A big hat tip to my students in my Race and Politics class this semester for providing a set of outstanding resources on gentrification. For those interested in the topic, here are some useful tools to broaden your understanding. Please feel free to add any links you find:

This article from the Winter 2007 edition of On Common Ground, a publication seemingly associated with the National Association of Realtors, has a nice introduction to the debate over gentrification.

An interesting article from designer Charles Hughes Smith on the process of “de-gentrification” or neighborhood decline.

The WYCA Housing Initiative Action Plan of 2005 has some data on patterns of residential segregation.

This video on the gentrification of the Echo Park/Silverlake area in Los Angeles highlights the tensions inherent in improving a neighborhood while maintaining demographic stability.

This passage from an L.A. Weekly article on the phenomenon draws an interesting analogy:

Perhaps the best way to understand gentrification is to view it as something akin to a weather pattern, like a tsunami, a hurricane or a driving rainstorm. Like the storm systems that pass through Los Angeles each winter, gentrification starts with the ocean, where buyers have shown themselves willing to pay outrageous sums to live near the water. The most expensive property in Los Angeles — and in the United States as a whole — is along the coastline, where properties routinely run in the seven figures.

La Voz de Atzlan provides some wonderful maps on the geographic dispersal of the Latino population in Los Angeles over the last sixty years.