I've always seen gentrification as more a symptom of a problem, rather than a problem itself. After all, it's not the appearance of a higher economic class that's bad; it's the forceful displacement of the lower economic class, which may or may not follow. I've seen both scenarios play out in both urban and suburban areas, depending a ton on willingness to allow new construction and pre-existing home ownership rates.

The displacement effect of gentrification is potentially overstated: https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/community-developmen... is an interesting study.

In that case, vulnerable populations in gentrifying neighborhoods were no more likely to leave than equivalent populations in non-gentrifying neighborhoods.

For me, the obvious mechanism is that, well, it's true that people who leave may often blame gentrification / increased costs for their departure. But on the other side of it, without gentrification people may still have left, but for different reasons: to get away from crime, to go somewhere with more amenities. It's possible that these two tendencies somewhat balance each other out.

Seems like the way to disentangle the two is to look a the people replacing those that move out. If they're roughly the same economically then it's the churn of being a poor person in a capitalist society if the income is going up particularly if it's a sharp increase and rents are rising then it's gentrification.

This is a restatement of the point you're replying to.

The question is which of these is worse for the people living in the area.

The harmful displacement effects of gentrification are really a symptom of unresponsive city planning and zoning. If governments were more flexible and faster to adapt to changing circumstances, gentrification could have been positive-sum.

The appearance of a higher economic class leads to lopsided political power. It's the lopsided political power that then leads to the displacement of the lower economic class from any desirable area.

Really? Look at the Mission in SF. You can’t build anything without Calle 24’s approval. Projects aren’t getting shutdown by the wealthy.

Seems like one could find problems with anything people do.