Mister Rogers' Neighborhood Goes Upscale: Redevelopment as Neighborhood Cleansing

Abstract

Despite an abundance of literature on gentrification that has been published over the past several decades, little attention has been focused on the fate of displacees once they have migrated away from their neighborhoods of origin. This study covers new ground by tracking displacees to their new sites of habitation and applying ethnographic methodologies to collect displacement narratives spanning a decade--from forced relocation to resettlement and beyond. I argue that, notwithstanding the "trauma" of eviction, outmovers were able to tap into their own personal as well as their collective sense of place-identity in order to better negotiate the relocation process, proving to be far more resilient than might otherwise have been anticipated. Furthermore I suggest that the informants, all former residents of a cluster of courtyard enclaves in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Squirrel Hill, were empowered in their displacement journeys by the everyday practices of collaborative living that they experienced as participants in a highly articulated socio-spatial system that I have called "court-ordered living." Finally, this dissertation argues that the discourses surrounding gentrification-induced displacement be reflected upon from the vantage point of hindsight, providing new insights into the intersection of historic preservation, property rights, neoliberal governance, affordable housing, and what constitutes "a beautiful neighborhood" from the perspective of competing stakeholders across time and place.