Door No. 4: The "G" Word

Gentrification is a process of neighborhood change in which higher-income, more highly educated residents move into historically disinvested, lower-income neighborhoods. - Small Business Anti-Displacement Network

By the time I arrived at SCAD, I thought I already knew what gentrification was.

Or at least I thought I knew who was responsible.

Like many people, I had inherited a story. It was a story about neighborhoods being taken, longtime residents being displaced, and outsiders arriving to profit from communities they had not helped build. From my own experiences in Detroit and Washington, D.C., it seemed obvious who the villains were.

Then I started researching.

The more I learned, the more I realized I wasn't questioning the definition of gentrification. I was questioning the story I had inherited about it. Every article, policy paper, neighborhood plan, and historical timeline seemed to reveal another layer. What I thought would be a straightforward investigation into neighborhood change became something much more personal.

Gentrification, I discovered, is not a simple process. It is layered.

Like an onion, each layer reveals another beneath it. Housing policy leads to lending practices. Lending practices lead to wealth disparities. Wealth disparities influence neighborhood investment. Investment reshapes communities. Communities reshape identity. By the time you reach what appears to be the center, you realize there isn't a single cause at all, only generations of decisions building upon one another.

That realization changed the direction of this project.

I no longer wanted to prove whether gentrification was good or bad. I wanted to understand why we experience it so differently. More importantly, I wanted to understand how our perceptions of place shape the decisions we make about the places we choose to preserve, invest in, or abandon.

Throughout my time at SCAD, I found myself searching for my own design philosophy. I expected that journey would teach me about architecture, interiors, branding, and urban systems. Instead, it taught me to ask better questions.

Does where we live shape who we become?

Or do the stories we tell about ourselves shape where we choose to live?

As a member of the African diaspora, I have often felt deeply connected to America while simultaneously feeling like a visitor within it. My ancestors helped build this country, yet many of the systems that shaped my family's story suggested we were temporary guests rather than rightful stewards. I began wondering whether that feeling came from history itself or from the stories history had taught me to believe.

At the same time, another question emerged that surprised me.

What if I tried to understand the people we call gentrifiers?

Not to excuse displacement. Not to dismiss generations of inequity. But to understand intention.

Is gentrification fundamentally a racial issue, or is it a spatial issue shaped by race? Are investors, homeowners, developers, and new residents simply responding to opportunities created long before they arrived? Can neighborhoods improve without forcing the people who carried them through decades of disinvestment to leave? Are the inequalities we continue to experience solely the responsibility of those arriving today, or are they the result of policies that have compounded over centuries?

I found myself resisting the idea that there had to be only two sides.

Much of the conversation surrounding gentrification asks us to choose between "who's here now" and "who's coming next." But what if that isn't the only possibility?

I have never been interested in one group winning at another's expense. If revitalization only works when longtime residents lose their homes, culture, or sense of belonging, then we have not solved the problem. We have simply shifted who carries the burden. What interests me is the possibility of a different outcome.

Can neighborhoods welcome new investment while honoring the people who never left? Can preservation exist alongside progress? Can economic growth strengthen a community instead of replacing it? Can development create opportunity without erasing identity?

Those questions became the true beginning of Every Door.

This project is not an argument against change.

It is an invitation to rethink how change happens.

What This Door Left Open

When I began this research, I thought I was studying gentrification.

Looking back, I realize I was studying relationships. The relationship between people and place. Between history and possibility. Between memory and progress. Between preservation and change.

The word gentrification gave me a vocabulary, but it did not give me an answer.

Instead, it left me with the question that continues to guide Every Door:

How do we create places where everyone has the opportunity to belong?