This series looks like it going to be very good. The first installment is here: Gentrification is About Power: What’s Community Got to Do With It.

What may seem curious is why this new version of land seizure and displacement is now happening with such ferocity in areas that were once disdained by those with more privilege. After all, much of the pattern of post-war suburbanization involved those with either wealth or racial advantage separating themselves from city neighborhoods that were denser and more diverse. “White flight” (and later middle-class flight as more economically successful minorities joined the exodus) generally meant that city centers would serve a daytime economic function even as immediately adjoining districts were considered undesirable by those who had other options.

For people who want to read more about Southern California’s racialized land development history, there are many, many options:

Hunt, Darnell M, and Ana-Christina Ramón. Black Los Angeles : American Dreams and Racial Realities. New York: New York University Press, 2010

Sanchez, George J, Charles Bergquist, and Ricardo Penaranda. Becoming Mexican American Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945. Cary: Oxford University Press, USA, 2014

Hise, Greg, and William Francis Deverell. Eden by Design : The 1930 Olmsted-Bartholomew Plan for the Los Angeles Region. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000

Fong, Timothy. The First Suburban Chinatown: The Remaking of Monterey Park, California.

McGirr, Lisa. Suburban Warriors : The Origins of the New American Right. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2015