2025/08/01 by Zawadi Rucks-Ahidianai · 1 voice
Health Professions · Social Sciences · #Homelessness and Social Issues #Urban Planning and Governance #Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies
paper · doi:10.1093/sf/soaf120
openalex publication_date 2025/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
We Belong Here: Gentrification, White Spacemaking, and a Black Sense of Place by Shani Evans documents the gentrification of Albina, a historically Black area of Portland. Based on interviews with long-time residents, the book documents the experiences of racial and socio-economic change that has come with the influx of White middle-class residents to the neighborhood. While much of the gentrification literature has focused on Black neighborhoods in cities with large Black populations like Chicago and New York City, Evans explores the experiences of gentrification for the Black neighborhood in a White city, contributing to a deeper understanding of gentrification as a threat to Black spacemaking. Her approach values Black neighborhoods, not as sites of exclusion and segregation, but as centers of community and culture, as safe havens to escape anti-Black racism, and as spaces where Black people have a sense of belonging. The book begins with a history of the Black experience in Portland as part of the White settler state of Oregon. In Chapter 3, Evans analyzes her respondents’ memories of Albina between the 1970s and 1990s when the neighborhood was majority Black through the concept of “homeplace” from the late, but never forgotten bell hooks (2008). Chapter 4 brings us into gentrification, learning from long-time residents about the changes in Albina as it became a White middle-class neighborhood and their perceptions of why that change happened. In Chapter 5, Evans looks specifically at White spacemaking or the creation of spaces that cater to the needs, interests, and desires of White people and the specific mechanism of “White watching” or the gaze of White residents that creates discomfort and a sense of social displacement for Black residents. Lastly, Evans turns to Black residents’, leaders’, and activists’ responses to gentrification in Albina, including efforts to preserve Black culture and history in both nostalgic and commodifying forms.