Anamika Jain

Anamika Jain
Instituto Pólis
São Paulo, Brazil

Coming back to New York has been really helpful in looking back at my experience in Brazil. During this first week of school, I have been discussing what I learnt in Sao Paulo with student friends and professors, allowing me to take a step back, reflect and draw comparisons between all I have learnt in the two cities.

During the class (Dis)placed Urban Histories, which I took with Becky Amato in the Spring, I learnt about gentrification in Los Sures (South Williamsburg). The class was required to produce individual oral histories for people in the community who belonged to the original largely Latino population – an exercise that I realise helped me a lot in putting faces to gentrification in Sao Paulo, described in my previous post. The parallels between the narratives of gentrification is striking considering how strikingly different New York and Sao Paulo are in terms of pace and development. That in both places, gentrification brings about this image of young, rich and white people as displacing a non-white community is also something I found really interesting – new questions that arise for me now include questions of the relationship between colonialism, race and gentrification. I can see now how I can really use this fellowship as a stepping stone to further research that intrigues me.

One of the most prominent things for me post-fellowship is just how much the things I have learnt about gentrification and right to the city apply to me in my daily life now. Coming back to the city and looking for an apartment had me questioning whether I was a gentrifier for moving into a certain neighbourhood, had me inquiring about my rent history, had me talking to real estate agents about rent control and most importantly, made me question my role in shaping  or changing that community. The latter is a question I don’t have an answer for, but intend to be aware of as I navigate the neighbourhood.

All in all, this fellowship and all I have learnt through my research is, I realise, only the beginning of a journey I am very excited to take. This semester, I am taking a class as part of a scholars program about Urban Democracy which will take me back to Sao Paulo (and Bogota). During this class, I hope to build on what I have explored so far. In the coming summer, I hope to be able to go back to Brazil through the Urban Democracy Lab to explore other facets of right to the city that I could not dig into during my brief 10 weeks in Sao Paulo.

Anamika Jain
Instituto Pólis
São Paulo, Brazil

When one thinks of gentrification, São Paulo is not necessarily the first city that comes into mind. But pick up a conversation with any local here and they’ll be sure tell you just how rampant it is.

While my official internship is teaching me a lot about gentrification and right to the city in theory, there is no doubting that so much of my learning about the topic has come from just talking to locals here. I realized quite early on in my stay here that I wanted more from the city than just an internship; I wanted to talk to people and get their opinions on the topics I was researching, I wanted to see how these topics were specifically pertinent to Brazil (which is one of the only countries in the world to include right to the city in its constitution!), and I wanted to ask questions about topics like displacement and compare them to the answers we got when we did the same in New York (during Becky Amato’s Gallatin course: (Dis)placed Urban Histories). Obviously, this was quite ambitious, but lucky for me, I made a wonderful group of friends, all Brazil born-and-bred, and I have been learning more about the city with them than I ever could have imagined. As a bunch of young, left-wing millennials, they are generally more than happy to explain anything from politics to history for me, and I’ve realized more and more how connected all these topics are, that I cannot separate urban studies from a tumultuous history or rich culture of a city. I’ve learned some very interesting things: the hip street I love to party on here was the mecca of strip clubs and shady bars just 10 years ago, the walk I make from my apartment to my favourite restaurant in the Centro would have been unthinkable for women a couple of years ago, there is an exponential growth in vegan and vegetarian places recently – all textbook signs of gentrification that I would have never known had I not talked to people around me.

Simply asking my friends questions about their lives reaps amazing insights into gentrification for me. My friend Marcelo who lives in a new, bougie development in the Glicerio neighbourhood – known to be home to the more rough-and-tumble lot – often talks about how he feels like part of the problem when he thinks about his place in his rapidly gentrifying community. But as a young black student, he also expresses his comfort in walking around on a neighbourhood where most people are black and in being able to buy cheap groceries from the neighbourhood grocery store. Another friend of mine, Má, a young white-passing woman, who lives in the Centro – the inner city – talks about the convenience of living in downtown SP, close to the subway and several stores, and paying cheap rent. However, safety at night is known to be a major problem in the area, but as more young and white people are moving in, there is an increased police presence and most buildings are now equipped with security guards. These are just two of the many friends I have prodded for information, and their stories hold a striking parallel to the narratives of gentrification I was hearing in New York.

There are also certain neighbourhoods in the city that just scream gentrification. When Alison and I first went to Vila Madelena, a hip area with everything from art galleries to tattoo parlours and fancy bars, all we could do is stare wide-eyed and try to believe we had not just got off the bus and ended up in Williamsburg. Also interesting to note was just how “white” the area was and how much more English we were hearing around us in the bars and restaurants.

What I’m seeing and hearing around me is contributing heaps to the research that I am doing for Polis. It allows me to align theory with concrete experience, and to put faces to the rather dry word “gentrification”. I’m so lucky to have met such an amazing group of people to show me so much of the city, and I am so lucky to be in São Paulo and see the theory I’m working with.

Anamika Jain
Instituto Pólis
São Paulo, Brazil

The past month in São Paulo has been a whirlwind of experiences. I came here to explore gentrification, but it seems I am now becoming a semi-expert in several areas of ‘Right to the City’ since even one branch of gentrification is deeply entangled with the others.

My official internship with Instituto Polis requires me to do research on good examples of right to the city in cities across the globe to be used as a persuasive document in the UN Habitat III conference in October in Ecuador. My purpose is to convince other countries that implementing right to the city is easy, cost-efficient, effective and productive. This research process is challenging as much as gratifying. I truly believe that in doing this research, I am learning not just more about the world’s cities but also more about practical uses of right to the city and it’s links to issues of politics, war, economy, society, sexism and environmentalism, just to name a few.

‘Right to the City,’ a concept developed by Henri Lefebvre in his 1968 book, Le Droit à la Ville, is defined by Polis as “the right of all inhabitants, present and future, permanent and temporary to use, occupy and produce just, inclusive and sustainable cities, defined as a common good essential to a full and decent life.” Polis classifies the right as both a collective and a diffuse right: as a collective right it pertains to the diversity of all inhabitants on the basis of their common interest; as a diffuse right, the right to the city belongs to present and future generations and is indivisible and not subject to exclusive use or appropriation. This diffuse right is interesting to me because unlike the collective right, I could not figure out what exactly its legal basis was until I asked a Brazilian friend and law student, who told me that this kind of right was common and known in the Brazilian context but not so much elsewhere. Thus, a lot of my work, guided primarily by Polis documents, has a Brazilian understanding of the right.

The challenging part about this job is not just the research, but learning the politics of writing an official document; I cannot explicitly criticize or highlight problems that I identify with the examples I am giving from my research since my purpose is to convince states to implement right to the city. Nevertheless, I am thoroughly enjoying the research I am doing and the guidance I have received from my supervisor Rodrigo at Polis has helped me a lot in the initial stages of thinking about how to approach and structure official documents. Rodrigo has also provided me with some official documents and books that have been invaluable in supporting my research and have taught me a lot about right to the city and its connections with gentrification.

All in all, this internship is proving incredibly rewarding and I am so excited to produce a high quality document that encourages cities to implement right to the city. My passion driving my will to produce good work lies in the knowledge that by implementing right to the city, so many other fundamental human rights are supported and promoted. Hopefully this passion translates into a convincing text!

Anamika Jain
Instituto Pólis
São Paulo, Brazil

Arriving in New York for the first time, fresh from Hong Kong, I was overcome with fascination when people told me what the Village used to be like, or how “robust” and “cultural” one of my favorite neighborhoods, the now über-hipster Williamsburg, used to be. And yet, as much as I loved the neighborhoods they have become today, I couldn’t help but wonder: at what cost have they changed?

Gentrification is one of the most prevalent socioeconomic phenomena of the 21st century, and as with all major urban changes, it does not come without some serious problems. Neighborhoods once known for their unique amalgamation of culture and grit now house some of the most expensive and hottest real estate on the market. This trend is rampant in major cities of the world, from New York in the global North to São Paulo in the global South.

I believe that a human rights approach to gentrification is much needed, as it allows us to compare and asses the changes in different cities on a humanitarian basis, using a common, universal set of rights. It also allows us to both arm our cities with land rights, squatter rights, and the right to community, and challenge eviction methods as well as the racial and gendered underpinnings of displacement.

This semester, my research partner, Alison, and I have been learning a great deal about gentrification theory and doing groundwork in New York’s South Williamsburg neighborhood in the Gallatin seminar, “(Dis)Placed Urban Histories.” Through the seminar, we have been working with a community organization called Los Sures, which protects Hispanic people in Williamsburg from displacement and from skyrocketing rent.

Alison and I hope to carry what we have learned in New York this semester to São Paulo, where we will be working this summer with the organization, Instituto Pólis. Pólis works to build just, sustainable, and democratic cities and works closely with Right to the City, a powerful housing and urban justice movement.

Having learned about many different theories of gentrification and having worked hands-on with a community organization in New York, I am incredibly excited to explore gentrification in the politically tumultuous and rapidly developing São Paulo with an organization that does advocacy work to make real policy changes. If there is one thing I need to actively do, it is to keep my mind open to observing aspects of gentrification not covered in the theories I have studied, which focus largely on urban cities like New York, Chicago, and London.

I hope to come back not just with new advocacy skills up my sleeve, but with a better understanding of gentrification and its intersections with things like race, class, gender, and perhaps even politics.