Here is the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project’s map on displacement. I’m still trying to figure out how to view the map fully, but from what I can see, it looks like a great project.

The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, a data visualization, data analysis, and digital storytelling collective is excited to release its crowdsourced map of displacement and loss: https://crowdmap.com/map/narrativesofdisplacement. Through CrowdMap, it offers people the opportunity to contribute their own story documenting changes that they observe and experience amidst a sea change of gentrification.

People can post directly on the website and geolocate the site that they are describing, whether it is the construction of new condos, or their displacement story. They can also email narrativesofdisplacement@in.crowdmap.com, or SMS 1-772-200-4233 and include *narrativesofdisplacement in the message.

While we are simultaneously creating a map holding formal oral histories of loss and displacement, this platform is intended for anyone to upload any story or anecdote that they observe or experience around gentrification. It does not have to be a loss of a home, though it could be. We find it important to create open platforms such as this so that multiple stories and voices can be heard and remembered. Gentrification functions by obscuring people’s lives and experiences, and this tool is intended to help combat this process.

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I’ve been a Mission resident since 1998 and a professor emeritus at Berkeley’s J-school since 2019. I got my start in newspapers at the Albuquerque Tribune in the city where I was born and raised. Like many local news outlets, The Tribune no longer exists. I left daily newspapers after working at The New York Times for the business, foreign and city desks. Lucky for all of us, it is still here.

As an old friend once pointed out, local has long been in my bones. My Master’s Project at Columbia, later published in New York Magazine, was on New York City’s experiment in community boards.

As founder/executive editor at ML, I've been trying to figure out how to make my interest in local news sustainable. If Mission Local is a model, the answer might be that you - the readers - reward steady and smart content. As a thank you for that support we work every day to make our content even better.

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2 Comments

  1. There’s nothing “organic” about crony capitalism. All it is is a path for human self-destruction. Who cares? You got yours, baby!

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    1. No, it is a natural process when people who cannot afford one place, seek a more promising and viable financial future in a place more suited to their wallet and earning power.

      In a failing town like Detroit, it is the wealthier folks who leave. but in a successful town like SF, inevitably it is the poorer folks who leave.

      As far as I know, that’s a process that has been going on for centuries. And some turnover is a healthy invigorating process.

      So again I ask – why not look at our new residents rather than try and freeze the city in time?

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