With gentrification now becoming a buzzword for seismic urban change, the battle lines were now tightly drawn in the debate over whether gentrification and development, or at least the types of development it brought, were a good or bad thing for poor Black and Hispanic communities. Developers, a slew of government officials and real estate moguls are solidly on one side repeatedly citing the supposed benefits: more jobs, a spur to businesses, more and better housing, schools and services, and spruced up public space.

Community activists and legions of residents counter with their checklist of bad things it purportedly will bring: homelessness, displacement, unaffordability, racial tensions and erosion of the decades of racial and cultural cohesion that ironically forced confinement to racially segregated neighborhoods.