Newcomers: Gentrification and Its Discontents University of Chicago Press, 2019
“Schuerman combines measured academic research with informal reportage. The effect is thorough, yet intimate.”
The Times Literary Supplement
“The wreckage of both gentrification and solutions to the gentrification problem litter every page.”
Times Higher Education
“[His] interviews with community activists, landlords, tenants, and developers capture insights that otherwise might be lost to memory. Similarly, he salvages extensive evidence from newspapers, magazines, online sites, public records, and published research.”
Journal of Urban Affairs
“A revelation, and one of the very best books on cities and urbanism I’ve read in some time.”
Richard Florida, author of The New Urban Crisis
“Schuerman’s analysis is refreshingly free of nostalgia or ideology; his reporting is careful and sharp.”
Eric Klinenberg, author of Palaces for the People
“The author humanizes the community transformations so that readers who have never set foot in those locales—and even those who know them personally—fully comprehend the dynamics involved.”
Kirkus Reviews
“…provocative and important, with the potential to reshape how we think about a polarizing topic.”
Gary Rivlin, author of Katrina: After the Flood
As millions of Americans moved to the suburbs after World War II, a smaller number stayed behind, enchanted by the vibrancy and diversity of city life. Largely white and well-off, these “pioneers” self-consciously crafted their ideal neighborhoods. They formed community groups, organized house tours, and lobbied city officials to promote their cause. Eventually, the back-to-the-city movement caught on to such a degree that these pioneers have, in some cases, pushed out the people and the places that made cities diverse and vibrant in the first place.
In Newcomers: Gentrification and Its Discontents, award-winning journalist Matthew Schuerman details how a trend that began so innocently turned into one of the most vexing social problems of our time. He focuses on three locales—Brownstone Brooklyn, Chicago’s Near North Side, and San Francisco’s Mission District—but the stories he tells resonate throughout the country.
“Gentrification has met its perfect biographer.”
Elvin Wyly, University of British Columbia
Matthew Schuerman 