Urban Displacement Project

What is the Nature of Gentrification and Displacement in American Cities?

The Urban Displacement Project (UDP) is a research and action initiative of UC Berkeley. UDP conducts community-centered, data-driven, applied research toward more equitable and inclusive futures for cities. Our research aims to understand and describe the nature of gentrification and displacement, and also to generate knowledge on how policy interventions and investment can respond and support more equitable development.

The goal of UDP is to produce rigorous research and create tools to empower advocates and policymakers, to reframe conversations, and to train and inspire the next generation of leaders in equitable development. Read an Executive Summary of our work.

Updated gentrification & policy maps

Gentrification and displacement continues to be a crisis across the nation. Check out our expanded, refined and updated maps that reveal the latest state of gentrification and displacement in California and Portland, Oregon. The policy maps highlight the lack of tenant protection policies in Southern California Communities.

Transit-Oriented Displacement or Community Dividends?

This is a work of careful scholarship, drawing on extensive literature reviews, field interviews, and statistical analysis to bring much-needed clarity to the debate around gentrification and displacement, showing how transit-oriented development has succeeded in some cities and failed in others, both politically and in practice. National and global examples make it a valuable resource for urbanists anywhere.

Research Brief on the Consequences of Displacement

In metropolitan regions across the country, residents face constrained, expensive housing markets and rising income inequality. As neighborhoods change and housing demand shifts, landlords are presented with a new set of financial prospects. Displacement and evictions are central components of this changing landscape, altering the geography of race and class across regions.

Displacement Explainer Video

“Pushed Out: Displacement Today and Its Lasting Impacts” is a short explainer video that helps paint a clearer picture of displacement and its long-term impacts. Displacement is not just a one-time unfortunate event -- it has long-lasting impacts for families and their opportunities, with low-income people and people of color often being hardest hit.

Literature Review on Gentrification and Displacement

In 2015, researchers at UC Berkeley and UCLA completed a review of the academic and practitioner literature on gentrification, displacement and its relationship to public and private investments. The lit review was published as a working paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco available here and as an academic article in the Journal of Planning Literature available here.

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