From Apple to Orange: Narratives of Small City Migration and Settlement among the Urban Middle Class

Abstract

As large cities become unaffordable, some people in the urban middle class are moving to small cities but risk replicating gentrification and its harms. Based on a qualitative research project on Newburgh, a small city north of New York City, this paper examines the narratives that middle-class urbanites construct to make sense of this migration, their new urban environment, and their place within it. These narratives describe their decision to move (migration) and their everyday lives in the city (settlement). Most importantly, their narratives are shaped by their social positions as both displaced residents and gentrifiers and as both consumers and producers of space. But despite being self-aware gentrifiers, their settlement narratives lack reflections on their own displacement from New York City, and instead emphasize how they try to mitigate gentrification’s harms. The paper concludes with a discussion of what makes gentrifiers in small cities distinct from those in large ones.