Gentrification is the process of wealthier people moving into a historically lower-income area, leading to increased property values, changes in the neighborhood’s character, and often the displacement of existing residents.
Placekeeping is the active process of maintaining and caring for a place, focusing on preserving its culture, history, and social fabric, often involving community involvement and addressing potential displacement or gentrification.
Part of the impulse for this project comes from understanding that increasing gentrification and economic pressures threaten to displace communities and erase valuable cultural treasures and the communities who sustain them. The Cultural Treasures Project (CTP) was launched in response— a community-driven effort to identify, document, and uplift the people, places, and practices that matter most. This project is about naming what we love so we can protect it. It’s about ensuring that future growth strengthens our identity rather than replaces it, essentially placekeeping.