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Gentrification. As we\u2019ve written elsewhere, the term often sheds more heat than light. This is due not only to its negative connotations and lack of precise meaning, but also because gentrification plays out differently from one city, one neighborhood to the next. Gentrification is used to describe convey a force that feels at once mysterious, unavoidable, and unstoppable \u2014 not unlike The Nothing in The Neverending Story. It is a word marshaled into service by those advocating for threatened neighbors...and a word generally avoided by mayors and city planners.\nAnd yet that word, gentrification, freighted and imprecise though it may be, is important. It\u2019s important because, as King Williams says, gentrification is a social concept with real-world implications. Behind gentrification \u2014 both the word and the phenomena \u2014 are real families, real stories, and real losses.\nKing Williams is a writer, the director of the documentary film, The Atlanta Way, which is slated to be released in early 2020, and cohost of The Neighborhood Watch podcast. In today\u2019s episode of our podcast, Strong Towns founder and president Chuck Marohn talks with Williams about how Atlanta\u2019s gentrification is both similar to and different than what\u2019s happening in other American cities. Williams describes what people mean when they say \u201cThe Atlanta Way\u201d \u2014 it's a particular way of making and presenting decisions can be traced back more than a century \u2014 and why the middle-class in Atlanta are now facing gentrification themselves.\nAlso discussed:\n1:45 - How gentrification gets confused with positive redevelopment and community reinvestment\n11:30 - Why gentrification is almost always avoidable\n22:00 - The \u201cOlympification of Atlanta\u201d and what Atlanta did and didn\u2019t learn about redevelopment ahead of Super Bowl LIII\n29:00 - The tragic paradox of gentrification: people advocating for the kind of changes to the neighborhood that will ultimately undermine their own ability to live there\n34:00 - The role of housing assistance and public housing in addressing gentrification\n37:30 - Who will finally put the \u201copportunity\u201d in opportunity zones\nWilliams ends by offering advice to the \u201cgentry:\u201d If you don\u2019t curb gentrification, you yourself will be gentrified.\nThis important and fascinating discussion is a must-listen for professionals and practitioners everywhere who care not just about growing but about growing well.\nFor more about King Williams, watch his TEDx talk on \u201cThe Atlanta Way,\u201d and make sure to follow him online:\n\nKing Williams (Twitter)\n\n\nThe Atlanta Way (Twitter)\n\n\nThe Neighborhood Watch (Twitter)