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Negotiating the Space between Avant–Garde and “Hip Enough”: Businesses and Commercial Gentrification in Wicker Park

Gentrification literature focuses mostly on growth machines pursuing profits or residents pursuing taste preferences, to the exclusion of cultural intermediaries that connect these processes, particularly businesses. Recent research addresses this gap, but even those focusing on commercial gentrification tell a partial story, neglecting the subjectivities of merchants and ignoring the diversity of businesses involved. This paper contributes to this growing literature by exploring merchants’ attitudes, and moving beyond boutiques and independent businesses. Examining Chicago's Wicker Park, it asks “Under what circumstances do merchants come to embrace or repudiate gentrification in their neighborhood?” Merchants support gentrification when they understand it primarily as an alternative to financial instability and repudiate gentrification when they understand it primarily as a disruptor of aesthetic stability. This paper identifies two specific neighborhood mechanisms that determine how merchants might arrive at such understandings: geographical location and perceived customer base. Additionally, while there is heterogeneity in terms of these two characteristics, there is remarkable homogeneity in terms of understanding of neighborhood reputation. Specifically, there is a common understanding of the neighborhood's reputational hipness across respondents. Those who support gentrification value this reputation instrumentally while those who oppose it value it intrinsically, but either way, everyone orients themselves to this reputation in forming attitudes and making consequential decisions.