Abstract
In We Belong Here: Gentrification, White Spacemaking, and a Black Sense of Place, sociologist Shani Evans examines how Black Portlanders experience gentrification in what is often described as “America’s whitest city.” Portland, Oregon carries a reputation as a stronghold of liberal progressivism, but Evans reveals how beneath the veneer of tolerance lies a more complicated reality of displacement, surveillance, and exclusion. Drawing on interviews, ethnography, and archival sources, Evans coins the term “white spacemaking” to describe how white residents, institutions, and policies remake urban space in ways that privilege whiteness and destabilize Black homeplaces. A key mechanism of this process is “whitewatching,” the everyday scrutiny of Black bodies, both invisible and hyper-visible, that marks them as out of place.
The book is rich with alternative accounts of what it means to be Black in Portland, and it challenges readers to rethink how neighborhood change is narrated, legitimized, and contested. Evans argues that gentrification is not only about the movement of capital and the displacement of working-class residents, but also about the remaking of cultural spaces and belonging. By centering the lived experiences of Black Portlanders, We Belong Here makes a significant contribution to urban sociology, Black geographies, and critical studies of race and space.
One of the first things I appreciated about the book is its accessible structure. Evans organizes chapters around subheadings that echo the voices of community members with phrases such as “How did change happen?”“Not for us,” and “It was planned.” This organization mirrors how neighborhood change is experienced in everyday life: as stories, reflections, and frustrations voiced in community spaces. Readers are invited into the interactions just below the surface: the glances, the extra scrutiny, the feelings of being watched that cumulatively constitute white spacemaking.
Evans’s analysis of Portland’s contradictory identity as a “progressive city” resonated deeply with my own research on San Francisco’s Fillmore District and Atlantic City’s Northside. In each of these places, Black residents confront the irony of exclusion within cities celebrated nationally for tech innovation or for resort life. A Portland interviewee named Troy captures this dissonance. As Black families were displaced, the neighborhood suddenly became “booming,” filled with businesses and homeowners who proudly displayed Black Lives Matter signs. Evans’s juxtaposition of such narratives underscores how proclamations of racial justice can ring hollow when they coexist with policies that perpetuate racialized displacement.
These stories invite us to consider whether urban policies can ever fully unlink Blackness from low property values, or whether equity-driven approaches might begin to disrupt these patterns. Evans notes that planning documents for Albina, the historic heart of Black Portland, rarely acknowledge racism’s role in neighborhood decline or integrate residents in decision-making processes. Evan begs us to consider the reality of a racially integrated neighborhood and cautions that it is “only beneficial if it provides Black residents with more access to the resources and opportunities that are lacking in the segregated neighborhoods” (p. 49). The book pushes us to consider whether racial integration is truly beneficial if it does not increase Black access to resources, services, and opportunities.
A strength of We Belong Here is Evans’s sustained attention to the micro-level experiences of Black Portlanders. She draws thoughtfully on W. E. B. Du Bois’s concept of double consciousness, the tension of seeing oneself through the eyes of white Americans while simultaneously holding a Black self-definition. This framework illuminates how gentrifying neighborhoods feel on the ground with the sleek architecture, the rise of hip coffee shops, and the subtle gazes that communicate who “belongs.”
Evans extends this analysis through the concept of “whitewatching.” Black residents describe being both invisible and hyper-visible, subject to an internalized surveillance that conditions how they move through space. This resonates with the stories I have encountered in Oakland, where Black residents modify their behavior, such as avoiding hoodies at night, to preempt racial profiling. Evans situates these individual acts within a broader system of racialized urban governance, showing how everyday vigilance is central to white spacemaking.
The book’s most provocative theoretical move is distinguishing between gentrification and white spacemaking. Gentrification often describes an influx of capital and whiter, higher-income residents that displace working-class communities. White spacemaking, however, encompasses a broader set of practices that reassert racial dominance. This includes not only displacement but also cultural erasure, architectural redesign, selective policing, and the heightened scrutiny of Black businesses. Evans encourages us to ask: what does racial dominance feel like? How is it embedded in building design, zoning decisions, or the everyday looks exchanged on the street?
This conceptualization matters because it prevents us from treating gentrification as a purely economic process. Evans demonstrates that displacement is not only about property markets but also about the reproduction of whiteness as normative. The distinction between gentrification and white spacemaking expands the toolkit available to urban sociologists.
Beyond the concepts it offers, We Belong Here continues the tradition of strong sociological scholarship. The book has a clear and significant thesis: that white spacemaking, not just economic gentrification, is central to understanding Portland’s racialized urban change. Evans’s methodology of interviews, participant observation, and archival research is both rigorous and deeply attuned to community voices, producing a textured account that resonates across different cities. At times, I wonder about the future of homeplaces in rapidly changing urban cities and what equity-driven redevelopment could look like in practice. Yet this may also be an invitation for future scholarship and community-based work.
In sum, We Belong Here is an important contribution to contemporary sociology. By foregrounding the voices of Black Portlanders, Evans reminds us that neighborhood change is not only measured in property values or census tracts but in feelings of belonging, dignity, and survival. Evans compels us to ask the right questions: what lessons can we carry forward to ensure that Black communities are not only remembered but are able to thrive in place?