.....gentrification" was first coined in 1964 by sociologist Ruth Glass, who commented on the changing "social character" of districts in London (Smith 1996, 33). Glass critiqued the process of gentrification, however inevitable it might seem to a realist, on the grounds that it threatened to undermine social welfare. Gentrification cannot be discussed without reference to the intersections between race, class, and power. However, gentrification may be an unreasonably maligned concept and term. Artists have consistently and historically stood at the forefront of gentrification, as the earliest pioneers of urban gentrification around the world. Ironically, though, artists have frequently been framed as the "victims" of gentrification (Makagon 2010, 26). The conceptualization of artists as victims and not as instigators of gentrification is a racialized critique of the process of gentrification because it ignores, discounts, or even denigrates the contributions made by non-white counterculture and bohemian pioneers of aesthetic urban revitalization. Although it is important to avoid the neoliberal misappropriation of artist-driven gentrification, the process has net positive outcomes in improving quality of life in urban spaces by conjoining disparate social groups and encouraging diversity (Markusen 2006). Gentrification deserves to be reconsidered as a desirable process that only sours when corporate interests undermine the ethos and aesthetics of original art-driven community-oriented progress.Because artists have higher rates of self-employment versus other urban denizens, they can potentially boost community empowerment and self-reliance overall. With spillover effects to the non-artist residents of the same community, artists generate their own products and services to prosper not corporate entities but local ones. From a Marxist perspective, artists own their own means of production, are not alienated from their labor, and subvert the capitalist labor system. Artists work in ways that deliberately, overtly, and consciously breaks down social, economic, and political barriers of race, class, and gender (Cole 1987). Gentrification can promote social diversity and reduce homogenization (Slater 2004). If the end result of artists' role in impoverished communities is corporate real estate development, then artists themselves cannot be blamed. Their transformative role should not be underestimated or devalued, presumed to be somehow thematically linked with corporate brands of gentrification....

As Marukusen (2006) puts it, "artists as a group make important, positive contributions to the diversity and vitality of cities, and their agendas cannot be conflated with neoliberal urban political regimes," (1921). Artist-driven gentrification is not the same thing as the corporate takeover and infiltration of working class, poor, or bohemian communities. If corporate interests to eventually encroach on working class spaces, it is only because of the cultural capital generated by artists and the commodification and co-opting of that cultural capital by neoliberal entities.
Urban geographers usually distinguish between first stage and second stage gentrification to clarify the differential role and perception of the artist. The first wave of gentrification is when the artist(s) move into an impoverished, run down, dilapidated, or simply old working class neighborhood. The second wave of gentrification is when corporate interests recognize the potential to raise real estate values because of artists' perceived cultural capital and the actual capital value associated with the artists' work in aesthetically improving the community and their local businesses. Critiques of the second stage of gentrification often obscure the political and social importance of the first stage. Regardless, gentrification is typically viewed as happening from the bottom-up: an artist-driven grassroots movement that organically shifts an economically depressed urban space into a mainstream one that is welcoming to yuppies. However, urban geographers are now conceptualizing a third stage of gentrification or at least a third type: whereby gentrification is a top-down process instead of a bottom-up process. That third model of gentrification involves active use and diversion of public funds into art-driven gentrification such as through support of public art, street art, and cultural facilities (Cameron and Coaffee, 2006). Matthews (2010) likewise calls the incorporate of art into public policy as third wave gentrification. Barcelona's Hangar Collective is unique in that it represents all three stages or types of gentrification: first, second, and third stages. As Pallares-Barbera, Dot, and Casellas (2012) point out, public outcries over the potential commodification and commercialization of the Hangar Collective led to top-down municipal policies that helped to retain the artist-only community concept. Not only did public funds help to resist corporate injections of finance into the community, they…