"Gentrification, it turns out, can have an odd psychological effect on those it occurs around. No one — almost no one — is wishing for a return of row upon row of boarded-up buildings or the summer mornings when lifeless bodies turned up in vestibules, or the evenings when every block seemed to have its own band of drug dealers and subordinate crackheads.But residents say they do miss having a neighborhood with familiar faces to greet, familiar foods to eat, and no fear of being forced out of their homes.It was Dr. Mindy Fullilove, a professor of clinical psychiatry and public health at Columbia University, who called the feeling “root shock” because, she said, its effects are similar to what happens to uprooted plants. She describes it as “the pain of losing one’s beloved neighborhood.”The psychological hold Harlem has on African-Americans has endured even as the neighborhood’s devolution became so complete that between about 1960 and 1990, Harlem had lost a third of its population and half of its housing stock." .Mixed Feelings as Change Overtakes 125th St. The New York Times, June 13, 2008
