ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests gender as one fruitful avenue through which class and racial divides can be crossed to build an alternative vision of urban redevelopment that contests gentrification as the only path to revitalization. Contesting gentrification requires the production of other ways of knowing our place, and organizing around gendered issues can be one way to enact these alternative claims to space. The chapter proposes an ethic of care as a way to both contest gentrification and accomplish socially just urban development. Care is essential to both social reproduction and sustainable communities and requires a redefinition of work and value that is fair and gender-just. A politics of care would make gentrification impossible. In an era of rampant real estate speculation and gentrification coupled with austerity, commoning has become a strategy through which people meet concrete needs, and in so doing confront dynamics of power.
