The injustice of gentrification is often reduced to residential displacement and the loss of affordable housing and to physical displacement of residents. In addition to that the gentrification also displaces community histories, social ties, and spaces of cultural gathering and civic action. The Neighborhood Story Project is a participatory action research intervention designed to engage residents of gentrifying neighborhoods in addressing more than the material effects of gentrification.

This multi case study of three Neighborhood Story Projects finds that participants experienced gains  place knowledge and attachments, social relationships, and  self and collective efficacy.    Although definitions of gentrification have some characteristics like the reinvestment of capital, an increase in high income demographics, landscape change, and direct or indirect displacement of low-income groups  In many communities, gentrification is also characterized by changing racial demographics. Although gentrifying neighborhoods are not always predominantly inhabited by people of color, and incomers are not always predominantly White, given historic and ongoing practices that have functioned to contain and/or segregate people of color. The people of color are more likely to live in neighborhoods vulnerable to gentrification.