Azorean-American Resilience in Camberville: A Visual Approach to a Vernacular Landscape in a Gentrified Neighborhood

This chapter delves into the urban transformation of Somerville, Massachusetts, focusing on the intersection of gentrification and resilience of the Azorean-American community situated on the city’s border with Cambridge, MA, next to Boston. Over three decades this urban space has transitioned from a working-class ethnic-immigrant enclave to one of the United States’ most expensive residential areas and suffering the profound impacts of gentrification. Based on a collaborative ethnographic and visual methodology, we explore cultural artifacts and conviviality practices of a semiotic landscape amid urban change, and critically examine the vanishing vernacular landscape and the ethnic identity shifts within this context: a bottom-up, counter-narrative contrasting top-down, homogenizing forces. Through three detailed ethnographic vignettes, our narrative delves into how Azorean-Americans navigate and challenge the urban renewal process, maintaining their cultural heritage and communal ties through visible and invisible markers in the urban space.