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Resisting gentrification on its final frontiers: Learning from the Heygate Estate in London (1974–2013)
... This decimation of public housing continued in the US via the large-scale HOPE VI programme which began in the early 1990s (Goetz 2013;Vale 2019). Such new urban renewal is a classic feature of contemporary neoliberal housing redevelopment across cities of the Global North, and is associated with manifold displacement effects, both direct and indirect (Glynn 2009;Lees and Ferreri 2016;Morris 2019a;Watt 2021), as we discuss in greater detail below. ...
... Displacement occurs via various estate regeneration strategies. These include the demolition of existing public/social housing dwellings and the subsequent redevelopment of estates as mixed-tenure neighbourhoods, as has occurred in British (Hodkinson and Essen 2015;Hubbard and Lees 2018;Lees and Ferreri 2016;Lees and Hubbard 2020;Wallace 2015;Watt 2021;, North American (August 2014;Goetz 2013;Hyra 2008;Vale 2019), and Australian cities (Porter et al. 2023;Wynne and Rogers 2021). In the case of Sweden, estate regeneration has largely occurred via renovation and upgrading rather than demolition and rebuilding (Baeten et al. 2017;Polanska and Richard 2021;Pull and Richard 2021), but this has resulted in 'renoviction' , referring to 'a phenomenon through which renovation processes in rental housing are linked to substantial rent increases, forcing tenants to move from their homes as they cannot afford the higher living costs' (Gustafsson et al. 2019, 193). ...
... First, is that some of these studies (especially those based solely on survey research) can be methodologically criticised for lacking sufficient depth in relation to exploring issues as sociologically complex and emotionally laden as home, place belonging, and displacement (Davidson 2009;Easthope 2014;Manzo and Devine-Wright 2014). Second, if the regeneration of public/social housing estates is as beneficial to residents as the agency/choice-oriented literature tends to suggest, it then becomes difficult to understand and explain the widespread activism and resistance that such regeneration has given rise to amongst estate residents themselves (see inter alia August 2016; Gustafsson et al. 2019;Hubbard and Lees 2018;Lancione 2019;Lees and Ferreri 2016;Morris 2019a;Polanska and Richard 2021;Watt 2013;. In their work on tenants resisting 'renovictions' and possible displacement in Sweden, Polanska and Richard (2021, 187) identify eight 'forms of resistance repertoires' which incorporate both individual and collective types of action. ...
This paper offers a critical analysis of urban displacement and acts as an introduction to the Special Feature: ‘Putting urban displacement in its place’. It begins by noting the magnitude and significance of displacement, and summarises its constituent components. Drawing upon the work of Hirsh, Eizenberg and Jabareen [2020. “A New Conceptual Framework for
Understanding Displacement: Bridging the Gaps in Displacement Literature between the Global South and the Global North.” Journal of Planning Literature 35 (4): 391–407], the paper then outlines four kinds of urban displacement processes which span cities in the Global South and North: development induced displacement, slum clearance, eviction, and gentrification. Brief consideration is also given to the significance of studentification,
touristification, and austerity for driving urban displacement. Next
the paper explores three crucial issues regarding the conceptualisation of urban displacement: temporality, vulnerability to displacement, and its emotional impacts. The following section discusses rehousing/resettlement and post-displacement experiences. We then examine the contested relationship between displacement and gentrification. The penultimate section outlines some of the methodological challenges in undertaking research on displacement, and also returns to the theme of
placing urban displacement via a discussion of urban politics. The final section summarises the four papers in the Special Feature.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13604813.2024.2315883
... Türkiye'de ve dünyada gerçekleşen kentsel yeniden yapılanmalara bakıldığında dikkati çeken ilk detay, dezavantajlı durumda olan sakinlerin projeden en fazla etkilenen gruplar arasında yer almasıdır. Bu etki süreci kendisini yerinden edilme, zorla tahliye, komşuluk ilişkilerinde zayıflama şeklinde göstermektedir (Farha, 2011;Lees & Ferreri, 2016 ...
... Neticede neoliberal kent politikalarının etkin araçlarla devreye sokulması geniş ölçekli konut yıkımı, karma gelirli mahalleler oluşturma stratejileri gibi farklı politikaların soylulaştırma süreçleriyle beraber anılmasını getirmiştir. Özellikle eleştirel kent bilimciler devlet öncülüğünde soylulaştırma (Watt, 2018), üçüncü dalga soylulaştırma (Hackworth & Smith, 2001) gibi farklı kavramsal önermelerle yakın dönemdeki soylulaştırma çalışmalarındaki yerinden edilme süreçlerinin belirginleştiğine dair aktarımlarda bulunmuşlardır (Slater, 2012;Ünsal, 2015;Lees & Ferreri, 2016;Watt, 2021 & Musterd, 2013;Miltenburg vd., 2018). Diğer taraftan projelere dair eleştirilerin odaklandığı noktalar yerinden edilme süreçlerinin en tartışmalı konuları olan toplumsal ilişkilerde zayıflama, yer değiştirmeye bağlı yaşanan stres gibi durumların ortaya çıkmasıdır (Hankins, 2014;Lees & Ferreri, 2016). ...
... Özellikle eleştirel kent bilimciler devlet öncülüğünde soylulaştırma (Watt, 2018), üçüncü dalga soylulaştırma (Hackworth & Smith, 2001) gibi farklı kavramsal önermelerle yakın dönemdeki soylulaştırma çalışmalarındaki yerinden edilme süreçlerinin belirginleştiğine dair aktarımlarda bulunmuşlardır (Slater, 2012;Ünsal, 2015;Lees & Ferreri, 2016;Watt, 2021 & Musterd, 2013;Miltenburg vd., 2018). Diğer taraftan projelere dair eleştirilerin odaklandığı noktalar yerinden edilme süreçlerinin en tartışmalı konuları olan toplumsal ilişkilerde zayıflama, yer değiştirmeye bağlı yaşanan stres gibi durumların ortaya çıkmasıdır (Hankins, 2014;Lees & Ferreri, 2016). ...
Studies by researchers from different disciplines reveal that the most common result of urban regeneration projects is displacement. However, although the relevant literature has findings on the occurrence of displacement processes for various projects, they remain weak in terms of tracing the displaced residents. This study traces the households that had to move from Antalya Kepez-Santral neighborhood after the urban regeneration project. The main purpose of the study is to reveal the movement patterns of displaced households and causes that shaped those movements. Moreover, satisfaction levels with urban regeneration is also questioned. To achieve these goals, this study utilizes quantitative and qualitative data sets. Within the scope of the study, it has been determined that the households who were forced to move preferred neighborhoods close to the project area. Furthermore, households have stated that their attitude towards the urban regeneration project were negative and their social ties and connections were affected by the project. Finally, location advantage, kinship and neighborly relations, and affordability of rents are found to be the main factors during the preference of new neighborhoods.
... For example, in Seongsu, the local government implemented a "coexist agreement" with landlords and tenants to avoid sharp rent increases, offering incentives on floor-area ratio regulations during restructuring projects; although this agreement had no legal force, approximately 80% of contracted landlords were reported to have frozen their rent (Cho and Chi 2020). There have also been bottomup resistance movements among citizens, such as local organizing to participate in planning processes, self-organized activism, and legal challenges (Lees and Ferreri 2016). Different outlets, such as blogs, public lectures, and music, have been used to raise public awareness of gentrification and displacement (Annunziata and Rivas-Alonso 2018). ...
... This is notable in that, although those engaged in the discourse were neither private owners nor community members, they identified themselves as either "concerned citizens of Seoul" or "artist and design industrial partners," leading to an online petition (Lee and Le Dantec 2023, 10). The literature suggests that the public is ambivalent; they drive declining areas to become Instagrammable according to their social taste (Chang and Spierings 2023), yet they can prompt the local government to implement policies for neighborhood stability (Lees and Ferreri 2016). This highlights the need for improved public understanding of the consequences of gentrification, particularly among "young and relatively affluent" demographics who typically play the role of active consumers in neighborhoods (Jeong, Heo, and Jung 2015, 147). ...
As a global phenomenon, gentrification has far-reaching social and economic implications. As civic engagement and public understanding are crucial for responding to gentrification, employing a game-based approach could be effective due to the games’ ludic attributes. However, existing gamified interventions often lack structured game design and empirical assessment of their learning effectiveness. As such, this study aims to develop a serious game (SG) and assess its effect on enhancing public understanding and awareness of gentrification using an Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation framework. A prototype of a serious board game, Urban Gentri, was developed to immerse participants in the process and consequences of gentrification. A Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics framework was used when developing the rules of the game. Then, the study employed a mixed-methods approach, with forty-five participants completing pre- and post-tests and semi-structured exit interviews. Quantitative analysis showed a statistically significant increase in cognitive learning scores, demonstrating an improvement in the understanding of gentrification. The qualitative analysis of the exit interviews revealed the SG’s effectiveness in fostering empathy and encouraging participants to explore solutions (e.g., communication and policy interventions) to mitigate gentrification’s negative implications. Participants also expressed their willingness to engage in civic actions, such as supporting local businesses or paying attention to relevant news articles after playing the game. This implies the role-playing aspect allowed participants to empathize with different stakeholders, leading to a deeper appreciation of the complexities involved in gentrification. The findings highlight SGs’ potential for promoting public understanding and awareness of urban planning issues, including gentrification. By leveraging SGs as educational tools, planners and educators can create engaging platforms to inform the public and promote informed decision-making on complex urban issues.
... This marks a significant increase from the rate of 17.9% in 1978, around the beginning of the reform and opening-up policy, reflecting China's accelerated pace of urbanization over the past decade. Nevertheless, this swift urbanization has brought a host of sustainability issues, such as the depletion of land resources [2], environmental pollution [3][4][5], social inequality [6], concentrated areas of poverty [7], urban expansion [8,9], and unsustainable land use [10]. ...
... (Expansion of urban regeneration scale) C67 Attracting external investment may be affected by policy or market uncertainties, leading to insufficient construction funds for UR. (Difficulties in attracting external investment) 6 Unimplemented resident resettlement C18 UR involves many demolitions, but the resettlement housing provided is insufficient to meet the housing needs of all households facing relocation. As a result, some families are only temporarily resettled. ...
China’s urbanization process is currently in a transition phase from rapid growth to slow growth, necessitating the implementation of sustainable measures in urban planning. Urban regeneration (UR), being one of the fundamental mechanisms for achieving sustainable urban development, has received considerable attention. UR promotes sustainable development by reusing abandoned land and buildings, improving energy efficiency, and enhancing the ecological environment. However, UR involves numerous stakeholders who may have conflicting interests due to factors such as the environment, technology, and economy, thereby giving rise to social risks (SRs). These SRs pose a threat to the success of UR projects and can also lead to social instability, as well as hindering sustainable urban development. Identifying risk sources forms the foundation of and key to risk management. Therefore, this research employs an integrated qualitative and quantitative method to explore the SR factors (SRFs) related to UR for China. On the basis of the grounded theory method, case study examination was used for data collection, resulting in the identification of 22 specific categories and five main categories. Through quantitative analysis, the identified SRFs and five main classifications of UR in China were verified, namely the negative effects of demolition and relocation, the negative environmental effect, the negative effect of technology, the organization-related negative effect, and the negative effect of policy. Among them, the unfair compensation for demolition and relocation has the greatest impact on the SRs in UR. Based on further analysis of the quantitative results, this study proposes three measures to alleviate the UR-related SRs for China on the macro, meso, and micro levels, which include improving policy and the legal system, enhancing collaborative governance capacity, and strengthening public participation. This research also has reference value in the context of promoting UR for other developing countries.
... communities, gentrification fails to promote the general social and economic status of citizens, particularly that of lower-class citizens, who are often displaced without receiving fair compensation [8]. Simultaneously, lower-class citizens are excluded from community culture while they being unable to take advantage of the amenities such as improved public facilities brought about by urban renewal [9]. ...
... Simultaneously, lower-class citizens are excluded from community culture while they being unable to take advantage of the amenities such as improved public facilities brought about by urban renewal [9]. As a result, there has been an increase in protests and criminal activity, putting society's stability in jeopardy [8,9]. It is clear that urban renewal is a process of confrontation and cooperation between individuals from different social classes. ...
Social sustainability is the major concern of planners and local officials when urban renewal projects are being conducted. Extreme individualism can potentially cause conflicts of interest, making urban renewal in Western cities fraught with various types of social risks. As a country with deep-rooted socialist tradition, urban renewal projects in China are influenced by collectivist culture and show different features from those of the West. The objective of this research is to investigate how different stakeholders in urban redevelopment projects, including local residents, social organizations, the local state, and developers, interact with each other and how the associated social risks are hedged against. Using a recent well-known project in the city of Guangzhou, the authors attempt to present the latest progress in social risk management in China. With the support from a government-sponsored project, the authors have conducted a questionnaire-based survey and year-long follow-up fieldwork. Using ATLAS.ti software, we found that that “residents’ demand”, “status of collaboration”, and “degree of trust” are the keys to risk management. The results of an ordered probit model show that residents are worried about the overall planning, the relocation timetable, and whether their personal needs are taken into account. It is also indicated that the timely disclosure of project information, high-quality public participation, and a reasonable compensation plan can possibly boost the support rate. The authors suggest that utilizing China’s collectivist culture could be an effective way to mitigate social risks, and residents’ personal interests should also be respected.
... Secondly, in most cases, URPs in downtown cities are more based on physical and economic aspects, and citizen participation plays a minor role (Parés, Bonet-Martí, and Martí-Costa 2012). As a result, these components lead to ecological segregation, mandatory displacement, injustice, gentrification, and uneven development in the intervened urban areas (Camerin 2019;Lees and Ferreri 2016;Raco, Henderson, and Bowlby 2008). ...
... They then compare these changes to city-wide average changes and consider gentrification to be occurring where increases in these variables in small areas (an estimation of neighborhoods) is greater than changes in the city-wide averages of the same variables. A variety of drivers of gentrification, often conceptualized as "demand-side" or "supply-side" drivers, have been identified, including: an influx of artists (Cameron & Coaffee, 2006), commercial revitalization (Summers, 2019), movement of white professionals (Hyra, 2017;Tissot, 2015), physical proximity of the neighborhood to affluent areas and economic amenities (Ley, 1986), a gap between existing and potential ground rent (Smith, 1979(Smith, , 1987, urban renewal and policies intended to decrease the availability of public housing (Lees & Ferreri, 2016;Visser & Kotze, 2008) and global competition for resources Wyly, 2015). ...
We aimed to create a theoretical framework to understand how neighborhood gentrification may impact urban health and health equity, taking into account perspectives and evidence from multiple disciplines. In addition to reviewing the literature and harnessing our own experience and expertise, we elicited input from researchers, activists and professionals from multiple fields using an eDelphi process, determined the agreements and disagreements between respondents on the causes, consequences, and health impacts of gentrification. Respondents agreed that neighborhood gentrification has important implications for mental health and on many of the causes and consequences of gentrification but reached less agreement on the pathways by which gentrification may affect health and the specific health outcomes that may be affected. Finally, we generated an evidence-informed conceptual framework taking into account the input from the eDelphi process. Here we present this conceptual framework for understanding the relationship between gentrification and health and discuss a future research agenda for this emerging theme in public health research.
... Collaboration between the public sector and private developers is common in gentrification projects (Davidson, 2007;Hackworth & Smith, 2001). With regards to people's attitudes towards these processes, there have been numerous instances of resistance against gentrification and displacement in the Global North (Lees & Ferreri, 2016;Newman & Wyly, 2006;Pearsall, 2013;Smith, 1996). ...
From the point when it was noted for the first time, gentrification has changed, and so has the role of the State, as public intervention has become central to urban upgrading. A popular model of this development describes three waves of gentrification for the U.S. Whether or not these experiences are indeed global, however, remains under discussion – and this is particularly the case for post-socialist cities. Against this background, the paper wishes to contribute to the ongoing debate about “state-led gentrification” and test the applicability of a widely used model of gentrification in a different context than it was developed. The guiding questions of the paper are the following: 1) What is the significance of institutions/policies in shaping the onset and trajectory of gentrification in Łódź (Poland), and what are the contributing factors behind it? 2) What are the underlying similarities and distinctions between the case of state-led gentrification in Łódź, and the general features of this phenomenon observed in the Global North?
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... This struggle is now approached on a "planetary" scale, as studies of displacement examine the strategies mobilized by vulnerable populations across the Global South to resist coercive real estate pressures that would place them in greater precarity, simply in order to survive (Lees, Shin, and López-Morales 2016). Such approaches focus on the "everyday resistance" (Johansson and Vinthagen 2016) of residents and their "invisible" acts of protest (Lees and Ferreri 2016), arguing that it is often the informal practices of solidarity that allow them to remain in their homes and neighborhoods (Lees, Annunziata, and Rivas-Alonso 2018). However, institutional modes of action remain relevant, as local governments and courts have also evolved in their approach to displacement, recognizing not only the right to be rehoused, but also a "right of residents to continue to occupy their homes" that acknowledges a broader "right to community" (Hubbard and Lees 2018). ...
Focusing on a low-income neighborhood of Asian immigrant settlement located at the eastern periphery of Portland, Oregon, this article traces the efforts of an organization representing API (Asian and Pacific Islander) populations to implement community-led development and to prevent the displacement of residents vulnerable to real estate pressures. The project is representative of a growing recognition among municipal authorities and the general population of the disparate impact of rising housing costs on minority communities. It was funded by the city’s urban development agency, in order to improve infrastructure and support business activity in the area while mitigating gentrification effects. Based on an ethnographic study of the neighborhood (the Jade District) undertaken in 2018 and 2023, the article addresses the negotiation of the inherent tension between these parallel missions by the organization chosen to manage the program. The development strategies adopted demonstrate a nuanced balancing of interests among community members, as well as an awareness of the broad range of profiles and motivations among the agents of gentrification. Although placemaking activities that promote a distinct identity for the neighborhood were pursued, the risks of contributing to the commodification of ethnicity or of branding the area as exclusively Asian were also acknowledged. The expansion of the area’s supply of affordable housing remained the organization’s priority, however, emphasizing the necessity of systemic solutions offering the capacity to the resist the market forces leading to displacement.
... Na génese do conceito de gentrificação está uma destas transformações. Ao analisar a transformação social em alguns bairros trabalhadores de Londres, nos anos 60, Ruth Glass cunhou o termo gentrificação (Doucet, 2014) que, desde então, sobretudo mais recentemente, tem vindo a ganhar relevância no contexto dos estudos urbanos (Lees & Ferreri, 2016). ...
Após um longo período de desinvestimento e declínio, nos últimos anos tem-se assistido a um crescente interesse na reabilitação dos mercados municipais em países europeus e sul-americanos, culminando frequentemente na gentrificação daqueles equipamentos comerciais. A nossa hipótese de trabalho é que alguns agentes na busca por boas práticas de planeamento urbano utilizam como referência certos mercados que, por via dos moldes usados para reabilitação, promovem processos de gentrificação. Face a uma aparente contradição entre os estudos académicos que confirmam a gentrificação dos mercados municipais reabilitados e a prática dos agentes políticos que encaram o atual molde de reabilitação como uma boa prática de planeamento urbano, temos como objectivo analisar e discutir no atual processo de reabilitação de mercados municipais em Portugal. Em termos metodológicos, este trabalho é suportado por uma abordagem qualitativa, baseando-se na análise teórica acerca da temática em causa e em entrevistas realizadas a responsáveis de três Câmaras Municipais portuguesas, assim como duas entrevistas a empresas de consultoria envolvidas no processo. Recorrendo ao quadro concetual da gentrificação para auxiliar na interpretação dos resultados, concluímos que a motivação para a reabilitação dos mercados é baseada numa leitura dos mercados em declínio e que os atuais moldes de intervenção se devem a estratégias de benchmarking e de transferências de modelos entendidos como sendo boas práticas, destacando-se, ainda, o papel das empresas de consultoria na sua disseminação.
... Action publique et gentrification commerciale : la régénération contestée d'un marché municipal à Londres Introduction 1 La littérature sur la notion de state-led gentrification appliquée à Londres -ville qui, par ailleurs, a vu naître le concept de gentrification sous la plume de Ruth Glass en 1964, à propos de la municipalité d'Islington (Glass, 1964) -est de plus en plus abondante (entres autres, Watt, 2009Watt, , 2013Lees, 2014). Alors que la causalité entre les politiques publiques de régénération des grands ensembles de logement social et la gentrification résidentielle a été fortement mise en évidence (Lees et Ferreri, 2016), la littérature sur les politiques de gentrification à l'oeuvre dans la régénération commerciale, et plus précisément dans la régénération de marchés de rue n'est encore qu'à ses balbutiements. Il y a bien une littérature émergente sur la gentrification des marchés de rue, notamment des marchés à Londres (González et Waley, 2012 ;, mais ces publications n'ont pas pour objectif d'examiner le rôle des politiques publiques par rapport à cette gentrification. ...
The London Borough of Hackney—a large Labour stronghold—faces a sweeping gentrification and is often accused of catalysing gentrification by community groups. Such criticism is characteristically harsh when it comes to a council-managed street market in the centre of the Borough: Ridley Road Market. It originates in campaigns that aim to save the local character of the market or to fight against commercial and/or residential gentrification. However, discursively, the council goes as far as depicting its actions as a resistance to commercial gentrification. This reveals a discrepancy between the council’s political discourse and its actions as perceived by campaign activists. While the council has implemented a range of actions to regenerate the market, this paper questions the ambiguity of its actions when it comes to the gentrification process which threatens the market. The council’s policies would indirectly foster the gentrification process. Among other things, the eviction of the tradespeople would be hastened by the regeneration of the market in which they are not invited to participate.
... The study of gentrification processes has gained prominence in Europe in the 80s of 20th century and gradually spread abroad. In London, for example, «gentrification and social cleansing of low income tenants from inner London has been on going since the late 1990s and continues today» (Lees, & Ferreri, 2016). Sociologist Ruth Glass coined the term gentrification in 1964 (Glass, 1964). ...
... From the perspective of the original resident, broad discussions has revolved around the wide-ranging elements of state-led gentrification (Aalbers, 2019;Lees & Ferreri, 2016) and the displacement caused by urban regeneration (Aalbers, 2017;Davidson, 2008;Ding, Hwang, & Divringi, 2016;Freeman & Braconi, 2004). While denouncing the negative impacts of displacement (Freeman & Braconi, 2004), some have called for caution and for using the neutral term 'relocation', in order to also examine positive effects of the government-assisted movement of population to residential neighborhoods that are not as poor (Carmon, 2013). ...
Urban regeneration and its implications for issues such as housing, gentrification, and homeownership have been researched by numerous theorists, practitioners, and policy makers. However, this article challenges the perception that urban regeneration is primarily a policy driver that leads to the displacement of residents, and by proposing an investigation of how urban regeneration also constitutes an opportunity for homeowners to achieve ‘In-Place Social Mobility’ (IPSM) – that is, social mobility without leaving their homes and neighborhoods. At a time when the welfare and social service system is weakening, residential property values are increasing, and wages remain stagnant, individuals must turn their homes into investment assets in order to increase their social opportunities. Following the Planning Deal and the Regeneration Deal, the interpretative scheme of the ‘Social Deal’ incorporates two fields: the city as a growth machine, and the social mobility of the homeowners. Through the theoretical demonstration of the notion of IPSM through urban regeneration in Israel, we propose the Social Deal as a new way of understanding the rent gap discussion – i.e., not only as a result of the cultural preferences of consumers on the one hand, or of real estate developers and market supply on the other hand, but also as a means to the self-profit of the residents.
... Over the past decades or so I have provided evidence on the detrimental impacts of gentrification at three public inquiries (seeHubbard & Lees, 2018;Lees et al., 2020;Lees & Ferreri, 2016), to the Haringey Scrutiny Committee on the Haringey Development Vehicle (HDV), to policy makers across four Southern European cities and to NGOs in the United States and beyond. I have also co-produced two toolkits to explain how policy is used to sell and indeed produce gentrification to help local communities under threat understand the complexities (see London Tenants Federation, Lees, Just Space and SNAG, 2014; Annunziata & Lees, 2020) and a website (https://www. ...
Despite recognition that gentrification around the world is state-led – and that gentrification is in of itself de facto an urban policy – few scholars writing about gentrification, including urban geographers, have engaged purposively with urban policy, urban policy makers and other institutional actors. Building on my particular commitment to putting mitigations and solutions to gentrification on the policy table, I once again call for scholars of gentrification to work with policy makers and other institutional actors, to make our research on the negative impacts of gentrification known and to develop alternative and better policy practice.
... Much of the public discussion has focused on London, where a combination of soaring house prices and private rents, sell-offs of council housing, and cuts to housing benefit have put pressure on large numbers of working-class people to move to the outskirts of the capital or to other cities, described by some as 'social cleansing' (Lees and Ferreri, 2016;Watt and Minton, 2016). Difficulties accessing decent housing are also affecting growing numbers of better-off workers and young middleclass professionals, which Clough et al (2018) argue has been decisive in bringing the housing crisis into public discussion. ...
Informed by Marxist theory, this book examines how categories of 'workers' and 'migrants' have been mobilised within representations of a 'migrant crisis' and a 'welfare crisis' to facilitate capitalist exploitation, and proposes alternative understandings that foreground solidarity.
... Yet, the composition of this social housing varies greatly, especially when considering the elaborate territories of social housing that string one particular project after another. Intricate combinations of design, social composition and withdrawal, and governmental intrusion and indifference shape the ways in which estates are articulated to each other and the larger surroundings, as well as the collective strategies deployed to fight against dispossession (Lees & Ferreri, 2016). Each has its own distinctive proportion of leaseholds and renters, of leaseholders that bought cheaply under the "right to buy" policies of the Thatcher era, and those who acquired them under subsequent renditions of this policy. ...
Working from Michael Sorkin’s expansive notions of public space, the article considers the ways in which figurations of the “we” emerge from the structures of mutual witnessing and the coordination of heterogeneities that operationalize multiple publics. Focusing on a relay amongst the Tanah Tinggi district of Jakarta and the estates of Hackney and East London, the problematics and volatilities of such a “we” are explored, particularly against the backdrop of pandemic conditions. Instead of regarding such collective identity to be a matter of settlement, the relays considered offer an opportunity to further conceptualize collective life in motion, as something continuously worked out as the very terrain of the public.
... Finally, a concern for the politics of displacement in theorizations of gentrification is evidenced in various heated debates (see Slater, 2010;Hamnett, 2010 for example) as well as through scholar-activist engagements in resistance practices (Lees & Ferreri, 2016) illustrating one of the ways in which displacement scholarship works to challenge urban decision making. The criticality of debate is commonly under scrutiny often from a political-economy perspective. ...
Residents’ lived experiences of movement into state directed housing frequently evidence contradictory outcomes. Often, movement is articulated in terms of displacement, noting its profoundly negative outcomes. However, displacement does not always fully capture contradictions, particularly where housing programmes form part of wider developmental strategies, themselves ambiguous in practice. Adopting a relational analysis, the paper argues for consideration of new sites of settlement relative to previous locations through a critical evaluation of place, as well as accounting for dynamism of urban change over time. Framings must capture residents varied and contradictory lived experiences and the relationality of place experiences. Contributing to work in this field, this paper calls for a broader analytical framing, named here as “disruptive re-placement”. Drawing on two different housing programmes, in South Africa and Ethiopia the paper charts movement into, and living in, state-led housing in three case study areas within three cities. It employs a ‘lived experiences’ methodology to understand these relocations, drawing on residents’ accounts of disruptive re-placement to examine the materialities of planned state-provided formal housing; the spatialities of disruptive re-placement; the economic and socio-political dimensions of these processes and the significance of temporality in shaping disruption. A continuum of disruptive and injurious re-placement, and a critique of the developmental state is used to articulate a just urban agenda in relation to relocation practices.
This article provides a critical reassessment of the role of the state in processes of neighborhood change in Hong Kong, based on mixed‐methods research conducted in the rapidly changing Sai Ying Pun neighborhood. We argue that common narratives of ‘state‐led’ processes of neighborhood change often overstate, oversimplify or unduly assume the influence of state agencies, especially the Urban Renewal Authority (URA) and other ‘usual suspects’, obscuring the complex ways that states facilitate and compel the actions and agendas of other actors. By elaborating implications of several specific forms of state action, especially a 2010 amendment to Hong Kong's Land (Compulsory Sale for Redevelopment) Ordinance, we demonstrate that the state in Hong Kong plays many different roles in facilitating neighborhood transformation, creating an uneven geography of state intervention dependent on locally specific factors such as the particularities of architecture, housing types and residential density in different urban areas as well as existing configurations of policy, legislation and infrastructure. These many articulations of the state are of strategic value to a variety of elite interests, from property developers to wealthy residents and international consumers, whose distinct and competing agendas could hardly be so well served by a less dynamic state.
Engaging with scholarship on vertical urbanism, this paper advances an understanding of architectural disavowal to account for the ways that vertical architectures deny their responsibility in causing harm to residential populations. The paper draws on Dionne Brand’s notion of disavowal in the vertical city to examine residents’ experience of and resistant responses to the harmful effects that vertical developments impose on their daily and nightly lives. In Aldgate, east London, the 13-storey high-rise development, Buckle Street Studio, has caused noise levels to rise, light pollution to intensify, the sky to vanish from sight and daylight to disappear from the flats in the neighbouring block Goldpence Apartments. Drawing on interviews with residents in Goldpence Apartments, the paper documents the extent of these changes and brings attention to the mundane strategies that residents deploy in their attempts to resist the overwhelming sensory invasions and affective intrusions of their homes. By showcasing how residents overturn the affective charge of their new high-rise neighbour/s and refuse – disavow – its force, the paper considers how mundane survival strategies might challenge architectural disavowal in the vertical city and beyond.
Civil society actors often combine or move between multiple modes of resistance beyond contentious protest politics and everyday resistance, yet this remains underexamined in the urban resistance literature. This paper aims to advance the knowledge on this alternative approach to resistance, particularly its potential to function as a democratic counterbalance to top-down urban planning, policymaking, and governance. Mobilising the lens of pragmatic resistance and institutionalist planning theory, the paper examines the acts of civil society resistance triggered by the state-led redevelopment of the Dakota Crescent public rental housing estate in Singapore. Empirical research data was collected through interviews, conversations, and e-mail exchanges with 22 civil society, governmental, political, grassroots, social service, and research actors, as well as a review of 177 documents. The findings uncover the ways in which civil society groups consciously reproduced dominant institutions of planning and activism as an effective strategy to increase the state's receptiveness to their advocacy objectives. Concurrently, they sought to reshape these institutions, often by adopting multiple resistance strategies within the same group or with other groups. This political balancing act between institutional reproduction and reshaping limited the possibility for democratic shifts at a structural level, but nevertheless offered a valuable means of influencing site-specific plans, policy problem definitions, and informal governance processes.
Research on council estate regeneration in London has revealed predominantly negative outcomes, including direct and indirect displacements, the loss of homes and communities, and the slow-violence enacted on residents by lengthy programs. Drawing on recent EU-funded research on Woodberry Down (Hackney), we highlight similar negative effects, alongside some positive, ambiguous, and novel outcomes. We discuss these mixed findings within two emerging trends: a new turn to criticizing “antigentrification” work on estate regeneration; and a housing policy turn back to promoting council homes and the refurbishment of council estates. We conclude that it is premature to evict “antigentrification” perspectives in the longue durée of estate regeneration in London, even in the case of Woodberry Down, which has had some significant community won victories. We also reveal new complicating factors in this “gentrification story”—“Guppies” and precarious private renters who are not the wealthy, professional gentrifiers of earlier new-build gentrification literatures.
ResumenLondres es sin duda un caso paradigmático de una ciudad global neoliberal y tambien de los procesos que se dan en ella como la gentrificación. El caso de Southwark, un distrito al sur del Támesis, es asi mismo relevante por ilustrar una nueva generación de procesos de gentrificación que afectan a la primera periferia. El articulo explora, mediante un método comparativo, que nos sirva a pensar las ciudades a través de otros lugares, cuáles han sido los principales factores, estructurales y culturales, que han desatado el proceso, y hasta que punto son trasladables, dentro de dinámicas que afectan a un mundo globalizado, a otros contextos como el español. AbstractLondon is undoubtedly a paradigmatic case of a neoliberal global city and also of the processes that occur in it such as gentrification. The case of Southwark, a district south of the Thames, is also relevant for illustrating a new generation of gentrification processes that affect the first periphery. The article explores, through a comparative method, that helps us think about cities through other places, what have been the main structural and cultural factors that have unleashed the process, and to what extent are they transferable, within dynamics that They affect a globalized world, other contexts such as Spain.
The process of gentrification encompasses numerous social, demographic, urbanistic, and economic consequences, among others. The majority of these outcomes are negative and demonstrate little consideration for the community and the territory in which they transpire. This paper presents a case study of a community project in a gentrified area of Palma (Balearic Islands – Spain), aimed at mitigating these consequences through community organization and empowerment. The article seeks to assess the subjective impact of the Intercultural Community Intervention Project and explore barriers to promoting participatory community development in gentrified locales. Findings indicate improvements incommunity networks and its responsiveness to social challenges, yet underscore difficulties in engaging the higher socio-economic status population . Another concern is the need for a technical team to sustain the community-driven process. In conclusion, community policies are recommended to empower the populace in addressing the social repercussions of gentrification by fostering spaces for participation and facilitating shared decision-making.
This article explores the economic politics of anti‐displacement struggle, bringing into conversation critical urban studies and diverse and community economies research. It draws on my research and collaboration with a community planning group which emerged from residents’ and businesses’ struggle against displacement on the Carpenters Estate in Newham, London in 2012/13. My analysis makes visible the ways in which anti‐displacement struggle both animates and limits the production of new economic subjectivities, language, and possibilities for collective action. Ideas and tools from diverse and community economies research—lightly held and adapted for specific struggles and contexts—can help to support and strengthen these messy and fragile economic politics. The article advances diverse and community economies research on antagonism and the diversity of capitalism and contributes to re‐orienting critical urban research towards the production of economic alternatives.
Across the social science and humanities disciplines, there has been an increased interest in questions of value and valuation. This article responds to the new emphasis by scrutinising the evolution of real estate valuation techniques over time, their embedded nature, and the implication of this for the (re)production of the built environment. This is achieved through the lens of two conceptual positions which are rarely used in the realm of real estate valuation. These are (a) path dependency which in this case charts the evolution of the discipline of valuation as it relates to retail related real estate assets; and (b) lock – in, which seeks to understand how valuation techniques and attitudes have become embedded during this evolution. This position sits alongside a series of investigatory interviews with professional valuers in international real estate organisations specialising in the commercial real estate market. This is often a missing voice in recent research into real estate and the wider subject of valuation. Findings suggest that valuation practice is reliant on confirmatory market practices that do not necessarily capture the contemporary affordability-based requirements of tenants. Instead, practice is locked into reinforcing the nature of zone-based market values for landlords and investors. The geographical implications of this situation at the micro-level can be vacant or poorly performing properties that undermine local areas in the interest of maintaining the headline value of properties in macro-level global capital markets. This new conceptual analysis provides understanding of how the physical built environment is developed and reproduced over time through notions of value, helps to connect often hidden practices of real estate valuation into existing academic debates in urban studies and geography, and in conclusion sheds some light on how practices of real estate valuation can be improved in the disrupted world of retail.
Between 2006 and 2022, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) attempted to address the fiscal and infrastructural crises in public housing through a number of controversial privatisation strategies. This contested push occurred alongside the pervasive role of policing in public housing. The New York City Police Department utilises several policing strategies specific to NYCHA communities, collaborating with the housing authority in the management of public housing residents. This article draws on qualitative content analysis of local policing strategies and public housing policy reforms in New York City to investigate how the state facilitates the displacement of disproportionately poor, non-white, public housing tenants while simultaneously sponsoring privatised redevelopment in their communities in ways that mirror gentrification processes usually studied in private housing. I focus on the content of and linkages between public housing-specific policing strategies and privatising public housing redevelopment plans. By examining police as collaborators within public housing policy, I uncover the entanglement of law enforcement in urban development, as well as the underlying roles and relationships between the state, capital and police in contemporary urban development and gentrification. The findings illuminate the processes of carceral urbanism, where the logics of the carceral state emerge as priorities throughout the urban governance of the contemporary neoliberal state in general, and public housing policy reform in particular.
In this paper, I describe resistance to a public housing redevelopment process in New York City. I describe the story within a theoretical approach of pragmatism, as I focus on both means and ends in planning while considering the experience and contestations of the various “publics” involved in deliberations surrounding a pilot site for mixed-income infill development. While pragmatism is helpful in reflecting on planning processes, I also simultaneously acknowledge the context of how racial capitalism has shaped and continues to impact the geography of the city, including public housing communities. As such, I propose that residents engaged in “situated resistance” as plans to radically transform the largest housing authority in the United States unfolded around them. I find that while the housing authority and residents had the same objective of preserving existing public housing, their desired paths to achieving that goal dramatically differed. I conclude by proposing that robust democratic engagement requires reparative approaches rooted in racial and economic justice that substantively and procedurally center African American communities such as those living in public housing. By introducing pragmatism alongside racial capitalism through the case of public housing redevelopment, I ultimately highlight the importance of fusing theories of democratic and structural change in urban redevelopment.
In this paper, we develop a situated and intersectional urban political economy approach to social infrastructure. This approach contrasts with a growing body of liberal urban geography, which offers an optimistic account of how shared spaces afford encounter and social connection. We present four arguments about why such outcomes cannot be assumed, which are informed by a case of contested redevelopment in the London borough of Haringey. First, social infrastructures express power relations, enacting distinct visions of “the social”, that are at times premised on the denigration of other forms of collective life as anti‐social. Second, elite social infrastructures are increasingly central to speculative urban development, serving to procure consent for, and valorise, investment. Third, other social infrastructures are essential networks of social reproduction and survival, especially for diverse working‐class communities: demolition and displacement mean infrastructural disruption. Finally, unequal political economies of social infrastructure are a realm of structural antagonism over urban citizenship (un)making.
Public health researchers are increasingly questioning the consequences of gentrification for population health and health equity, as witnessed in the rapid increase in public health publications on the health (equity) effects of gentrification. Despite methodological challenges, and mixed results from existing quantitative research, qualitative evidence to date points to the role of gentrification processes in exacerbating health inequities. Here we discuss past methodological and theoretical challenges in integrating the study of gentrification with public health research. We suggest taking an interdisciplinary approach, considering the conceptualization of gentrification in measurement techniques and conceiving this process as a direct exposure or as a part of broader neighborhood changes. Finally, we discuss existingpolicy approaches to mitigating and preventing gentrification and how these could be evaluated for effectiveness and as public health promotion and specifically as interventions to promote health equity.
This paper shows how residential high-rise developments in London deteriorate the living conditions for existing residents and set a legal precedent for distributing harm unevenly across the population. The paper unpacks the contentious decision-making process in one of several local planning applications in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets that ended in a spur of high-profile public planning inquiries between 2017 and 2019. The Enterprise House inquiry shows how, among other things, a loss of daylight, sunlight and outlook, and an increased sense of enclosure, affect already marginalised residents in neighbouring buildings disproportionately, elevating light to a legal category for assessing harm and addressing social injustice in the vertical city. The paper adopts a forensic approach to interrogate four instances during the public inquiry, in which numerical evidence of material harm resulting from a loss in daylight, sunlight and outlook was made to appear and disappear. The translation of scientific evidence into legal evidence is performed through the act of claiming ‘truthful’ representations of ‘real life experiences’ of light in digital visualisations. By revealing how material harm resulting from vertical development is normalised and thus naturalised in the planning inquiry, the paper demonstrates how ‘light’ violence is exercised in vertical development.
Over the past 20 years, increasing land values, a rising population and inward investment from overseas have combined to encourage the demolition and redevelopment of many large council-owned estates across London. While it is now widely speculated that this is causing gentrification and displacement, the extent to which it has forced low-income households to move away from their local community remains to a large degree conjectural and specific to those estates that have undergone special scrutiny. Given the lack of spatially disaggregated migration data that allows us to study patterns of dispersal from individual estates, in this article, we report on an attempt to use consumer-derived data (LCRs) to infer relocations at a high spatial resolution. The evidence presented suggests that around 85% of those displaced remain in London, with most remaining in borough, albeit there is evidence of an increasing number of moves out of London to the South-East and East of England.
Social sustainability is a major concern of planners and local officials when urban renewal projects are being conducted. Extreme individualism can potentially cause conflicts of interest, making urban renewal in Western cities fraught with various types of social risks. As a country with a deep-rooted socialist tradition, urban renewal projects in China are influenced by collectivist culture and show different features from those of the West. The objective of this research is to investigate how different stakeholders in urban redevelopment projects, including local residents, social organizations, the local state, and developers, interact with each other and how the associated social risks are hedged against. Using a recent well-known project in the city of Guangzhou, the authors attempt to present the latest progress in social risk management in China. With support from a government-sponsored project, the authors have conducted a questionnaire-based survey with a year-long fieldwork follow-up. Using ATLAS.ti software, we found that that “residents’ demand”, “status of collaboration”, and “degree of trust” are the keys to risk management. The results of an ordered probit model show that residents are worried about overall planning, the relocation timetable, and whether their personal needs are taken into account. It is also indicated that the timely disclosure of project information, high-quality public participation, and a reasonable compensation plan can possibly boost the support rate. The authors suggest that utilizing China’s collectivist culture could be an effective way to mitigate social risks, and residents’ personal interests should also be respected.
Since the term “gentrification” was coined by Ruth Glass in 1964, this concept and the phenomenon it referred to have been subject to change. This paper reviews the literature and employs Ian Hacking’s work to investigate how two types of changes—that is, changes of the concept and of the phenomenon—are implicated by each other. By investigating the interaction between a classification and its class, it becomes possible to understand gentrification as, in Hacking’s terms, a “moving target.” This paper argues that gentrification can be conceptualized as such and explores the consequences of this for gentrification research.
Few urban phenomena command as much attention as displacement. Scholars continue to refine conceptualisations of displacement to more effectively capture its diversity in forms, scales and temporalities. Recent research advocates a more inclusive conceptualisation, attuned to the processes of ‘un-homing’ – that is, the more subtle, ‘non-catastrophic’ forms of ‘slow violence’ that rupture residents’ phenomenological attachments to place and home. Advocates of the un-homing approach call on researchers to develop the data and analytical frameworks necessary for capturing the perceptions and lived experiences of displacement from the perspective of longtime residents. This article develops one such analytical framework, which we refer to as displacement frames. Building on the conceptual tools of cultural sociology, displacement frames are the evaluative schema through which residents make sense of, and act towards, the slow violence and micro-events of un-homing. Drawing on 32 interviews with long-time Black residents in San Francisco’s rapidly gentrifying Bayview Hunters Point neighbourhood, we identify three primary displacement frames: (1) displacement-by-design, (2) displacement-as-predation and (3) displacing-the-problem. As a product of residents’ historical experiences, networks and housing tenure, these frames simplify complex (and often ambiguous) experiences into a coherent narrative about the primary causes, conditions and consequences of displacement. In turn, displacement frames influence how and to what extent residents attempt to resist, prevent or perhaps even accept and support local displacement.
Housing construction is considered to be one of the main top-priority and investment profitable sectors of the countrys economy. It has become a stable integral part of the market-oriented economy, but has not fully provided a comfortable living environment for the new housing complexes belonging to the residents of the megapolis. The policy, oriented on the ramp-up of the housing stock without improving its quality and the environmental improvement level, becomes a deterioration of the competitivity factor regarding municipal entities, regions and the country. The state is actively involved into the housing policy, developing an integrated urban development strategy of the massive housing areas referring to suburban zones. But its implementation is accompanied by serious failures and conflicts between the residents of the complexes and representatives of city authorities as well as business. The above-mentioned conflict situation leads to the necessity of the citizens initiative groups creation of so as to defend their rights in order to increase the average quality environment level. The process of the residents self-organization oriented on the activists groups formation, whose actions resulted in the corporate initiatives, has been studied as exemplified by the materials of express-interviewing regarding the urban space quality perception by the inhabitants of the Baltic Pearl residential complex of Saint Petersburg. The disconnection between the levels of urban land improvement, tertiary sector provided by developers and the expectations of residents, as well as the unsatisfactory participation of business representatives and the city administration in resolving emerging conflict situations, has led to the creation of activists grassroots organization of the complex. The performance results have led to a collective petition by V.V. Putin. The tool that made it possible to implement this initiative has been the current level of digital technologies and social networks development of the residents of the neighborhood unit.
Ireland’s housing situation in the 2020s is similar to many other Anglophone countries, including Australia and the UK: A deepening housing crisis, an increased reliance on the private rental sector, and a residual ideological preference for homeownership, despite this increasingly being a less viable option for ‘Generation Rent’. Using Fullilove’s concept of rootshock, we argue that tenant perceptions of landlords’ actions and beliefs can contribute to a sense of rootlessness: no or few ties to the spatial setting of the dwelling. Using work done by resistance scholars, we also demonstrate that the inability to feel fully ontologically secure in one’s residence often leads to attempts by the tenant to make roots in their dwellings or resist rootlessness to create the sense of being at home. Based on qualitative research undertaken in 2019 with renters in three Irish cities, Dublin, Cork and Galway, we examine everyday forms of resistance, to explore the possibilities tenants carve out for themselves in order to survive and exist in the private rental sector and conclude by asking how we can learn from these practices to think about how to improve living standards for tenants.
The article offers a methodological contribution to the pedagogies of urbanism by examining how design can address the urgent issue of urban inequality from an in-depth, long-term, and ultimately, transformational, perspective. We conducted a 3-year experiment in studio pedagogy at Cardiff University to address this question by confronting one of the most prominent spatial expressions of urban inequality, i.e. gentrification. The site of the studio was the Grangetown area in the city of Cardiff, which is the capital of Wales in the United Kingdom. Grangetown contains concentrations of low- to moderate-income groups that are threatened with large-scale involuntary displacement due to incipient gentrification. The goal of this experiment in design pedagogy was to gain an in-depth understanding of processes of gentrification while simultaneously developing design strategies that not only address gentrification’s root causes but also propose equitable alternatives to the future of the city. The studio was guided by an overall framework–based on extensive research on gentrification–consisted of its most critical aspects (e.g. patterns of land ownership and uses, housing finance and commodification, public policies and regulations). The article describes this design studio process, its multiple innovations and different outcomes, and then critically reflects on its implications for studio pedagogy as well as for design practice. The goal of confronting gentrification in this experiment was to help graduate students--and future practitioners--design a far more equitable city by combining theoretical knowledge and scholarly research with critical thinking and design skills, and by engaging with values that are closer to social justice than what market-oriented thinking and mainstream practices currently allow.
When Google announced, in October 2018, that it would not pursue its plan to open a Google Campus in Berlin-Kreuzberg, the local anti-gentrification protesters were triumphant. The retreat was widely seen to be the result of a 2-year-long fight between the tech company and local activist groups. Next to the usual gentrification issues, the protests had additionally addressed what Google as a company stands for and focused on their data policies and the underlying (economic) rationale. The article asks what role this additional critique played in the protests. It will begin with a brief introduction to the key concepts before retracing the history of the planned Google Campus in Berlin as well as of the protests against it.
Urban studies have predominantly analysed the impact of short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb on cities through the lens of gentrification. However, the concept of gentrification has been applied to this platform-based urban change without considering how platform economy might alter the way scholars think about gentrification. First, this paper shows that short-term rental platforms build on the increasing use of housing by ordinary people to generate income. Second, it explores what this entails for gentrification studies. Contrary to the classical pattern of gentrification, suppliers of short-term rental platforms are not necessarily external investors but may be local homeowners in an area that is appealing to tourists. This puts local homeowners in an ambiguous position regarding gentrification patterns. On the one hand, as stakeholders providing the accommodation supply, they can theoretically benefit from short-term rental platforms by generating income from their housing. On the other hand, as long-term inhabitants, their housing trajectory can also be disrupted by the consequences of Airbnb-driven gentrification that they enable. This paper aims to disentangle the role of local homeowners in Airbnb-driven gentrification by answering the three following questions. (1) Who are the Airbnb hosts? Are they external newcomers or local homeowners? (2) Which host strategies lead to the displacement of long-term inhabitants? (3) What lines of inquiry does the ambiguous position of local hosts (as both driver and victim of Airbnbfication) open for gentrification studies?
Although social scientists have documented urban redevelopment and gentrification extensively, few have addressed their discursive causes and effects. In this paper, I use a critical discourse approach to investigate the success of discourse manipulation, the primary mode through which urban elites displace public housing residents and carry out redevelopment in Cabrini Green, an African-American public housing community on Chicago's Lower North Side. Using qualitative methodologies, I show that public housing residents recognize the discursive constructions that enable the implementation of redevelopment and contest it in rhetorical ways. To expose their forceful displacement from their homes and community, resident activists reframe public housing redevelopment as a "human rights crisis." As evidenced by these tactics, redeveloping Cabrini Green is inherently a discursive site, a space marked by "cultural production and political struggle" (Conquergood 1992: 97).
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, proclamations rang out that gentrification had gone global. But what do we mean by 'gentrification' today? How can we compare 'gentrification' in New York and London with that in Shanghai, Johannesburg, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro? This book argues that gentrification is one of the most significant and socially unjust processes affecting cities worldwide today, and one that demands renewed critical assessment.
Drawing on the 'new' comparative urbanism and writings on planetary urbanization, the authors undertake a much-needed transurban analysis underpinned by a critical political economy approach. Looking beyond the usual gentrification suspects in Europe and North America to non-Western cases, from slum gentrification to mega-displacement, they show that gentrification has unfolded at a planetary scale, but it has not assumed a North to South or West to East trajectory the story is much more complex than that.
Rich with empirical detail, yet wide-ranging, Planetary Gentrification unhinges, unsettles and provincializes Western notions of urban development. It will be invaluable to students and scholars interested in the future of cities and the production of a truly global urban studies, and equally importantly to all those committed to social justice in cities.
Under contemporary capitalism the extraction of value from the built environment has escalated, working in tandem with other urban processes to lay the foundations for the exploitative processes of gentrification world-wide. Global gentrifications: Uneven development and displacement critically assesses and tests the meaning and significance of gentrification in places outside the ‘usual suspects’ of the Global North. Informed by a rich array of case studies from cities in Asia, Latin America, Africa, Southern Europe, and beyond, the book (re)discovers the important generalities and geographical specificities associated with the uneven process of gentrification globally. It highlights intensifying global struggles over urban space and underlines gentrification as a growing and important battleground in the contemporary world. The book will be of value to students and academics, policy makers, planners and community organisations.
This paper offers a critical review and interpretation of gentrification in Latin American cities. Applying a flexible methodology, it examines enabling conditions associated with societal regime change and local contingencies to determine its presence, nature, extent, and possibilities. Questioning the uncritical transfer of constructs such as gentrification from the Global North to the Global South, the paper advocates analyses of mediating structures and local conditions to determine their applicability and possible variations. Overall, the review questions the feasibility of self-sustained, large scale gentrification in central areas of the region’s cities today tying it to each city’s level of incorporation into global circuits and the role of local governments. Rather than an orthodox hypothesis testing, this is an exercise in interpretation that calls for nuanced approaches to the study of urban restructuring in cities of the global South.
In cities across the globe there is mounting evidence of growing mobilization by members of the so‐called ‘creative class’ in urban social movements, defending particular urban spaces and influencing urban development. This essay discusses the meaning of such developments with reference to the hypothesis made by David Harvey in Spaces of Capital about the increasing mobilization of cultural producers in oppositional movements in an era of wholesale instrumentalization of culture and ‘creativity’ in contemporary processes of capitalist urbanization. After briefly reviewing recent scholarly contributions on the transformations of urban social movements, as well as Harvey's hypothesis about the potential role of cultural producers in mobilizations for the construction of ‘spaces of hope’, the essay describes two specific urban protests that have occurred in Berlin and Hamburg in recent years: the fight for Berlin's waterfront in the Media Spree area, and the conflict centred on the Gängeviertel in Hamburg. In both protests artists, cultural producers and creative milieux have played a prominent role. The essay analyses the composition, agenda, contribution and contradictions of the coalitions behind the protests, discussing whether such movements represent the seeds of new types of coalitions with a wide‐ranging agenda for urban change. The essay finally proposes a future research agenda on the role of artists, cultural producers and the ‘creative class’ in urban social movements across the globe.
Résumé
Dans les villes à travers le monde, on constate une mobilisation croissante des membres de la classe dite ‘créative’ dans des mouvements sociaux urbains afin de défendre certains espaces de la ville ou d'influencer l'urbanisme. La signification de ces évolutions est analysée en référence à l'hypothèse qu'a formulée David Harvey dans Spaces of Capital sur la mobilisation accrue des producteurs culturels dans des mouvements contestataire à l'ère de l'instrumentalisation massive de la culture et de la ‘créativité’ dans les processus contemporains d'urbanisation capitaliste. Après une courte étude des récentes contributions sur les transformations des mouvements sociaux urbains et de l'hypothèse d'Harvey sur le rôle potentiel des producteurs culturels dans les mobilisations en vue d'élaborer des ‘espaces d'espoir’, deux contestations urbaines qui ont eu lieu ces dernières années à Berlin et Hambourg sont présentées: le combat pour les quais de Berlin dans le projet Media Spree et le conflit centré sur le Gängeviertel hambourgeois. Dans les deux cas, artistes, producteurs culturels et milieux créatifs ont joué un rôle déterminant. Cet essai analyse la composition, le programme, la contribution et les contradictions des coalitions qui soutiennent les contestations, tout en cherchant à savoir si ces mouvements sont les germes de nouveaux types de coalitions dont l'agenda se diversifie en faveur du changement urbain. Pour finir, un programme de recherches est proposé sur le rôle des artistes, des producteurs culturels et de la ‘classe créative’ dans les mouvements sociaux urbains à travers le monde.
This paper examines the much-hyped 2012 Olympic Games ‘legacy’ in relation to the displacement experiences of lower-income East Londoners. The paper begins by outlining the overall context of housing-related regeneration including the reduced role for social housing, especially council (public) housing in London. It then sets out a framework for understanding how regeneration, state-led gentrification and displacement are intertwined, as well as how such processes have been contested. The paper examines these issues in greater depth with reference to case studies of the inhabitants of two working-class spaces in the London Borough of Newham, an Olympics host borough. The first study is based on the Carpenters Estate, a council housing estate in Stratford that is facing potential demolition, and the second focuses on young people living in a temporary supported housing unit. These studies illustrate how the 2012 Olympics, alongside other regeneration schemes, is changing the nature of space and place from the perspective of existing East London residents and how gentrification is implicated in such transformations. Neither the Carpenters Estate residents nor the young people think that the Olympics and other regeneration schemes in Newham are primarily occurring, if at all, for their benefit—indeed, displacement processes may well mean that they are no longer able to live in their current neighbourhood. The Olympics legacy is for others, not for them.
This paper is an honest, reflexive account of action research with activists. Through a two year project called 'Autonomous Geographies', a team of researchers undertook case studies with three groups: self-managed social centres, tenants resisting housing privatisation, and eco-pioneers setting up a Low Impact Development. The original aim was to explore the everyday lives of activists as they attempted to resist life under capitalism and build more autonomous ways of living. The paper reflects on the messy, difficult and personally challenging research process of the project, with the failures being more instructive than the successes. By recounting this experience we provide lessons for the complex but necessary process of doing what is known as scholar activism in what we see as difficult, neo-liberal times. In particular we focus on how we can better formulate and implement strategic interventions with activists and social movements. We need to reject the false distinction between academia and wider society in conceptualisations of valid sites of struggle and knowledge production, and to find ways to research and engage collectively and politically, rather than individually.To this end, the paper offers seven principles for scholar activism that can be applied inside and outside the neo-liberal university.
The "geography of survival" describes the spaces and spatial relations that struc- ture not only how people may live, but especially whether they may live. For very poor people, such as the homeless, the geography of survival is knitted together into a network of public and private spaces and social services. In this article we focus on three trends that are simultaneously restructuring this geography of survival—the rise of automated surveillance (CCTV), innova- tions in trespass law, and the criminalization of sharing food in public—to assess their impact on homeless people's geography of survival in particular, and their right to the city more generally.
The interrelationships between law, legal processes and urban regeneration have been little addressed by researchers of urban studies, while few have acknowledged the centrality of law as one of the core facets involved in the restructuring of the built environment, Rather, it has tended to be taken as 'given', as an underpinning of socio-institutional actions rather than being conceptualised as constitutive of them, In seeking to redress this imbalance, the paper considers the role of legal processes in urban regeneration through an exploration of the multiple and contested terrains of one of the core tools of urban regeneration, the compulsory purchase order (CPO), In exploring the interplay between urban renewal and CPOs, the paper begins by providing a brief overview and critique of the claimed value-neutrality of the Angle-American tradition of law and legal processes, while outlining alternative ways of conceiving of the multiple interrelationships between law and socio-spatial processes, In a second section, we deploy case-study material to illustrate and discuss the socio-legal processes underpinning the CPO, We develop the argument, following Chouinard, that the legal discourses, practices and institutions of CPOs are powerful factors in perpetuating relations of social authority, power, exclusion and oppression
Over the past three decades, research in urban politics or increasingly urban governance reveals a landscape powerfully reflecting what might now be defined as a post-political consensus. Following a waning of the community power, urban managerialist and collective consumption debates, this ‘new urban politics’ has appeared conspicuously absorbed with analysing a purported consensus around economic growth alongside a proliferation of entrepreneurially oriented governing regimes. More recent contributions, acknowledging the role of the state and governmentalities of criminal justice, uncover how downtown renaissance is inscribed through significant land privatisations and associated institutionalised expressions like Business Improvement Districts and other ‘primary definers’ of ‘public benefit': all choreographed around an implicit consensus to ‘police’ the circumspect city, while presenting as ultra-politics anything that might disturb the strict ethics of consumerist citizenship. Beyond downtown, a range of shadow governments, secessionary place-makings and privatisms are remaking the political landscape of post-suburbia. It is contended that the cumulative effect of such metropolitan splintering may well be overextending our established interpretations of urban landscapes and city politics, prompting non-trivial questions about the precise manner in which political representation, democracy and substantive citizenship are being negotiated across metropolitan regions, from downtown streetscape to suburban doorstep. This paper suggests that recent theorisations on post-democracy and the post-political may help to decode the contemporary landscape of urban politics beyond governance, perhaps in turn facilitating a better investigation of crucial questions over distributional justice and metropolitan integrity.
Squatting as a housing strategy and as a tool of urban social movements accompanies the development of capitalist cities worldwide. We argue that the dynamics of squatter movements are directly connected to strategies of urban renewal in that movement conjunctures occur when urban regimes are in crisis. An analysis of the history of Berlin squatter movements, their political context and their effects on urban policies since the 1970s, clearly shows how massive mobilizations at the beginning of the 1980s and in the early 1990s developed in a context of transition in regimes of urban renewal. The crisis of Fordist city planning at the end of the 1970s provoked a movement of "rehab squatting" ('Instandbesetzung'), which contributed to the institutionalization of "cautious urban renewal" ('behutsame Stadterneuerung') in an important way. The second rupture in Berlin's urban renewal became apparent in 1989 and 1990, when the necessity of restoring whole inner-city districts constituted a new, budget-straining challenge for urban policymaking. Whilst in the 1980s the squatter movement became a central condition for and a political factor of the transition to "cautious urban renewal," in the 1990s large-scale squatting — mainly in the eastern parts of the city — is better understood as an alien element in times of neoliberal urban restructuring.
Encouraging neighbourhood social mix has been a major goal of urban policy and planning in a number of different countries. This book draws together a range of case studies by international experts to assess the impacts of social mix policies and the degree to which they might represent gentrification by stealth. The contributions consider the range of social mix initiatives in different countries across the globe and their relationship to wider social, economic and urban change. The book combines understandings of social mix from the perspectives of researchers, policy makers and planners and the residents of the communities themselves. Mixed Communities also draws out more general lessons from these international comparisons - theoretically, empirically and for urban policy. It will be highly relevant for urban researchers and students, policy makers and practitioners alike.
This chapter argues the need for a much better debate around social sustainability and what it might offer London. Focusing on mixed communities policy and how it has been used to gentrify large council estates in inner London, the chapter shows that the deconcentration of poverty plays itself out as working-class/low-income population displacement and community destruction. By highlighting the case of Heygate Estate in Elephant & Castle, it exposes the negative effect to the community life in London at the national and local level. The result is social exclusion and new forms of social segregation, rather than social inclusion.
An evaluation of the most enduring privatisation of the Thatcher era... Written in an accessible style, this is a key reference for students and researchers in housing and planning; geography; and social policy. The book analyses the operation and impact of the right to buy policy (RTB). It includes a critique of the Housing Act and the 2001 Housing (Scotland) Act. The enactment of these changes under a Labour government affirms the continuance of the RTB. The authors take stock of its profound effect on housing policy, reversing the growth in social housing developed over the twentieth century, transforming the nation's tenure structure and revolutionising the UK housing system. The Right to Buy: analysis and evaluation of a housing policy begins with an examination of the policy background to the establishment of the RTB and the main features of the legislation. This is followed by chapters that review its take-up and the pattern of sales and their impact on social housing; a chapter examining the financial aspects of the RTB from the viewpoints of tenants, local authorities and central government; one looking at the impact of the RTB via subsequent re-sales on the open market and on the private rented sector; and a chapter drawing on the information already reviewed to consider the potential of the RTB to create sustainable and diverse communities. In the final chapters the international experience of parallel policies are considered and the future take-up of the RTB is assessed in the light of recent reforms together with alternatives.
This first textbook on the topic of gentrification is written for upper-level undergraduates in geography, sociology, and planning. The gentrification of urban areas has accelerated across the globe to become a central engine of urban development, and it is a topic that has attracted a great deal of interest in both academia and the popular press. Gentrification presents major theoretical ideas and concepts with case studies, and summaries of the ideas in the book as well as offering ideas for future research.
This thesis evaluates the colonial productions and contestations of Puerto Rican public housing and its residents as urban ‘others’. It combines a historical analysis of the political, spatial and material trajectory of the island’s projects with an ethnography of the resistances enacted by a group of residents- mainly women- from one such complex called ‘Las Gladiolas’ against an impending order of demolition and displacement.
I argue that while a context of socio-spatial exclusion and environmental determinism has pervaded the constructions of these postcolonial ‘projects’ in ways that have significantly discriminated against its residents, public housing has never been and can never be completed according to that limited governmental design- which today exists under the rubric of urban redevelopment- mainly because communities of solidarity, dissent and conflict emerge simultaneously with and against those formulations, taking on a life of their own in ways that collude with and escape rigid technocratic formulations of housing policy. The research presented emphasizes the symbolic struggle and material reality embedded in Las Gladiolas’s community politics which resists and disrupts a homogeneous vision of past, present and future urban space.
The historical analysis highlights the ways in which ‘othering’ was set in place within the colonial context of Puerto Rico’s urban development in a way which has allowed for the continued stigmatization of public housing projects and for the reproduction of residents’ disadvantage according to raced, gendered and classed discriminations. Those distinctions of difference also created the conditions for particular forms of resistance to emerge. The ethnographic data tells the story of how the political and physical enactment of the buildings’ deterioration intersected with residents’ informal, institutional and legal resistance to relocation. It shows how the contemporary production, experiences and contestations over public housing are not fixed, but multiple and highly ambiguous. The complex interplay that emerges between political, social and material elements demonstrates that the boundaries separating Las Gladiolas from its urban environ, and Puerto Rican housing agencies from the American ones, are in fact open and porous, fluctuating according to use, appropriations, and political and legal transformations.
Two of the most celebrated black neighborhoods in the United States - Harlem in New York City and Bronzeville in Chicago - were once plagued by crime, drugs, and abject poverty. But now both have transformed into increasingly trendy and desirable neighborhoods, with old buildings being rehabbed, new luxury condos being built, and banks opening branches in areas that were once redlined. In "The New Urban Renewal", Derek S. Hyra offers an illuminating exploration of the complicated web of factors - local, national, and global - driving the remarkable revitalization of these two iconic black communities.How did these formerly notorious ghettos become dotted with expensive restaurants, health spas, and chic boutiques? And, given that urban renewal in the past often meant displacing African Americans, how have both neighborhoods remained black enclaves? Hyra combines his personal experiences as a resident of both communities with deft historical analysis to investigate who has won and who has lost in the new urban renewal. He discovers that today's redevelopment affects African Americans differentially: the middle class benefits while lower-income residents are priced out. Federal policies affecting this process also come under scrutiny, and Hyra breaks new ground with his penetrating investigation into the ways that economic globalization interacts with local political forces to massively reshape metropolitan areas.As public housing is torn down and money floods back into cities across the United States, countless neighborhoods are being monumentally altered. "The New Urban Renewal" is a compelling study of the shifting dynamics of class and race at work in the contemporary urban landscape.
While sustainability and green urbanism have become buzzwords in urban policy circles, too little analysis has focused on who gets to decide what green looks like. Many visions of the green city seem to have room only for park space, waterfront cafes, and luxury LEED-certified buildings, prompting concern that there is no place in the “sustainable” city for industrial uses and the working class. We will use the case study of Newtown Creek in Brooklyn, New York, to explore how different visions for the green city are enacted through activism and policy-making. Neighbourhood residents and business owners seem to be advocating a strategy we call “just green enough”, in order to achieve environmental remediation without environmental gentrification. Following the crash of both the financial and real estate markets, attempts to construct a sustainable city that is economically diverse and socially just seem to be taking hold. We interrogate how urban sustainability can be used to open up a space for diversity and democracy in the neoliberal city and argue that there is space for interventions that challenge the presumed inevitability of gentrification.
In the past decade, England has not experienced the radical neglect and demolition of public housing that We Call These Projects Home describes happening in the United States. The English social housing sector has declined in size, primarily by sales to sitting tenants, but it remains a significant part of the housing system. Nonetheless, in London, we find that the progressive commodification of housing has contributed to the dispersion and suburbanisation of the urban poor over the 2000s, as the city as a whole prospered. As well as some demolition of inner-city housing estates, the increasing use of subsidised private renting has played a central role in this. We argue that in England, the boundary and relationship between state and market is an essential foundation to an analysis of 'rights to the city'. This is because it both determines the actual proportion of housing allocated by market pricing (as opposed to rights or needs) and the spheres of decision where market logic (rather than claims to r
This paper discusses the urban injustices of New Labour's “new urban renewal”, that is the state-led gentrification of British council estates, undertaken through the guise of mixed communities policy, on the Aylesbury estate in Southwark, London, one of the largest council estates in Europe. In this particular case of post-political planning I show how the tenant support for the regeneration programme was manipulated and misrepresented and how choices were closed down for them, leaving them ultimately with a “false choice” between a regeneration they did not want or the further decline of their estate. I look at what the estate residents thought/think about the whole process and how they have resisted, and are resisting, the gentrification of their estate. I show revanchist and post-political practices, but ultimately I refuse to succumb to these dystopian narratives, very attractive as they are, for conflict/dissent has not been completely smothered and resistance to gentrification in and around the Aylesbury is alive and well. I argue that we urgently need to re-establish the city as the driver of democratic politics with an emancipatory agenda, rather than one that ratifies the status quo or gets mired in a dystopic post-justice city.
Outright victories against urban elitisation are rare in the current urban revolution. This article highlights how urban elitisation is confronted in Chacao, the most elite and urban part of Venezuela. Initially it reviews how this urban elitisation created the main economic, political and military strongholds of the opposition to the Bolivarian revolution. Then, in contesting it, the urban and Bolivarian revolutions feed each other through women's participation in invited and invented spaces of citizenship. From such spaces, Chacao women in their settler's movement organised struggles of insurgent citizenship to stop elitist urban renewal agendas and develop further forms of insurgent urbanism to conduct an urban renewal from below and establish a New Socialist Community for 600 families. They emerged as a revolutionary class to implement Bolivarian policies addressing the inefficiency and opportunism of the bureaucratic state and contesting urban elitisation with an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist insurgent urbanism.
Municipal governments have incorporated brownfield redevelopment programmes into urban sustainability plans to encourage the redevelopment of these sites into productive uses. The combination of government support and developer initiatives indicates potential for the gentrification of brownfields. However, developer proposals to expedite the conversion of contaminated properties along the Gowanus Canal in New York City into residential and commercial venues resulted in the addition of the canal to the US National Priorities List (NPL) of uncontrolled hazardous sites, rendering the site less attractive to developers. It is argued that the listing process became an effective tool in the struggle to resist gentrification in the Gowanus Canal neighbourhood. Place stigmatisation slowed developer-driven redevelopment and the NPL designation allows for a comprehensive remediation approach and increases opportunities for community input. This study provides an interesting case study of resistance to developer-driven ‘smart-city’ planning that represents a meaningful departure from neoliberal urbanism.
The redevelopment of Melbourne’s docklands—the largest urban development project in Australia—has been the subject of various official narratives in the course of its 20-year realisation so far. Many of these have invoked aspirations—‘visions’ or imaginaries—of sustainability, including, variously, economic, environmental, social and cultural sustainability. Through documentary sources used to establish these narratives, this paper tracks the changes in vision against changes in the local political-economic context and examines their effects on the ground. The paper argues that, while each vision was intended to some degree to rescue the development from the failure of the preceding one, only the most recent phase represents any deviation from neoliberal development-as-usual, and this is more to do with the intensifying criticism of the project’s failure to demonstrate any kind of sustainability than it is the implementation of an articulated aspiration.
This article examines how housing becomes a basis for mobilization that brings residents in East Harlem, New York City into internationally mobile social movement networks. These networks foster the mobility of people, practices and ideas to transform ‘housing’ from an immobile practice into a mobile, shifting entity experienced as tenuous, a counterfactual demand for immobility, and an expression of a shared desire for self-determination. Through mobilizing frames that turn the demand for decent housing into a struggle against neoliberalism, gentrification and displacement, and for collective self-determination, housing struggles create multi-scale networks of mobility that are essential to pursuing a neighborhood-level struggle to stay put.
Le logement est à la base d'une mobilisation des New-yorkais de East Harlem qui les a fait entrer dans des réseaux de mouvements sociaux mobiles à l'échelon international. Ces réseaux favorisent la mobilité des individus, des pratiques et des idées de sorte que le ‘logement’ ne soit plus une expérience immobile, mais une entité variable mobile vécue comme précaire, une demande virtuelle d'immobilité et l'expression d'un désir commun d'autodétermination. En passant par des cadres de mobilisation qui transforment la demande de logement décent en un combat à la fois contre le néolibéralisme, la gentrification et les déménagements forcés, et pour une autodétermination collective, les luttes liées au logement créent des réseaux de mobilitéà plusieurs échelons, indispensables à la résistance des habitants qui ne veulent pas quitter leur quartier.
Since World War II, San Francisco has been transformed by the high-rise postindustrial restructuring of central cities and by corresponding gentrification pressures. In one low-income inner-city district, the Tenderloin, residents organized and fought successful battles against the gentrifying growth regime through the 1980s. Moving beyond being a reactionary antigrowth movement, Tenderloin activists have advanced a proactive, neighborhood-sensitive regime, with a social-production capacity of its own, represented by the neighborhood's nonprofit housing movement. Their example teaches about the neighborhood-responsive progressive forces that characterize San Francisco and about the potential of grassroots mobilization as a response to international economic restructuring.
This article examines housing stock transfers from local authorities to registered social landlords in relation to regeneration and state-led gentrification in London. The article traces the inter-linkages between social rental housing provision, gentrification and neoliberalism. These inter-linkages are illustrated via an examination of the contestation over stock transfer and housing redevelopment in two New Deal for Communities regeneration schemes in London.
The position of flat owners inevitably raises complex issues in terms of the balance of individual and collective rights and responsibilities to be enshrined in housing law. These issues are resolved in various ways according to national policies and market frameworks. This paper examines the unique and unusual position of long leaseholders in privately owned blocks of flats in England and Wales. It outlines the major legal changes which have affected this sector in recent years, and assesses some of the experiences of leaseholders, based on a national study of 870 cases. The paper highlights the confusion surrounding the status of leaseholders as tenants and owners and assesses current proposals for further reform. The analysis is situated in debates about the complexity of 'tenure' as a category, and reveals the extent to which the concept embraces multiple meanings rooted in both legalistic discourse and popular assumption. The paper reflects on the methodological potential of approaching tenure as a construct in order to understand why the leasehold sector in England and Wales has endured and has so far proved relatively immune to attempted legal transformations of its character and function.
In order to explain the traction, which the right to the city slogan currently enjoys within urban resistance movements and beyond, this paper contextualizes its emergence in the shifting framework of postwar political-economic regimes and then traces and compares the different versions of this motto, which has become a defining feature of urban struggles not just in the Euro-American core, but around the world—though with different meanings. It distinguishes a radical Lefebvrian version from more depoliticized versions as widely used in the global NGO context, problematizing the latter for limiting the participatory demand to inclusion within the existing system. The conclusion opens up the question of the implications of the current crisis for the right to the city movement.
Displacement has been at the centre of heated analytical and political debates over gentrification and urban change for almost 40 years. A new generation of quantitative research has provided new evidence of the limited (and sometimes counter-intuitive) extent of displacement, supporting broader theoretical and political arguments favouring mixed-income redevelopment and other forms of gentrification. This paper offers a critical challenge to this interpretation, drawing on evidence from a mixed-methods study of gentrification and displacement in New York City. Quantitative analysis of the New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey indicates that displacement is a limited yet crucial indicator of the deepening class polarisation of urban housing markets; moreover, the main buffers against gentrification-induced displacement of the poor (public housing and rent regulation) are precisely those kinds of market interventions that are being challenged by advocates of gentrification and dismantled by policy-makers. Qualitative analysis based on interviews with community organisers and residents documents the continued political salience of displacement and reveals an increasingly sophisticated and creative array of methods used to resist displacement in a policy climate emphasising selective deregulation and market-oriented social policy.
This paper uses several events in New York in the late 1990s to launch two central arguments about the changing relationship between neoliberal urbanism and so–called globalization. First, much as the neoliberal state becomes a consummate agent of—rather than a regulator of—the market, the new revanchist urbanism that replaces liberal urban policy in cities of the advanced capitalist world increasingly expresses the impulses of capitalist production rather than social reproduction. As globalization bespeaks a rescaling of the global, the scale of the urban is recast. The true global cities may be the rapidly growing metropolitan economies of Asia, Latin America, and (to a lesser extent) Africa, as much as the command centers of Europe, North America and Japan. Second, the process of gentrification, which initially emerged as a sporadic, quaint, and local anomaly in the housing markets of some command–center cities, is now thoroughly generalized as an urban strategy that takes over from liberal urban policy. No longer isolated or restricted to Europe, North America, or Oceania, the impulse behind gentrification is now generalized; its incidence is global, and it is densely connected into the circuits of global capital and cultural circulation. What connects these two arguments is the shift from an urban scale defined according to the conditions of social reproduction to one in which the investment of productive capital holds definitive precedence.
Summary Two ‘real’ attempts that have been made to engage geography with everyday struggles are considered in the light of the critical geography movement. First, my experiences of an anti-gentrification workshop at the Inaugural International Conference on Critical Geography in Vancouver, Canada. Second, my experiences in speaking about a research project ‘outside’ the academy, through the media. These attempts illustrate that geographers may be overestimating the particular expertise and experience that we bring to the table. Stepping out of our so-called ‘ivory towers’ is but the first step in what can only be called an educational journey.
Gentrification has changed in ways that are related to larger economic and political restructuring. Among these changes is the return of heavy state intervention in the process. This paper explores heightened state involvement in gentrification by examining the process in three New York City neighbourhoods: Clinton, Long Island City, and DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). We argue that state intervention has returned for three key reasons. First, continued devolution of federal states has placed even more pressure on local states to actively pursue redevelopment and gentrification as ways of generating tax revenue. Second, the diffusion of gentrification into more remote portions of the urban landscape poses profit risks that are beyond the capacity of individual capitalists to manage. Third, the larger shift towards post–Keynesian governance has unhinged the state from the project of social reproduction and as such, measures to protect the working class are more easily contested.