Gentrification

11 Key excerpts on "Gentrification"

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  The Gentrification Debates

  A Reader

  • Japonica Brown-Saracino(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  an economic and social process whereby private capital (real estate firms, developers) and individual homeowners and renters reinvest in fiscally neglected neighborhoods through housing rehabilitation, loft conversions, and the construction of new housing stock. Unlike urban renewal, Gentrification is a gradual process, occurring one building or block at a time, slowly reconfiguring the neighborhood landscape of consumption and residence by displacing poor and working-class residents unable to afford to live in ‘revitalized’ neighborhoods with rising rents, property taxes, and new businesses catering to an upscale clientele.

  (2004: 139)

  This definition captures many of the characteristics that scholars agree define Gentrification: an influx of capital and resultant social, economic, cultural, and physical transformation and displacement (see Atkinson 2003 ).

  If there is general agreement among scholars about these defining traits, what is there left to debate about? To varying degrees the authors in this section provide definitions and descriptions of Gentrification that overlap with Perez’s. However, each author emphasizes distinct elements of Perez’s definition. For instance, some stress the displacement of poor and working-class residents, while others devote greater attention to the transformation of housing stock. Underlying debate about how to define Gentrification are a few pressing questions. As this section details, first and foremost is the question of whether to define Gentrification by its causes, outcomes, or everyday character. A second related question is about which of Gentrification’s causes, outcomes, or dimensions typify the process. A third question involves where Gentrification takes place. In the process of posing and answering these questions scholars argue about which cases of revitalization should be deemed “Gentrification,” while simultaneously pushing each other to construct definitions that acknowledge Gentrification’s variability—i.e. the fact that its precise characteristics and dynamics vary, to an extent, by time, place, and stage of Gentrification (Clay 1979 , Kerstein 1990

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  Housing, Culture, and Design

  A Comparative Perspective

  • Setha M. Low, Erve Chambers, Setha M. Low, Erve Chambers(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • University of Pennsylvania Press Anniversary Collection

    (Publisher)

  Gentrification is primarily not the realm of the very wealthy. This fact has caused some critics to suggest that such phrases as neighborhood resettlement, neighborhood revitalization, and 73 74 Culture as a Political and Economic Structure the like, are more appropriate. Call it what you with—whatever words are ultimately chosen to label the process, it and its impacts are significant on a worldwide basis. To understand Gentrification is to understand the way in which people have traditionally perceived the establishment and evolution of urban neigh-borhoods, areas that were originally populated by people of the middle or upper socioeconomic classes. As Gale (1984) and others have commented, woven throughout our concept of these neighborhoods is the theme of ulti-mate decline. For many years, social scientists have shared with the general public a notion that assumes all neighborhoods eventually decline in both physical condition and value with increasing age; such an assumption is usu-ally labeled a filtering theory. As this decline progresses, the older neighbor-hood becomes populated by people at the lower end of the economic scale, who replace the original inhabitants. This process has long been viewed as an inevitable feature of most neighborhoods. Gentrification is the upset of this trend or belief. Since the early 1960s, in many cities what could simply be called reverse filtering began to occur. This consisted of middle- and sometimes upper-income people purchasing, reno-vating, and moving back into formerly declining urban neighborhoods. In-stead of moving upward to progressively more affluent areas, these groups began to filter downward to older neighborhoods, originally established in the early twentieth, nineteenth, or sometimes even late eighteenth centuries. This trend, amusing to many at first, began to have a significant impact on many urban neighborhoods.

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  Introduction to Urban Sprawl (Concepts, Elements & Issues), An

  • (Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • The English Press

    (Publisher)

  ________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ________________________ Chapter- 8 Gentrification Gentrification and urban Gentrification denote the socio-cultural changes in an area resulting from wealthier people buying housing property in a less prosperous community. Consequent to Gentrification, the average income increases and average family size decreases in the community, which may result in the informal economic eviction of the lower-income residents because of increased rents, house prices, and property taxes. This type of population change reduces industrial land use when it is redeveloped for commerce and housing. In addition, new businesses, catering to a more affluent base of consumers, tend to move into formerly blighted areas, further increasing the appeal to more affluent migrants and decreasing the accessibility to less wealthy natives. Urban Gentrification occasionally changes the culturally heterogeneous character of a community to a more economically homogeneous community that some describe as having a suburban character. This process is sometimes made feasible by government-sponsored private real estate investment repairing the local infrastructure, via deferred taxes, mortgages for poor and for first-time house buyers, and financial incentives for the owners of decayed rental housing. Once in place, these economic development actions tend to reduce local property crime, increase property values and prices and increase tax revenues. Political action, to either promote or oppose the Gentrification, is often the community’s response against unintended economic eviction caused by rising rents that make continued residence in their dwellings unfeasible. The rise in property values causes property taxes based on property values to increase; resident owners unable to pay the taxes are forced to sell their dwellings and move to a cheaper community.

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  The Routledge Handbook of Housing Policy and Planning

  • Katrin B. Anacker, Mai Thi Nguyen, David P. Varady, Katrin B. Anacker, Mai Thi Nguyen, David P. Varady(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Section 7

  Gentrification

  Passage contains an image

  21 A Moving Target

  The Shifting Genealogy of Gentrification

  Dennis E. Gale

  Introduction

  Over the past 40 years Gentrification has become an increasingly critical issue in U.S. housing policy and planning. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Congressional hearings and federally funded studies indicated growing national concerns (U.S. Congress 1978; U.S. Congress 1986; U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development 1980). Similar signs of Gentrification were being observed in certain cities in Canada, the UK and Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Moreover, this issue has generated tremendous interest, media reportage, and scholarship. For example, a recent Google search of the term “Gentrification” received 3,730,000 hits. A search of the term in the Stanford University Library catalog turned up 322 references, including monographs and digital sources.

  Coined by sociologist Ruth Glass (1964), the noun “Gentrification” referred to the renovation of older London neighborhoods by middle-class households, or the new gentry, who gradually replaced their working-class predecessors. The term took root in North American lexicons in the late 1970s. Today it bears physical, demographic, economic, social, and political implications (Lees et al. 2008). Previously, U.S. scholars and other observers had referred to Gentrification as neighborhood resettlement, revitalization, regeneration, refurbishment, resurrection, and reclamation, among other terms (Laska and Spain 1980; Lees et al. 2008).1

  In the following sections I first discuss the counterintuitive nature of Gentrification, escalating as it did during the height of the nation’s urban crisis. Second, I address the misunderstood origins of Gentrification in the U.S. and the initial failure of federal urban renewal policies to exploit its potential. Third, I explore the elusive definitional challenges of Gentrification and the difficulties this poses for empirical research. Fourth, I briefly examine the geographic range of Gentrification with examples of scholarship in other nations. Fifth, I analyze two particularly bedeviling issues: the consumption versus production debate and the role of state sponsorship. Sixth, I discuss the issues of succession versus displacement and the differential outcomes of Gentrification. And last, I probe the variable incidence of Gentrification among U.S. cities and the implications it poses for housing affordability.

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  The Battle for the High Street

  Retail Gentrification, Class and Disgust

  • Phil Hubbard(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 P. Hubbard, The Battle for the High Street, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-52153-8_1 1 The literature on contemporary cities is vast, constantly evolving as it struggles to keep pace with frenetic processes of urban restructuring. But for the last 50 years or so, one theoretical concept has consistently been to the fore: urban Gentrification. Originally invoked to describe the social transformation of some of London’s inner city neighbourhoods via the ‘sweat equity’ of owner-occupiers, the term is now routinely used to describe any instance where landscapes of long-term disinvestment are ‘upscaled’ through state funding, corporate speculation or individual initiative. Around the world, we are seeing neighbourhoods long associ- ated with working-class and minority populations being reinvented in accordance with contemporary ideals of metropolitan living, with new residents and tourists consuming these spaces as sites of leisured, middle- class urbanity. Corporations search eagerly for new opportunities to exploit the ‘rent gap’ between current and potential rents, often aided and abetted by state governors keen to see an urban transformation. The theories and experiences of Gentrification first worked through in London in the 1960s are thus being updated and revised as new landscapes and spaces of Gentrification become apparent elsewhere, including the global South. Indeed, the putative globalization of Gentrification has led some Introduction: Gentrification and Retail Change scholars to suggest the pulse behind Gentrification is now generalized, and a key dimension of ‘planetary urbanism’ (Merrifield 2013; Wyly 2015). But Gentrification is not just diffusing globally, with the Gentrification ‘frontier’ simultaneously moving out from the inner city to encompass other locations.

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  Gentrifications

  Views from Europe

  • Marie Chabrol, Anaïs Collet, Matthieu Giroud, Lydie Launay(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Berghahn Books

    (Publisher)

  Last but not least, Gentrification is never the only process at work in a neighbourhood: it can also operate hand in hand with other trends – including dynamics of stabi- lization or social pauperization that may also have an impact on business activity and the development of tourism – so that the renewal of the popu- lation is sometimes relative in social and spatial terms (Authier 2003). This echoes conclusions already formulated in France in the early 2000s by the sociologist Jean-Yves Authier and the geographer Jean-Pierre Lévy, who argued that ‘Gentrification presents itself more as a coexistence of differ- ent populations and mobilities, as the social outcome of a complex game in which sedentary and mobile residents rub shoulders, the combination of population movements, urban planning decisions, actors’ strategies and the distinctive ways of living and cohabitating of the different social groups’ (Lévy 2002: 200). The Importance of Contextual Variations One of our main goals in this book is therefore to build on the legacy of the classical theories of Gentrification and move beyond them to expand our understanding of the process by unveiling its multiform character. We shed light on the complexity and diversity of Gentrification processes, drawing on concrete examples. The main deviation observed from theories and explanatory models con- cerns the timing of urban change. Gentrification can hardly be reduced to a linear, sequential and progressive temporality: depending on the case, it fol- 14 Gentrifications lows distinctive paces, with more or less long periods of acceleration, slow- down and stagnation, and in some cases of deadlock and even regression (in times of economic crisis, for instance). It can occur extremely quickly and sometimes much more slowly, owing to the multiplicity of drivers and brakes involved, as well as to its intertwining with sometimes contradictory trends.

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  Multivariate scaling methods and the reconstruction of social spaces

  Papers in honor of Jörg Blasius

  • Alice Barth, Felix Leßke, Rebekka Atakan, Manuela Schmidt, Yvonne Scheit, Alice Barth, Felix Leßke, Rebekka Atakan, Manuela Schmidt, Yvonne Scheit(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Verlag Barbara Budrich

    (Publisher)

  Recent debate in Germany revolves on the one hand – following Hackworth/ Smith’s (2001) argument for the third wave of capitalisation and Christophers’ (2012) theses about the role of the growing of financial sectors share of prof- its – around commodification and financialisation of housing (Belina 2022, Janoschka 2022). On the other hand, authors discuss – impacted by Lees et al. (2008, 2016) – whether Gentrification should be discerned as a local/particular or global/universal process (Bernt 2016, 2020). 3. Gentrification: More than an either – or! Definitions of Gentrification are either very narrow and therefore predestined for developing a theoretical definition like “Gentrification is the replacement of lower strata in favour of higher strata within a neighbourhood” (Friedrichs 134 1996:14) or they include all kinds of upgrading and displacement everywhere throughout the world (Lees et al. 2016). The definition used here follows Hamnett (1991: 32), who stated that gen- trification is a “physical, economic, social and cultural phenomenon”, an “inva- sion by middle-class people in former working-class districts or multi-occupied ‘twilight areas’” and the “replacement and displacement of many of the orig- inal occupants.” Other aspects are “physical renovation and rehabilitation”, which causes “significant price appreciation” and commonly it “involves a de- gree of tenure transformation from renting to owning”. Referring to the data of the Hamburg study I would add, that second and third waves of Gentrification can also happen in quarters first built in the period of promoterism and/or art nouveau based on longer periods of incumbent upgrading (Dangschat/Alisch 1995) and are driven by tenure change to owner occupation. Displacement then is among middle class (middle-aged families of, say, teachers have to leave in favour of established managers who are double-income-no-kids households).

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  Advanced Introduction to Gentrification

  • Chris Hamnett(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Edward Elgar Publishing

    (Publisher)

  79 5 Gentrification, displacement and replacement Introduction Of all the issues concerning Gentrification, the issue of displacement is undoubtedly the one that generates most attention and polarises opinion (Atkinson, 2003). While some claim (The Economist, 2015, 2018, 2019) Gentrification is a beneficial process that assists the regeneration of run-down inner-city areas, most academics view it as a negative process, and it has been linked with the displacement of lower-income groups by higher-income groups right from Glass’s (1964) pioneering definition of the process: ‘Once this process of “Gentrification” starts in a district, it goes on rapidly until all or most of the original working class occupiers are displaced and the whole social character of the district is changed’ (p. xviii). Some argue that Gentrification always entails the displacement of one group of people by another richer one with the ability to push or price the former out of an area. Indeed, they would argue that displacement is an inevitable corollary of Gentrification. Others argue that Gentrification does not necessarily entail displacement and that it could be a slow process of class replacement or, if the area was not previously residential, the introduction of a middle class on a blank social-class slate. Urban displacement has a long history. Engels identified a similar process in Manchester in the 1840s; Haussmann’s renovation of central Paris in the second half of the 19th century displaced many residents, and Steadman-Jones (1971) showed that displacement was common in the poorer areas of central London in the 19th century, though the cause then was slum clearance rather than Gentrification. Displacement was a big ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO Gentrification 80 problem in some parts of inner London in the 1960s. Perec Rachman and other notorious slum landlords used thugs and dogs to get rid of poor tenants and push up rents.

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  Unequal City

  London in the Global Arena

  • Chris Hamnett(Author)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  London: Aspects of Change, published in 1963, that:

  One by one, many of the working class quarters of London have been invaded by the middle classes—upper and lower—shabby modest mews and cottages—two rooms up and two down—have been taken over when their leases expired, and have become elegant, expensive residences. Larger Victorian houses, downgraded in an earlier or recent period–which were used as lodging houses or were otherwise in multiple occupation—have been upgraded once again… Once this process of ‘Gentrification’ starts in a district it goes on rapidly until all or most of the original working class occupiers are displaced and the whole social character of the district is changed.

  (Glass, 1963, p. xviii)

  Her use of the term ‘Gentrification’, which sometimes vexes American academics who would prefer the term neighbourhood ‘revitalisation’ or ‘renovation’ was deliberately ironic and rooted in the intricacies of traditional English rural class structures. It was designed to point to the emergence of a new ‘urban gentry’, paralleling the eighteenth-and nineteenth-century rural gentry familiar to readers of Jane Austen, who comprised the class strata below the landed aristocracy, but above yeoman farmers and landless labourers. She identified Gentrification as a complex process involving physical improvement of the housing stock, housing tenure changes from renting to owning, price rises and the displacement or replacement of the working-class population by the new middle class. She was not alone in recognising the emergence of Gentrification in London. Several key elements of the process were brilliantly captured by Michael Frayn (1967) in his novel, Towards the End of the Morning:

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  Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies

  • Leslie Kern(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Between the Lines

    (Publisher)

  6 . Gentrification Is About Physical Displacement

  Ruth Glass was certainly prescient when she predicted the complete social transformation of neighbourhoods in her 1964 definition of Gentrification. Displacement, she suggested, was at the heart of Gentrification. Since then, displacement has remained central, yet confounding, as there are many different definitions, causes, and ways of measuring displacement. What does displacement really look and feel like? What are the everyday experiences that lead to a lost sense of place or belonging? For qualitative researchers like me, people’s personal accounts are compelling data. For quantitative analysts, measuring changes in household type and income, housing tenure, and rates of eviction based on census, planning, and other survey data is usually preferred. Whatever approach you take, any study of Gentrification must confront displacement in all its forms and reckon with the deep and lasting impacts on people’s lives.

  The standard story of Gentrification has tended to focus on one form of displacement: the out-migration of working-class and/or racialized residents from gentrifying areas. A picture gets painted of a neighbourhood undergoing a total turnover in the class and identity of inhabitants, businesses, and services over a period of time. This story implies that few, if any, “original” residents remain. Here, Gentrification has a distinct before and after. This story compels us to look for quantitative evidence of the physical departure of certain people from the community. Without proof of this particular trajectory and kind of displacement, some observers do not believe Gentrification has occurred at all.

  Unfortunately for those who like to have neat graphs and uncomplicated narratives, Gentrification is often messy, drawn out, and without a clear endpoint. The desire to tell a straightforward story means researchers and writers might be pulled toward studying places where displacement has “happened” in some kind of eventful way, rather than considering the ordinary neighbourhoods where displacement and Gentrification are affecting people slowly, emotionally, and often quietly. Sometimes we have to eschew clean notions of a measurable before and after in order to understand displacement as a multi-layered, multitemporal, and relational process that defies simple packaging.

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  Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies

  • Leslie Kern(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Verso

    (Publisher)

  6 Gentrification IS ABOUT PHYSICAL DISPLACEMENT

  Ruth Glass was certainly prescient when she predicted the complete social transformation of neighbourhoods in her 1964 definition of Gentrification. Displacement, she suggested, was at the heart of Gentrification. Since then, displacement has remained central, yet confounding, as there are many different definitions, causes, and ways of measuring displacement. What does displacement really look and feel like? What are the everyday experiences that lead to a lost sense of place or belonging? For qualitative researchers like me, people’s personal accounts are compelling data. For quantitative analysts, measuring changes in household type and income, housing tenure, and rates of eviction based on census, planning, and other survey data is usually preferred. Whatever approach you take, any study of Gentrification must confront displacement in all its forms and reckon with the deep and lasting impacts on people’s lives.

  The standard story of Gentrification has tended to focus on one form of displacement: the out-migration of working-class and/or racialized residents from gentrifying areas. A picture gets painted of a neighbourhood undergoing a total turnover in the class and identity of inhabitants, businesses, and services over a period of time. This story implies that few, if any, “original” residents remain. Here, Gentrification has a distinct before and after. This story compels us to look for quantitative evidence of the physical departure of certain people from the community. Without proof of this particular trajectory and kind of displacement, some observers do not believe Gentrification has occurred at all.

  Unfortunately for those who like to have neat graphs and uncomplicated narratives, Gentrification is often messy, drawn out, and without a clear endpoint. The desire to tell a straightforward story means researchers and writers might be pulled toward studying places where displacement has “happened” in some kind of eventful way, rather than considering the ordinary neighbourhoods where displacement and Gentrification are affecting people slowly, emotionally, and often quietly. Sometimes we have to eschew clean notions of a measurable before and after in order to understand displacement as a multi-layered, multi-temporal, and relational process that defies simple packaging.

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