Recension de « Gentrification is inevitable and other lies »

Geography Compass, 2008

This article outlines the key contemporary debates on gentrification, most of which arise from variations in the process: in interpretations, assessments of displacement, the agents involved and the forms that gentrified cities take. The variations are so extensive that some scholars argue that gentrification has become too broad a concept to retain analytical coherency. Others counter that the logic of gentrification is now so generalised that the concept captures no less than the fundamental state and market-driven 'class remake' of cities throughout the world. The article agrees with the latter position and proposes that gentrification should be considered part of a broader continuum of social and economic geographic change, replacing the useful but outdated stage model but still accommodating the myriad of variations within its underlying logics. Understanding gentrification as a complex but coherent concept highlights the importance of time and place in the viability of progressive policy responses to gentrification's inequitable effects.

Environment and Planning A, 2004

Environment and Planning A, 2007

City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 2012

Chatsworth Road in Hackney, has recently been branded in an article in The Guardian newspaper as ‘the frontline of gentrification’ in East London. As one of the ‘faces’ of the article, and through my position as local street market trader, I want to open up these claims to scrutiny, beyond both scholarly discourses on gentrification and the tough language of militant resistance. Through a blossoming of local action groups, the planning mirage of the Localism Bill, the proximity to the Olympic Park and the activities of local estate agents, the Clapton area is certainly at the centre of intense transformations in both demographics and property values. How are such urban shifts are created and the resulting values distributed in this area and for whose benefit? Where is the place for truly transformative social justice in the scope and tools of the Localism Bill? At the crossroads between declared missions of ‘managing gentrification’ for the love of the local, and the ways in which the employment of images of area distinction and notions of cultural ‘authenticity’ inevitably bolster the fragmentation of the local as the locals know it, the probing of Chatsworth Road and Clapton at this point in time offers a valuable vantage point to observe East London beyond the Olympic rhetoric.

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 1984

In this paper, I make a critical assessment of the ways that issues relating to the ‘gentrification’ of inner-city neighbourhoods have been conceptualised, especially in North America, in both positivist and extant marxist work, I aim to rethink the processes generating ‘gentrification’ and ‘gentrifiers' and our ‘ways of seeing’ the results of these processes, First, I address epistemological problems of neoclassical and marxist approaches to this subject. Second, I critically appraise the problématique of marxist work on gentrification, emphasising its lack of attention to the interrelationships of employment restructuring and changes in the reproduction of labour power. From this, I argue that gentrification is a ‘chaotic concept’ and that the processes and elements it comprises need to be thought through again. I begin tills task by attempting to disaggregate the concept with empirical reference to North American metropolitan inner cities, I hypothesise that the upsurge of re...

2010

Taylor and Francis CCIT_A_458437. gm 10.1080/1360 810903579287 ity: Analysis of Urban Trends 360-4813 (pri t)/1470-3629 (online) Original Article 2 1 & Francis 4 0 0 00 February 2010 Professor Ch isHamnett chris.h mnett@kcl.ac.uk am pleased to have the opportunity to respond once again to Tom Slater’s (2010) arguments regarding gentrification and displacement. The issue is an important one, which has major social, analytical and political implications and it merits serious debate. Tom’s case seems to boil down to four key issues. These are: first, that I ignore or fail to engage with the key issue of Marcuse’s classification of different types of displacement; second, that I focus on the claimed diversionary issue of replacement versus displacement, which is in fact undermined by Marcuse’s concept of exclusionary displacement; third, that I utilize aggregate class analysis rather than a more rounded approach to class; and fourth, that my work is deemed to be mainstream versus critic...

This paper looks critically at the definition of gentrification, analyzing its role in the neoliberal rhetoric of gentrification vs. decay. It outlines, at various scales, the state’s role in encouraging and facilitating gentrification and its preconditions, emphasizing that gentrification cannot be regarded as natural or unintentional, while its definition in general, still overshadowed by its earlier conditions, is not fully representative of its current rendition. The paper argues for more clarity in definition and expansion of its time span to include the early deliberate preconditions which make a neighborhood ‘gentrifiable’. Juxtaposing gentrification with larger global trends, the paper highlights gentrification’s prominence in the new global clash for urban space, emphasizing on importance of expanding awareness through a more appropriate conception of the phenomenon. Keywords: gentrification, involuntary displacement, globalization, neoliberalism, spatial justice

Gentrification alters the ways places are gendered and by doing so it reflects and affects the ways gender is constructed and experienced. The ways places are gendered as well as changes in gender notions may also affect the occurrence of gentrification. The concept of gentrification refers to a changing class composition – for instance, Hackworth (2002, p.815) defines gentrification as ‘the transformation of space for more affluent users’. Yet, gentrification is also a product of and invariably involves changes in gender relations and the production of gender inequalities. Despite the expanding literature on gentrification, our knowledge on its relation to gender constitution is limited. The ways gender has been conceptualized and linked with gentrification have transformed from early 1980s up until today.Thanks to some crucial feminist interventions in the literature (see Rose (1984), Bondi(1991, 1999), Bondi and Rose (2003)), the research focus shifted from the role of women in gentrification processes to understanding gentrification as gender constitution, thus from categorical understanding of gender to conceptualizing gender as a set of social relations that are fundamentally structured by power relations in the society. In this chapter, I present a critical review of the existing literature pinpointing the gaps in our knowledge regarding the link between gentrification and gender. I call for a comparative and intersectional approach to investigate gendered geographies of gentrification. I conclude by underlining the need for a feminist engagement with knowledge production about gentrification as well as for feminist praxis to contest gendered inequalities and dispossessions involved in gendered geographies of gentrification.

'The Changing State of Gentrification' (2001) by Jason Hackworth and the late Neil Smith is one of the most influential papers ever published in TESG. By introducing three waves, or periods, of practices and patterns of gentrification, it changed the way we think about gentrification. This Introduction to the Forum discusses the three waves introduced by Hackworth and Smith as well as fourth wave introduced by Lees et al. Finally, I will argue that during the global financial crisis we have entered fifth-wave gentrification. Fifth-wave gentrification is the urban materialization of financialized or finance-led capitalism. The state continues to play a leading role during the fifth wave, but is now supplemented—rather than displaced—by finance. It is characterized by the emergence of corporate landlords, highly leveraged housing, platform capitalism (e.g. Airbnb), transnational wealth elites using cities as a 'safe deposit box', and a further 'naturalization' of state-sponsored gentrification.

Metropolitics.eu

The debate on the causes, effects and extent of the "gentrification" of working-class neighbourhoods in the central areas of our cities has animated (and divided) the fields of geography and urban sociology for the last decade or so in France. This debate was reignited in September 2013 by the publication of a book by Anne Clerval titled Paris sans le peuple ("Paris Without the People"). In this article, Anne Clerval and Mathieu Van Criekingen reply with force to those fellow researchers and those politicians and administrators who see gentrification as a positive process that can modify social structures and encourage urban renewal.