A smart gentrification theory

European Planning Studies, 2017

Does greening whiten? Does greening richen? Does greening raise rents and housing prices? These are the core questions that drive environmental sociologists Gould and Lewis's recent book Green Gentrification. Building on research tackling environmental privilege (Park and Pellow 2011) and environmental/ecological gentrification (Dooling 2009, Checker 2011, Anguelovski 2016), Gould and Lewis contribute to this emerging field through their proposal of green gentrification as a process that fortifies environmental privilege for elites in the city. In this light the book makes a valuable contribution to a new strand of environmental justice research that has developed since the 2000s, unmasking how efforts to improve the environment can increase racial, class and other inequities as environmental goods become concentrated with wealthy and white populations. Green gentrification can thus invisibilise racial and ethnic conflicts as greening is appropriated into the urban green growth orthodoxy. Through their exploration of five cases of urban greening in Brooklyn, New York, Gould and Lewis illustrate how greening outcomes are environmentally sustainable but tend to be socially unsustain-able. The richest parts of the book are undoubtedly the case-based chapters, focusing on different typologies of sites-several rezoned from industrial to residential with either brownfield restoration or green space creation, one extensive park restoration and one new park alongside high density rezoning-with different actors initiating greening and varied community responses. The cases illustrate that achieving some degree of social equity in development outcomes only manifest when residents mobilise early on in the process to demand them, as seen in the Sunset Park case. Similarly, social equity can also be effectively resisted through the same process, illustrated by mobilised white, wealthy residents in the Brooklyn Bridge Park case actively resisting affordable housing development. All cases, nonetheless, illustrate the power of capital accumulation that both pushes and drives the

Society & Natural Resources, 2018

Handbook of Gentrification Studies

This Handbook surveys the contemporary state of play of the gentrification studies literature, a body of work that now dominates both the sub-discipline of urban geography and also urban studies more generally. It does not set out to rehearse previous debates on the definition of 'gentrification' nor does it rehearse the well-worn battlegrounds over explanations (on these see Lees, Slater and Wyly, 2008, 2010); rather this book is a collection of chapters by both long-standing and up-and-coming researchers on gentrification that represents the latest in global thinking on this process. It provides critical reviews and appraisals of the current state of, and future development of, conceptual and theoretical approaches, as well as empirical knowledge and understanding in gentrification studies. It also seeks to encourage dialogue across disciplinary boundaries, for the contributors sit in and work across geography, sociology, anthropology, planning, policy, law, and so on. The book is divided into 5 parts: Part 1 looks at recent attempts to extend and rethink gentrification as a planetary process and condition, drawing on the 'new' comparative urbanism; and a more 'earthly' take that replaces old style complementarity in gentrification studies with relationalism. Part 2 reviews the key/core concepts that have dominated gentrification studies to date, including class, landscape, rent gaps, and displacement; adding spatial capital to this list, updating them conceptually and globalizing them. Part 3 looks at other social cleavages in addition to social class, including sexualities, age, ethnicity and gender, providing ideas on future research trajectories. The cross-cutting of social cleavages in addition to social class needs fresh and deeper empirical investigation; this book seeks to instigate such an agenda. Part 4 looks at some of the different types of gentrification, including slum gentrification, new-build gentrification, public housing gentrification, tourism gentrification, retail gentrification, gentle/soft gentrification, environmental/green gentrification, the cultural economy and gentrification, and wilderness/ rural gentrification. These types of gentrification all deserve attention in their own right but can also be read together. Part 5 contains chapters on living and resisting gentrification. Unlike in most gentrification books, this part takes seriously the complexities of living with gentrification, resistance to gentrification (all types and levels of resistance) but also key to this resistance-possible alternatives to gentrification. Here readers will find some of the most comprehensive reviews of resistance in the literature to date and real attempts to find alternatives to gentrification. Although the key users of the book are likely to be advanced undergraduates, postgraduate students, and international scholars of gentrification, the chapters also have real purchase for policy makers, planners, housing activists, and indeed everyday people for whom gentrification is an issue. It is now over 50 years since the British sociologist Ruth Glass coined the term 'gentrification' in 1964.

Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability

Antipode, 2019

The interplay between intensifying labour market precarity and gentrification constitutes a hitherto under-researched topic in the fields of labour and urban geography. To rectify this lacuna, we argue that gentrification and labour flexibilisation are both socio-spatial manifestations of capital's efforts to confront crises of accumulation. Distinguishing between what we call "weak" and "strong" links between them, and drawing upon the concepts of "gentrification-supporting" and "gentrification-fostered" labour flexibility, we outline a framework for connecting gentrification and precarity. This allows us to make links between the restructuring of the built environment and the reorganisation of work in the post-industrial city; it also allows us to show how workers, through their agency, can shape rent gaps in the contemporary city. R esum e: L'interaction entre l'intensification de la pr ecarit e du march e du travail et la gentrification constitue un sujet encore peu etudi e dans les domaines de la g eographie du travail et de la g eographie urbaine. Pour rem edier a cette lacune, nous soutenons que la gentrification et la flexibilisation du travail sont deux manifestations socio-spatiales des efforts du capital pour faire face aux crises d'accumulation. En distinguant ce que nous appelons des liens «faibles» et «forts» entre les deux, et en s'appuyant sur les concepts de flexibilit e du travail «soutenant la gentrification» et «favoris e par la gentrification», nous d efinissons un cadre pour relier la gentrification a la pr ecarit e. Cela nous permet de faire des liens entre la restructuration de l'environnement bâti et la r eorganisation du travail dans la ville post-industrielle; cela nous permet egalement de montrer comment les travailleurs, par leur agentivit e, peuvent combler les ecarts de loyers dans la ville contemporaine.

Global Gentrifications: Uneven Development and Displacement, 2015

This special issue addresses the questions of gentrification and new-build gentrification, two processes of urban transformation that significantly contribute to the reconfiguration of the socio-demographic profile of populations in contemporary cities. Whereas gentrification has long referred to the physical and social transformation of central areas through rehabilitation of existing housing stock and population displacement by more affluent households, the concept has recently been extended to include new high-status developments (regeneration of brownfield sites or demolition/reconstruction of existing residential areas). Although these new developments do not always cause direct population displacement, the question of the possible indirect consequences has been critically raised while the densification of the built environment appears as a favourable outcome in a context of environmental sustainability concerns. The papers collected in this issue focus on the emerging debates ...

This is a draft of the fourth, penultimate chapter of my forthcoming book, Natural Catastrophe: Climate Change in the Age of Neoliberal Governance. It examines the claims of urban sustainability against the realities of rampant neoliberal gentrification. Theoretically, the work of Lefebvre, Arendt and Marcuse on the nature of work are examined in order to highlight dimensions of social sustainability that remain hidden in the current sustainability paradigm. This chapter also builds on the work of critical geographers such as David Harvey and Neil Smith in order to outline a more truly progressive production of the urban.