The age dimensions of urban socio‐spatial change

Abstract

AbstractContemporary societal transformations are marked by particular age dynamics and shifting fault lines between generations. Growing socio‐economic divides between young and old have been singled out as a key concern, for example, on the housing market. However, age is not very often explicitly integrated into analyses of urban socio‐spatial inequality. This paper makes an effort to do so, drawing on the case study of Amsterdam (the Netherlands). Results highlight how age factors into urban socio‐spatial change. First, by placing age centre stage, it shows how aggregate urban upgrading comes about. Some age groups—those in their midthirties and over sixty—drive urban upgrading, whereas the 50‐to‐60 age group has become poorer, dampening upgrading. Second, geographies of affluence and poverty differ substantially between age groups. Whereas affluent elderly concentrate in the most privileged areas, and increasingly so, younger generations move to neighbourhoods lower on the urban hierarchy. Third, at any one point, multiple generations are involved in driving neighbourhood gentrification. Affluent elderly drive further gentrification in already affluent areas, wheras younger adults do so in lower status neighbourhoods.