Gentrifying City Research Articles

Intergenerational support shaping residential trajectories: Young people leaving home in a gentrifying city

Parental support, in both financial and non-financial ways, is important in explaining the residential trajectories of young people leaving home. For instance, the influence of parental support on the ability to leave home or enter homeownership is well established. This study adds a dimension by investigating how inequalities in terms of parental background – particularly assets – are spatially articulated. More specifically, we study whether parental background influences the types of neighbourhoods young people leaving home move to. Drawing on the case of Amsterdam, we show that these ‘fledglings’, despite their generally very modest income, disproportionally move to gentrification neighbourhoods. Moreover, fledglings with wealthy parents are even more likely to move to both early gentrifying and expensive mature-gentrification neighbourhoods. Gentrification research should therefore also take into account the importance of middle class social reproduction strategies as well as the potential intergenerational transfer of (financial) resources – rather than merely personal financial situation – in shaping housing outcomes and spatial inequalities of young people leaving home. Drawing on parental support, young people may be able to outbid other households and hence exclude them from gentrifying neighbourhoods. Consequently, parental wealth and other resources can thus contribute to gentrification and exclusion.

Coupling urban regeneration with age-friendliness: Neighborhood regeneration in Jangsu Village, Seoul

This paper examines a neighborhood regeneration effort in Jangsu Village, Seoul, through which residents strived to continue living in the area on the verge of wholesale renewal. In Seoul, a large-scale urban development and/or regeneration has shaped urban fabric since the 1960s, while the recent phenomenon of rapid aging has led to a sudden demographic shift. Jangsu is a low-income, dilapidated neighborhood in the center of Seoul where many inhabitants are aging long-term squatters. Therefore, this research provides a glimpse into how older inhabitants with fewer resources are able to continue living in their neighborhood in a gentrifying city undergoing rapid spatial, socio-economic and population changes. The paper demonstrates how neighborhood social capital has fostered multi-stakeholder collaboration and the participation of older residents in the area's regeneration, enabling residents to continue living there and improving living conditions by repairing and reusing existing buildings. Thereby, this paper highlights: (1) neighborliness as a significant dimension in making age-friendly cities and, (2) the notion that age-friendliness might serve as an urban regeneration framework, emphasizing stable and affordable residency as well as progressive transformation.

Molly Vollman Makris: Public housing and school choice in a gentrified city: youth experiences of uneven opportunity

Molly Vollman Makris: Public housing and school choice in a gentrified city: youth experiences of uneven opportunity

Tone Huse 2014: Everyday Life in the Gentrifying City: On Displacement, Ethnic Privileging and the Right to Stay Put. Farnham: Ashgate

International Journal of Urban and Regional ResearchVolume 39, Issue 2 p. 430-431 Book Review Tone Huse 2014: Everyday Life in the Gentrifying City: On Displacement, Ethnic Privileging and the Right to Stay Put. Farnham: Ashgate Hamish Kallin, Hamish Kallin University of EdinburghSearch for more papers by this author Hamish Kallin, Hamish Kallin University of EdinburghSearch for more papers by this author First published: 18 June 2015 https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12229Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume39, Issue2March 2015Pages 430-431 RelatedInformation

Tone Huse: Everyday Life in the Gentrifying City: on displacement, ethnic privileging, and the right to stay put

Tone Huse: Everyday Life in the Gentrifying City: on displacement, ethnic privileging, and the right to stay put

Redfern as the Heart(h): Living (Black) in Inner Sydney

AbstractBefore the arrival of the ‘white fella’ over 200 years ago, the Gadigal people and others of the Eora Darug occupied the place where the city of Sydney now stands. At the heart of this second tier global city, the inner‐city suburb of Redfern has become a mainstay of urban Aboriginal identity. Yet, this troubled and stigmatised focal point of populist media representations and government policy does not reflect the diversity of urban Aboriginal life in inner Sydney. This paper draws on a range of sources about living in Redfern, from the difficult politics of establishing and retaining an Aboriginal urban space and place in the contemporary gentrifying city – achieved in large part through the establishment of now long‐standing service provision – through to the rise of alternate visions and lives and many more ‘ordinary’ ways of living in the city. This paper seeks to highlight that Aboriginal people variously inhabit, occupy, and sometimes thrive in Australia's first colonial city and the site of invasion. It also provides several of the author's personal experiences of engagement with some of these processes.

DIY Home Improvements in a Post-Soviet Housing Market: A Socio-Spatial Analysis of Vilnius, Lithuania

As part of the Large Analysis and Review of European housing and health Status (LARES), the WHO collected data in eight European cities during 2001 and 2002. Using this data, the paper analyses home-related ‘do-it-yourself (DIY)’ activities in Vilnius, Lithuania where housing was privatized following the collapse of Communism. The paper investigates whether DIY activities were prevalent near the ‘Old Town’ where officials encouraged renovation. It was found that overall, DIY activities were prevalent among households in 2001–2002 regardless of socio-economic status. However, residents of particular housing types were not more likely to engage in DIY activities nor was DIY activity associated with condition of buildings and open spaces between buildings. Nonetheless, perceptions of neighborhood quality were important in explaining DIY activity. The findings also show that DIY activity was no greater in/near the gentrifying city center than elsewhere. Interviews with Vilnius officials suggest several aspects of the local household or neighborhood environment not captured by the survey that help explain study findings.

The cinema of resistance: An interview with Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

ABSTRACTNaturalistically shot, impeccably constructed, uncompromising and emotionally searing, the Dardenne brothers' films give voice to a population often despised or ignored: illegal aliens, slumlords, corrupt officials and small-time criminals. To their characters the brothers bring a compassionate view born of the understanding that this underclass has, in part, been created by society's higher-ups. These are figures of limited material and social means who, under the most dire circumstances, must grapple with life-and-death decisions. And though the pair might deny it, their films also suggest an ingrained Christian vision through insisting on the transformative possibility of the most debased being. Le Silence de Lorna, their latest portrait, which premiered at Cannes, failed to elicit the rapturous response received by some of the earlier work, such as the 2005 Palme d'Or winner L'Enfant/The Child. Yet despite an exposition that some found lengthy, the Dardennes bring great resonance to this fable of a young Albanian immigrant caught in a terrible dilemma who struggles to redeem herself. As in 1996's La Promesse, the film focuses on the machinations forced on illegals hoping to grab a morsel of the world's wealth—in this case through fake marriages for citizenship. But this time the brothers have placed their camera in the more gentrified city of Liège, rather than their grimy industrial hometown of Seraing. I caught up with the Dardennes at the ‘Cannes Film Festival’ in May 2009, where Le Silence de Lorna won the award for best screenplay, and had the following conversation with them about the totality of their film work.

‘A Literal Necessity to be Re‐Placed’: A Rejoinder to the Gentrification Debate

AbstractThis rejoinder begins and ends with some remarks on the gentrification strategies taking place in post‐Katrina New Orleans, and responds to and builds on the commentaries by outlining, first, how the eviction of critical perspectives from gentrification research has continued, second, how displacement must be understood as multifaceted and contextual, and third, how urban researchers have become seduced by the rewards of claiming ‘policy relevance’. It concludes by offering some thoughts on the state of resistance to gentrification, and how much more research is needed not just on working‐class experiences of gentrification, but on how people fight for their right to place in the gentrifying city.Resumé Cette réponse débute et finit par quelques remarques sur les stratégies de la ‘gentrification’ qui opèrent à la Nouvelle‐Orléans depuis Katrina. Entre‐temps, elle réagit et ajoute aux commentaires en exposant, d'abord, comment se poursuit l'éviction des perspectives critiques de la recherche sur la ‘gentrification’, ensuite, comment il faut appréhender le déplacement comme présentant plusieurs facettes et dépendant du contexte et, pour finir, comment les chercheurs urbains ont cédé aux mérites de revendiquer une ‘pertinence politique’. En conclusion, elle propose plusieurs réflexions sur l'état de résistance à la ‘gentrification’ et sur le volume de recherches supplémentaires nécessaire, non seulement sur les expériences de la classe ouvrière, mais aussi sur la manière dont les gens luttent pour leur droit à une place dans une ville en cours de la ‘gentrification’.

The “Creative Class” and the Gentrifying City

This study explores the recent spatial politics of John F. Kennedy Plaza, “Love Park”—a piece of Philadelphia's mid-1960s Penn Center redevelopments. By the turn of the century, Love Park had become a center of a growing international skateboard culture, appearing widely in magazines and videos and on ESPN. In 2002, the city redesigned the park in order to deter the skateboarders, to the vocal protests of a broad-based coalition that included Edmund Bacon and over half the city council members. Through a review of city planning documents, local newspaper reportage, and personal interviews, I argue that the Love Park debates illustrate the extent to which “bohemian” or “countercultural” lifestyles are becoming institutionalized as instruments of urban development.

Differing Circumstances, Shared Challenges: Finding Common Ground between Urban and Rural Schools

PICK UP ANY newspaper and you can read about school problems and the ongoing debate about policy and reform. While schools certainly face critical challenges, rural schools face many of these same concerns. Yet we seldom hear about problems in rural schools. Perhaps we hear more about because most major media outlets are located in cities, or because high population densities in cities make the challenges more visible, or because voters are concentrated in cities. Regardless of the reason, focusing primarily on schools establishes a needless rural/urban antagonism and ignores the fact that and rural communities face similar struggles even though their circumstances differ. Both have experienced declining employment and increasing poverty that affect school funding. Both must respond to increasing federal and state demands for accountability and higher student achievement while facing growing teacher shortages during fiscally challenging times. Both have been adversely affected by economically driven population shifts. By identifying here the common threads of the challenges they share, we intend to stimulate discussion about how people in and rural communities can find common purposes. If the shared challenges are recognized, it may be possible for and rural schools to join forces and so exert more effective influence on the national sociopolitical arena. Over the course of the 20th century, the U.S. experienced a profound shift in terms of where people lived and how they earned a living. This shift accelerated about 30 years ago and has had two related effects: in large metropolitan areas, formerly clear distinctions between urban, suburban, and rural communities have substantially blurred, and in areas far from large cities, populations have steadily declined. Generally, areas are defined as having 1,000 people or more per square mile, while rural communities have fewer than 150 people per square mile. Using these criteria, rural America at the turn of the present century comprised 2,052 counties, including 75% of the nation's land but just 17% of its population and only 14% of its children. Notably, schools educated a similar proportion of the school-age population: approximately 13% or roughly 6.5 million children. (1) Yet classifying communities and schools by population densities alone ignores how the distinctions between urban, suburban, and rural have blurred in response to economic pressures. New Jersey, for example, is a predominately metropolitan state. Only one New Jersey resident in 10 lives in a rural area. However, 10% of New Jersey's population constitutes more people than there are in all of Maine. (2) Similarly, the term became common only after World War II, when the middle class left the cities for the suburbs and many rural citizens moved to cities for jobs and opportunities. As the middle class left the cities, impoverished people, often people of color, increasingly populated inner cities, where the cost of housing was lower. Subsequently, urban education became a euphemism for inner-city education, meaning schools for predominately poor communities populated chiefly by people of color. (3) However, more recent movements by the middle class have been either further away from the cities or back into gentrified city centers. Thus previously rural areas have turned into suburbs (sometimes called exurbs) and previously suburban areas (called ring suburbs) have become peri-urban communities with many characteristics formerly found primarily in inner cities. (4) We argue that the traditional classifications of schools based on their community's population density or geographic position may no longer be useful now that schools in various types of communities face similar challenging conditions, contexts, and social infrastructures. Let us look at and rural schools through a new lens. INCREASED DIVERSITY Urban schools have long struggled to level the playing field for the racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse children of the families that have moved to inner cities for inexpensive housing near productive employment. …