Gentrification Theory Research Articles

Dampak Persaingan Suku Jawa dan Masyarakat Lokal pada Penguasaan Tempat Strategis di Wisata Kuliner Oepoi

Based on data from BPS as of February 2023, from Lifetime Migration (100 Population) in Kupang City, it was recorded that 35.96 were data on residents who migrated into Kupang City, and the net migration figure which reached 33.8 proves that many immigrants from outside Kupang City who want to live and live their lives in Kupang City, including the Javanese who have migrated to Kupang City since the Dutch colonial period in the 19th century. This research aims to examine the theory of gentrification and its relevance in the migration of Javanese to NTT, especially the city. Kupang on the Oepoi Culinary Tour. The method used in this research is a quantitative verification method by testing the truth of theoretical assumptions with data in the field. The results of the research prove that the arrival of Javanese immigrants resulted in changes in terms of demographics, development aesthetics, employment opportunities, social controversy and an increase in property prices. The development of Oepoi Culinary Tourism is correct in arranging the relevant locations to make them look neater, but it must be accompanied by the readiness of the local community in terms of human resources to welcome competition with Javanese people in the culinary world.

Production and reconstruction mechanism of consumption spaces in urban fringe areas under capital intervention: Evidence from Guangming town in Shenzhen

As the rapid urban expansion and the rise of consumer society, urban fringe areas have become an essential place for urban capital to intervene and achieve spatial regeneration, and it has triggered the consumerization and transformation of space. Taking Guangming Town in the urban fringe area of Shenzhen as an example, this paper reveals the process and dynamics of spatial consumerization transformation under the influence of capital intervention. It examines the intricate mechanisms of capital operation underlie the production of space, and endeavors to explore a novel model of rural spatial regeneration in China's urban fringe areas. This paper found that the production of space in Guangming Town under the capital intervention includes the material production and social relations production. With the reconstruction of spatial form and relationships, new local products, spatial configuration, social services and organizational relations are generated, forming a consumption space with heterogeneous landscape, market institutionalized management, commercialization and symbolization. The realization of the production of consumption space in urban fringe areas is based on the joint action of core elements such as land, capital and government, which provide the material foundation, operational power and coordination organization for space consumption. These promote capital to complete the triple cycle of “acquiring land - creating space scarcity - realizing space consumption”, and then realizing space reproduction and capital appreciation. In the Chinese context, the spatial transformation and production of urban fringe areas should not be regarded as a local practice of Western counter-urbanization or rural gentrification theory. Rather, it as a new spatial regeneration mode that harmonizes urban and rural production, lifestyles and development trajectories. This paper offers valuable practical insights and analytical perspectives for promoting integrated urban-rural development and fostering a new type of urbanization, thereby broadening the regional framework of rural development.

Tourism gentrification and neighbourhood transformation

PurposeThis study aims to examine the process of tourism gentrification from China tourists, a major source market, in two neighbourhoods in Hong Kong: one that has been long exposed to tourism and one that is just being discovered by tourists. Through a series of in-depth interviews with local residents and community leaders, complemented by non-participant observation, the paper tracks the commercial, social and cultural changes that have occurred or are occurring in these two places.Design/methodology/approachThis study evaluates the process of place change through tourism gentrification in two neighbourhoods in Hong Kong that are at different stages of the process. An ontological approach is adopted using an interpretivist paradigm involving in-depth interviews and on-site observations, supplemented by secondary data. These data were complemented by non-participant observation.FindingsBoth the places have been transformed due to the influx of mainland Chinese tourists. Some impacts felt by both communities have much in common, such as congestion and shop dislocation, while others are more location specific. Even though the degree of tourism gentrification is different, locals from both locations tend to hold negative perceptions towards tourists, although of different strengths. All have also noted the traditional social cohesion is not as strong as before.Originality/valueThe paper argues that tourism gentrification exists on a continuum as neighbourhoods move seemingly inextricably from local-centric nodes to tourist-centric nodes. Apart from enlightening the theory of tourism gentrification, it provides insights to the local leaders on proper tourism development by balancing the social and economic benefits.

Local government intervention in tourism-driven rural gentrification: Types and interpretative framework

Exploring the role that the local government plays in tourism-driven rural gentrification has the potential to make a contribution to rethinking the influence of power mobility on local development. Using 115 in-depth interviews and non-participant observation, this study examines the local government's changes in interventions in Pingnan county, Fujian province in China. It was found that the Pingnan County Government adopted deregulated, performative, and contractual interventions as strategies in three different spatio-temporal scenarios of tourism-driven rural gentrification; the underlying logic of tourism-driven rural gentrification is the vertical and horizontal mobility of power, which is directed by the internal mechanism of “political utility-power flexibility-risk control.” This study is expected to extend the applicability of rural gentrification theory to government-dominated contexts and provide practical insights for policymakers to intervene in an adaptive and periodic manner in local socio-economic affairs, including rural tourism development.

Havana's Transnational Gentrification: Highest and Best Use from Elsewhere

AbstractThis article addresses the two processes of market making and transnationalization in Havana through the lens of gentrification theory. Using a case study situated between Global South and East, this article looks more closely at transnational families and migrants as agents of gentrification in Havana, analysing how they create and exploit the rent‐gap. Returning to the central ideas of ‘highest and best use’ and ‘circulations’ in N. Smith's rent‐gap theory, I analyse how increased transnational mobility has affected the commodification and potential use of housing in Havana. Based on interviews with transnational owners who purchased housing to upgrade and convert into an Airbnb, this article shows how the “highest and best use” of a property is evaluated from elsewhere. It also demonstrates the complexities of transnational gentrification in a southern socialist city and insists on the need to understand more broadly the gentrification–migration nexus.

Review of Matthias Bernt (2022): The Commodification Gap: Gentrification and Public Policy in London, Berlin and St. Petersburg. London: Wiley.

Debates about the most widely used theory of gentrification—the rent gap theory—and the universally adopted metaphor of the seesaw of capital that lies at its core have grown ever louder over the last decade as gentrification research has gone truly global. This includes both generalized debates around theoretical inconsistencies concerning the role of stigmatization, […]

Typologies of multiple vulnerabilities and climate gentrification across the East Coast of the United States

Climate change is expected to alter community dynamics and characteristics in complex ways, with the most severe implications for already vulnerable populations. The theory of climate gentrification provides a lens for investigating the ways in which climate change interacts with community demographics, housing, and socioeconomic characteristics in coastal communities. Here we apply unsupervised machine learning to 51 counties along the United States East Coast to identify four distinct clusters of multifaceted vulnerability related to social, housing, and environmental variables. Two of the four clusters, interpreted as superior investment and disinvestment, may be indicative of different pathways of climate gentrification. We also demonstrate the applicability of our methodology at finer spatial scales using a case study within North Carolina. As coastal climate impacts increase, this work demonstrates the need for adaptation planning that proactively considers compounding vulnerabilities to avoid disproportionate impacts on the most vulnerable.

The actions of key agents in facilitating rural super-gentrification: Evidence from the English countryside

Whilst the process of gentrification in rural spaces is widely recognised, there has been less focus to date on the emergence of rural super-gentrification - defined as the displacement of the wealthy from rural communities by the super-wealthy. Of the limited work which has been conducted on super-gentrification, this has focused on the nature and outcomes of displacement taking place in different rural settings without considering the actions of key agents, such as planners and estate agents. Consequently, this paper explores the role of gentrifying agents - namely planners and estate agents - in shaping processes of rural super-gentrification in the English countryside. The paper highlights how restrictive planning regimes, including constraints on higher plot densities, contribute to ‘rural exclusivity’ and rural super-gentrification. Within such contexts, the promotional and steering strategies of estate agents - based upon incomers perceived economic and cultural capital - also facilitate rural super-gentrification. In such a way, the paper advances existing consumption-side theories of gentrification by highlighting desires by super-wealthy incomers for consuming rural village locations with local services, a slower pace of life and a ‘sense of community’. In addition, the importance of privacy and seclusion, urban proximity and connectivity and access to educational circuits by incomers also shape the promotional and steering strategies of estate agents. Consequently, the paper highlights how more localised ‘micro-geographies’ of rural super-gentrification are of relevance to rural areas in comparison to urban contexts, where super-gentrification is argued to be a neighbourhood-level phenomenon.

Land dispossession, rural gentrification and displacement: Blurring the rural-urban boundary in Chengdu, China

Rural China is experiencing rapid socioeconomic transformations, including suburbanisation and rural gentrification. In this paper, we argue that to understand these processes, we have to take into account the changes in rural land rights. Based on an analysis of a pilot case for China's rural collective commercial construction land (RCCCL) reform policy at the edge of Chengdu City, we demonstrate how state-led rural land reform paves the way for stealthy land dispossession and rural gentrification. Our argument in this paper is threefold. First, given the entrenched collective land use rights of rural villagers in China, state-led land commodification, is a necessary condition for rural gentrification in China. Secondly, the prospect of capital accumulation through rural gentrification motivates entrepreneurial public and private actors to promote such reforms in ways that dispossess rural peasants and peasant collectives of their land (use) rights. Thirdly, the particularities of dispossession through state-led land reform result in particular experiences of displacement and displacement pressure on the side of affected rural communities. Our findings contribute to the decentring of rural gentrification theory, in that they underline the necessity to include the particular histories of land commodification and dispossession in our understanding of rural gentrification in contexts where rural land is partly or wholly shielded from market influences. In the case of China, dynamics of rural gentrification are blurring the rural-urban boundary on three dimensions: political economy (land use governance), material infrastructure (landscape and residential architecture), and socio-cultural practices (rural livelihoods and identity).

The moral rent gap: Views from an edge of an urban world

For more than 40 years, Neil Smith's rent gap theory of gentrification has been one of the most influential concepts in critical urban research. In recent years, however, the rent gap has been challenged as an economically deterministic tool suitable only for the study of inner city land parcels in certain types of deindustrializing cities of the Global North. But what if the rent gap was never really about economics, but instead about moral outrage? And what happens when moral and ethical questions about access to urban space are extended across multiple human generations? This article develops the concept of the moral rent gap: juxtapositions, tensions, and often irreconcilable contradictions in the present use of urban land in the context of intergenerational debts and responsibilities. Parcels of urban land are not clear, Cartesian locations, but are portals into multidimensional transformations of space and time produced through diverse, competing moral claims to the benefits of urban life.

Postscript

This postscript to the Special Feature describes the explicit and implicit temporalities of gentrification in gentrification theory. It asks whether the papers in this collection affirm or disrupt the accepted understanding of gentrification as a phenomenon that emerged in the postwar years in the context of urban deindustrialization. It argues that a robust definition of gentrification, which identifies the historicity of the phenomenon and its temporal boundaries, is required in order to avoid the co-optation of gentrification definitions and theories and the ‘naturalization’ of gentrification. And, lastly, it suggests that critical history writing and historiography can contribute to gentrification studies’ project of denaturalizing the process by grounding it in long-term processes with a historical dimension.

Can gentrification theory learn from Airbnb? Airbnbfication and the asset economy in Reykjavík

Urban studies have predominantly analysed the impact of short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb on cities through the lens of gentrification. However, the concept of gentrification has been applied to this platform-based urban change without considering how platform economy might alter the way scholars think about gentrification. First, this paper shows that short-term rental platforms build on the increasing use of housing by ordinary people to generate income. Second, it explores what this entails for gentrification studies. Contrary to the classical pattern of gentrification, suppliers of short-term rental platforms are not necessarily external investors but may be local homeowners in an area that is appealing to tourists. This puts local homeowners in an ambiguous position regarding gentrification patterns. On the one hand, as stakeholders providing the accommodation supply, they can theoretically benefit from short-term rental platforms by generating income from their housing. On the other hand, as long-term inhabitants, their housing trajectory can also be disrupted by the consequences of Airbnb-driven gentrification that they enable. This paper aims to disentangle the role of local homeowners in Airbnb-driven gentrification by answering the three following questions. (1) Who are the Airbnb hosts? Are they external newcomers or local homeowners? (2) Which host strategies lead to the displacement of long-term inhabitants? (3) What lines of inquiry does the ambiguous position of local hosts (as both driver and victim of Airbnbfication) open for gentrification studies?

Faith-Driven Gentrification and Displacement in Education in Israeli Urban Neighborhoods

Community-based, Judaism-intensive action groups (Hebrew: Gar’inim Toraniim—GTs) are religiously motivated to settle in Israeli development towns, seeking to narrow social gaps through education. However, their influence has never been fully clarified. This study is grounded in the theory of educational gentrification and introduces the concept of Faith-Driven Gentrification. Until now research has lacked voice from local people forced to face the intervention of settlers driven by religion and their influence on urban school systems. The findings, based on institutional data and in-depth interviews, show that GTs alter the structure of educational systems and the dominant educational ethos. They drive achievement and strict religiosity; nevertheless, their actions impair disadvantaged groups and opponents of their religious lifestyle, intensifying segregation. By giving voice to these communities, this study claims that despite gentrifiers’ commitment to social justice in urban communities, they harm longtime residents through indirect displacement, fueled by religious and ethnic elitism.

Reinvesting in Havana: Housing Commodification and Gentrification in the Central Neighbourhoods of a Socialist City in the Global South

This article addresses the commodification of housing in Havana from 2011 onwards. It argues that the theories of gentrification and rent-gap can illuminate aspects of the transformation of the Cuban capital, even though these theories originated in capitalist urban contexts and that in Cuba the state is responsible for determining the value and ownership of land. The analysis of digital real estate ads on four platforms between 2012 and 2020 allows us to estimate the price and location of properties sold, their relationship to economic reinvestment in the central areas of the city, and how the geographic factors that define centrality are increasingly compromised by touristification and more generally by the commodification of housing. The urban transformations studied in this initial article on the real estate market and gentrification in the Cuban capital allow us to highlight that, on one hand, the transformation of housing into a commodity demonstrates the erosion of socialist values in urban production and, on the other, the creation of a real estate market in Havana has reinforced the connection of the Cuban city with transnational capitalist circulation. The article considers the economic and political context in which the market develops, then explains the methodology of big-small data in a context of limited access to information, followed by an analysis characterising Havana's market that examines the importance of spatial centrality and transnational flows of people and capital.

Introduction

Introduction

Gentrifying the Brazilian city? Convergences and divergences in urban studies

There is a growing number of processes in Brazilian cities that have been identified as gentrification. However, the classic definition of gentrification as a process of transformation of existing urban housing stocks by new homeowners with a higher socio-economic profile poses challenges to understand recent empirical data coming from Brazil and the Global South more generally. Instead of dismissing them as deviant cases, this paper challenges the Northern empirical foundations of gentrification theory and calls for a new methodological approach to both classic and new cases that take into consideration its contextualization. This new framework for gentrification research is based on necessary dimensions that identify the production of gentrifiable space as the initial condition to the process of socioeconomic change with displacement in which built-environment upgrades constitute one of its most visible feature. These dimensions are present in each and every case, bounding the concept and operationalizing research, while local mediating forces make gentrification context-specific. Therefore, urban studies on gentrification. Should understand and explore the nature of these differences, in a return to in-depth studies and empirical research, opening spaces for decentering positions and building theory from multiple positionalities.

Displacement through development? Property turnover and eviction risk in Seattle.

Eviction is a powerful form of displacement that perpetuates and amplifies socioeconomic and racial inequalities through the rental housing market. Examining the relationship between evictions and property turnover through Neil Smith's theories of gentrification and uneven geographical development, this article considers the argument that eviction provides a mechanism for property owners to facilitate displacement prior to property redevelopment and neighborhood change. Models of property-level turnover in the city of Seattle reveal that evictions are more likely to occur at properties that are sold in the same year, properties where planned demolition or remodeling activity is imminent, and buildings that were recently constructed. Increased likelihood of eviction is also associated with a greater volume of remodeling and demolition permit applications filed in the surrounding neighborhood, suggesting that evictions may be more likely to occur at the early stages of development-driven neighborhood change. These findings highlight the multifaceted relationship between evictions and property turnover and illustrate the value of administrative microdata for displacement research.

Travel Gentrification of Historic District Tourism from the Perspective of Consumer

In the context of globalization, the rapid development of tertiary industry tourism, the middle class and artists began to consciously transform the historic districts, tourism gentrification as an important branch of gentrification theory. With the rapid development of global tourism, tourism gentrification phenomenon began to show a global spread. On the one hand, the gentrification of historic districts optimizes the urban industrial structure and promotes the development of tertiary industry and service industry. On the other hand, improving the standard of living of some people has intensified the gap between the wealthy and the poor, and excessive commercialization has made consumers dull. Therefore, the trend at this stage is modest urbanization, and it is suggested to build composite blocks.

A City Too Busy to Remember? Aging, Structural Violence, and the Politics of Forgetting in Atlanta’s Gentrification

Can forgotten stories from the past inform a city’s future? As older adults continue to live longer and comprise more of the population than ever before, the suitability of gentrifying spaces for older adults aging in place is increasingly important. Critical theories of gentrification argue that remembering the experiences of older adults in this context - experiences of suffering, resilience, and structural violence - is essential to promote changes in support aging in place. In this study, we tell a story of individual experiences, structural violence, and aging in the ongoing gentrification of one neighborhood in southwest Atlanta. We construct this narrative through a qualitative analysis of 1,500 local newspaper articles from 1950 to the present day and 10 in-depth interviews with ex-residents of the neighborhood aged 65-87. Drawing on the theory of planetary rent gaps, we frame gentrification as a class struggle between property-owners and working class residents. We highlight the city government’s role as a facilitator for property-owners through projects including the Model City initiative, preparation for the 1996 Olympics, and ongoing development surrounding the Atlanta BeltLine. We show how these projects have affected the prospects for aging in place in general and, specifically, by affecting access to healthcare services. We share this story in an effort to combat the politics of forgetting and to inform a richer, more inclusive, and more equitable future for gentrifying spaces.

Potential rents vs. potential lives

The seeking of potential rents directs flows of investment into built and natural environments, suffusing volatility into urban and rural landscapes, generating gentrification and other forms of land use change, and displacing lives and livelihoods to make space for ‘improvement’, ‘highest and best use’, ‘revitalization’, or the like. In this paper we argue that potential rents are captured at the cost of potential lives, and that rent gap theory, long central (and limited) to gentrification theory, is more widely applicable to the dynamics of land use change and uneven geographical development in capitalist societies. By reading David Harvey’s analyses of rent and accumulation by dispossession as a sophisticated formulation of rent gap theory, we relate the seeking and capturing of potential rents to the power of landed developer interests and a broadened conceptualization of rentiership. We furthermore relate the seeking of potential rents to an ideology of limitless accumulation, and the striving to rein in potential rents to ideas of degrowth and the need for a culture and a politics of limits. Brief vignettes from the ‘primary sector’ (fisheries in the Baltic Sea, dairy farming in Europe, and small-scale farming in Sweden) suggestively illustrate our central argument that the seeking and capturing of potential rents stand in stark opposition to potentials for wellbeing and flourishing of human and non-human lives. We conclude that constraining potential rents – founded as they are on faith in limitless growth – requires a culture of self-limitation and politically imposed limitations commensurable with post-capitalist societies.