Rural gentrification New-build gentrification State-led gentrification Commercial gentrification Super-gentrification etc
=> Generic gentrification
Opposite of gentrification: filtering (slum formation)
Residential mobility: downward shift in class/socioeconomic status + Disinvestment in built environment
1
Generic gentrification: the rent gap mechanism
Potential land rent What ‘vagrant sovereigns’ are willing to pay to move in, take over space and realize their visions
To accomplish more, sometimes you need to see less. Go on. Be a Tiger. High performers don’t allow themselves to be distracted.
Do you see opportunities where others don’t? Go on. Be a Tiger. The competitor who is first to spot an opportunity is usually in the best position to capture it. By working to sharpen your vision, we can help you become a high performer.
What are the necessary relations underlying gentrification?
Commodification of space Polarized power relations Dominance of vision over sight, characteristic of ‘the vagrant sovereign’
Capitalized land rent What present users can afford to stay put and continue with their lives and livelihoods, and realize their visions
Building value
Generic gentrification
Warning for gentrification as ‘chaotic concept’ Faulty understanding of what characterizes a chaotic concept reproduced in gentrification research Necessary – contingent relations The order and simplicity of gentrification – a political challenge (2005)
Generic gentrification: structural undergirding (take two)

Inequality/polarization Commodification of land/space The set of fictions that naturalize the logic of capital, which is thereby successfully “imposed upon social life” (Harvey 2006, 81)
The Rent Gap
Potential land rent
Capitalized land rent Building value
Clark (1987) adapted from Smith (1979) Toward a theory of gentrification: a back to the city movement by capital not people, Journal of the American Planning Association
SGEM11 Social, Economic and Environmental Challenges for Cities, Landscapes and Regions
Gentrification
Thursday, September 9, 2010 Eric Clark Lund University Department of Human Geography
Flows of people and capital across land/space change in land use / occupancy
Gentrification
Ruth Glass (1964) inner city London, working class, residential, renovation, market-driven Not only inner city, working class, residential, renovation, market-driven, global city, ’new middle class’, or otherwise particularly defined:
What is gentrification?
Gentrification is a process involving change in the population of land-users such that the new users are of a higher socioeconomic status than the previous users, together with an associated change in the built environment through reinvestment in fixed capital.
Vision over sight
(the colonial impulse)
“We came with visions, but not with sight. We did not see or understand where we were or what was there, but destroyed what was there for the sake of what we desired. … And this habit of assigning a higher value to what might be than to what is has stayed with us, so that we continue to sacrifice the health of our land and of our communities” Wendell Berry (1982) The gift of good land
Commodification of space opens up space for conquest, facilitating ‘highest and best’ land uses to supplant present uses, i.e. “forcing the proper allocation of capital to land” (Harvey 1982, 360). It works in tandem with the seeking of vagrant sovereigns to realize visions through the exploitation of potentials, destroying the actual in the process. The more polarized the power relations, the more forceful the dynamic.
Gentrification
Residential mobility: upward shift in class/socioeconomic status + Reinvestment in built environment
Flows of people and capital across land/space change in land use / occupancy
New York, 1990s, 6 – 10 % of all moves displacement (Newman & Wyly 2006)
Gentrification is a form of “accumulation by dispossession” (Harvey 2003)
Neil Smith (1986) On the necessity of uneven development, IJURR
“If we are to understand the contemporary uneven development of capitalism, it is important that we dismiss the so-called ‘law of uneven development’, with its universal overtones. What we are seeking, rather, is a theory of uneven development as it operates under the specific historical conditions of capitalism.”