Gary Bridge

Microgeographies of Retailing and Gentrification

It has long been argued that gentrification is a process of consumption as well as production but, in the main, analyses of consumption and gentrification have only tangentially or anecdotally considered the retail spaces of gentrified neighbourhoods. In this paper we investigate the nature of the retail landscapes of gentrification, using empirical evidence from Sydney, Australia. We point to micro retailscapes that differ between gentrified neighbourhoods that suggest a divergence of consumption practices between different groups of gentrifiers. These consumption practices are considered both in terms of their relations to identity (through food and the conception of the body) and to the spaces of the city. The paper concludes by drawing out the implications for future research on the consumption practices of the new middle class and the working class in an international context .

Estate Agents as Interpreters of Economic and Cultural Capital: The Gentrification Premium in the Sydney Housing Market

This article focuses on the role of real estate agents as interpreters of the relationship between housing aesthetics (taste) and price. The research includes an analysis of housing advertisements, observation of housing auctions, and interviews with real estate agents in the gentrified inner western suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Adapting the work of Pierre Bourdieu on social class, the article argues that the relationship between housing taste and price captures the interaction of cultural and economic capital and that the intermediary role of the estate agent can be used to explore this. It concludes that the gentrification aesthetic is dynamic and increasingly demands economic capital at the expense of cultural capital (a gentrification premium) to maintain class distinction. Copyright Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001.

Bourdieu, rational action and the time-space strategy of gentrification

This paper proposes gentrification as an example of class habitus adjusting to a new field via a time-space strategy that involves conscious rational coordination of class agents on a new aesthetic ‘focal point’. This approach suggests: (1) a much greater role for conscious rational processes in both the intentional and intuitive processes of class reproduction; (2) an understanding via gentrification of the symbolic significance of time-space in class processes; (3) the significance of individual class agents in the process of gentrification; (4) a view of gentrification that gives greater prominence to working-class taste and habitus.

It's not Just a Question of Taste: Gentrification, the Neighbourhood, and Cultural Capital

In this paper I explore elements of the relationship between deployments of cultural capital and neighbourhood change. Based on research in a gentrified neighbourhood of Bristol, England, I argue that for gentrifier households with children the need to reproduce (institutional) cultural capital in the education market can conflict with the desire to display (objectified) cultural capital via the gentrification aesthetic in the inner-urban neighbourhood. In the trade-off between aesthetics and education, education wins, resulting in a much more conventional suburban, exurban housing/neighbourhood career for onward-moving gentrifiers. I conclude by suggesting a more diffuse, provincial form of gentrification in which the different strands of cultural capital can conflict in urban space (rather than the smooth reproduction of cultural capital assumed by the idea of a gentrification habitus). It confirms that the intergenerational reproduction of an (urban) new middle class is likely to be confined to large metropolitan areas.

Perspectives on Cultural Capital and the Neighbourhood

Neighbourhoods have long been analysed in terms of the impacts of economic or social capital. This paper argues for the significance of the impact of cultural capital on neighbourhood change. It compares the ideas of lifestyle cultural capital as an asset in urban competitiveness, or a participatory tool in neighbourhood regeneration, with Pierre Bourdieus idea of cultural capital applied in the neighbourhood context. Using the examples of gentrification in several cities, the paper suggests how, rather than being a uniformly productive asset (as the lifestyle and regeneration approaches imply), the various forms of cultural capital might consolidate or dissipate to produce contrasting neighbourhood trajectories and a range of interneighbourhood and intraneighbourhood social distinctions and divisions.

A Global Gentrifier Class

If gentrification is now global, I investigate the degree to which it is possible to argue that it involves a global gentrifier class. This is examined in a number of dimensions: occupational characteristics; the mix of economic and cultural capital; ideas of cosmopolitan knowledge; gentrification aesthetics and the use of urban space. I argue that, whilst a new middle class is reproduced in certain global cities, the diversity of aesthetic trajectories and the localisms of cosmopolitan knowledge suggest that the case for a global gentrifier class or urban new middle class is a weak one. Much more pervasive at a global scale is a conventional set of strategies of middle-class reproduction in preserving social distinction that now occurs in urban as well as suburban contexts.

Geographies of Radical Democracy: Agonistic Pragmatism and the Formation of Affected Interests

There is significant interest in democracy in contemporary human geography. Theoretically, this interest has been most strongly influenced by poststructuralist theories of radical democracy and associated ontologies of relational spatiality. These emphasize a priori understandings of the spaces of democratic politics, ones that focus on marginal spaces and the destabilization of established patterns. This article develops an alternative account of the spaces of democratic politics that seeks to move beyond the stylized contrast of poststructuralist agonism and liberal consensualism. This alternative draws into focus the spatial dimensions of philosophical pragmatism and the relevance of this tradition for thinking about the geographies of democracy. In particular, the geographical relevance of pragmatism lies in the distinctive inflection of the all-affected principle and of the rationalities of problem solving. Drawing on John Deweys work, a conceptualization of transactional space is developed to reconfigure understandings of the agonistics of participation as well as the experimental institutionalization of democratic will. The difference that a pragmatist approach makes to understandings of the geographies of democracy is explored in relation to transnational and urban politics.

Mapping the terrain of time-space compression: power networks in everyday life

In this paper I seek a more comprehensive mapping of the experience of time—space in late modernity. I develop Masseys critique of the work of Harvey and Jameson in their reading of time space compression as a socially uniform experience of disorientation. Building on Masseys notion of ‘power geometry’ I integrate discussions of time—space with an application of different understandings of power (from traditional political philosophy, Marxism, and poststructuralism) and their manifestations—in latent-power conditions, socioeconomic networks, actor networks, ‘local’ interpersonal relations, and the network spaces of subjectivity. Rather than being posited as irreconcilable conceptions, these versions of power and their articulations can be seen as initial coordinates in the mapping of the complexities of the experiences of time and space in late modernity.

Gentrification, Class, and Residence: A Reappraisal:

This paper is an attempt to expose the inadequacies of current arguments on the influence of residence on class relations in a gentrifying neighbourhood. In the gentrification literature it is assumed that the influx of the middle class into working-class neighbourhoods disrupts the association between social relations and residential spaces and that this influences class relations. The results of research in a gentrifying London neighbourhood do not support such spatial formalism and, on the basis of social network analysis, suggest an array of sociospatial relations which are not tied to neighbourhood, It is suggested that the involvement in neighbourhood varies temporally (according to stage in the life cycle) and by gender, rather than spatially or by class location. The discussion is concluded with an assessment of the implications of this argument for the gentrification literature in particular and for social geography in general.

Rationality, Ethics, and Space: On Situated Universalism and the Self-Interested Acknowledgement of ‘Difference’

The author explores the relationship between rationality, ethics, and space. He argues that the contemporary ethical project involves a derationalisation of ethics through a recorporealisation of space. There is a move away from the abstract space of liberal-individualist notions of justice to more enclosed and local spaces of communitarian loyalties and intersubjective communication. Postmodern interventions into the ethical realm lead us to a corporealised, intimate space that recognises difference and is heavy with phenomenological presence. The author argues that the conception of agency which explains adherence to community norms and the acknowledgement of difference is strategically rational self-interest. Situated practices and understandings of the other rely on rational assumptions. The time-space conditions of late modernity bring unlike others into more regular contact and open up the possibilities for more universalist forms of strong (ethical) social coordination based on expanded strategic rationality.