Loretta Lees

A reappraisal of gentrification: towards a 'geography of gentrification'

The gentrification literature since the mid-1990s is reappraised in light of the emergence of processes of post-recession gentrification and in the face of recent British and American urban policy statements that tout gentrification as the cure-all for inner-city ills. Some tentative suggestions are offered on how we might re-energize the gentrification debate. Although real analytical progress has been made there are still ‘wrinkles’ which research into the ‘geography’ of gentrification could address: 1) financifiers – super-gentrification; 2) third-world immigration – the global city; 3) black/ethnic minority gentrification – race and gentrification; and 4) liveability/urban policy – discourse on gentrification. In addition, context, temporality and methodology are argued to be important issues in an updated and rigorous deconstruction of not only the process of gentrification itself but also discourses on gentrification.

New-Build ‘Gentrification’ and London's Riverside Renaissance:

In a recent conference paper Lambert and Boddy (2002) questioned whether new-build residential developments in UK city centres were examples of gentrification. They concluded that this stretched the term too far and coined ‘residentialisation’ as an alternative term. In contrast, we argue in this paper that new-build residential developments in city centres are examples of gentrification. We argue that new-build gentrification is part and parcel of the maturation and mutation of the gentrification process during the post-recession era. We outline the conceptual cases for and against new-build ‘gentrification‘, then, using the case of Londons riverside renaissance, we find in favour of the case for.

The geography of gentrification: Thinking through comparative urbanism

This paper revisits the ‘geography of gentrification’ thinking through the literature on comparative urbanism. I argue that given the ‘mega-gentrification’ affecting many cities in the Global South gentrification researchers need to adopt a postcolonial approach taking on board critiques around developmentalism, categorization and universalism. In addition they need to draw on recent work on the mobilities and assemblages of urban policies/policy-making in order to explore if, and how, gentrification has travelled from the Global North to the Global South.

Towards a critical geography of architecture: The case of an Ersatz Colosseum

This paper argues that an architectural geography should be about more than just representation. For both as a practice and a product architecture is performative in the sense that it involves ongoing social practices through which space is continually shaped and inhabited. I examine previous geographies of architecture from the Berkeley School to political semiotics, and argue that geographers have had relatively little to say about the practical and affective or ‘nonrepresentational’ import of architecture. I use the controversy over Vancouver’s new Public Library building as a springboard for considering how we might conceive of a more critical and politically progressive geography of architecture. The library’s Colosseum design recalls the origins of western civilization, and is seen by some Vancouverites to be an insensitive representation of a multicultural city of the Pacific. I seek to push geographers beyond this contemplative framing of architectural form towards a more active and embodied engagement with the lived building.

Rematerializing geography: The ‘new’ urban geography:

In the face of several recent proposals for rematerializing social and cultural geography this paper argues that we should look to the ‘new’ urban geography for inspiration. Because of its subdisciplinary history – its relatively greater attachment to quantitative and applied work, the strong influence of political economy, and the long tradition of empirical and practical research – urban geography was relatively late to embrace the cultural turn. Partly as a result, it has done so in ways that avoid many of the excesses that Jackson (2000) and Philo (2000) seek to remedy by ‘rematerializing’ social and cultural geography. In urban geography, engagement with the cultural turn has not replaced studies more firmly grounded in material culture or concern with socially significant differences. These are issues that Jackson (2000: 9) outlines in his call to revive a ‘ “material culture” perspective’. Philo’s (2000) treatise is more nuanced; he traces the progression of [social and cultural] geography’s move away from sometimes avowedly materialist work to a wholehearted engagement with the immaterial, while recognizing that not all early work shied away from the immaterial nor does all contemporary work shy away from the material. However, Philo (2000: 33) is concerned with geography’s current:

Gentrification in London and New York: An Atlantic gap?

Abstract This paper is concerned with differences and similarities between gentrification in England and the United States. The central argument is that processes of gentrification are context specific. Three aspects of local contexts that are crucial to gentrification are explored: (1) the institutionalisation of property transfer; (2) the capitalisation of property, and (3) urban conservation practices. These are illustrated with reference to two examples of gentrification: in Barnsbury, part of the inner London borough of Islington and in Park Slope, part of the Brooklyn borough of New York City. The analysis demonstrates that differences between the English and the US land and housing markets and urban conservation practices have important effects on the gentrification process, and that concepts which are relevant in one national setting are not necessarily appropriate in another national setting.

In the Pursuit of Difference: Representations of Gentrification:

Since the earliest texts on gentrification appeared, the process has been represented in terms of binary oppositions, for example, inner city—suburb. I question these representations, which have been constructed as sites of difference. Some of these have become particularly prevalent if not dominant in the literature, some have become stereotypes. I illustrate these assertions through the analysis of four gentrification texts: academic, journalist, realtor, and gentrifier. I conclude that representations of gentrification and their expression through sites of difference need to be more nuanced or mobile, especially as many of these dualisms are becoming or can be displaced. A middle ground or space should be sought, for it is at the overlap and displacement of difference that the identity of gentrification is most traceable.

DE-GENTRIFICATION AND ECONOMIC RECESSION: THE CASE OF NEW YORK CITY

A new debate has emerged in the literature on gentrification concerning the effects of the current economic recession. We criticize the terms of this debate for underplaying both the complexities and local specificities of gentrification. Exploring the course of gentrification in two localities in New York since the early 1970s, we show how the same city-wide processes can produce quite different effects in different places.

A ‘building event’ of fear: thinking through the geography of architecture

This paper examines an incidence of fear that a resident experienced in a council tower block in inner London. Thinking through this ‘building event’, the paper returns to earlier work that called for a move towards ‘a critical geography of architecture’ and draws on the work in so-called new geographies of architecture over the past decade. A series of arguments related to the human experience of buildings is made. Latourian actor network theory-type approaches in architectural geography are criticised for having little to say about emotion. An argument is made that the work on affect in geography needs to develop a more complex sense of human subjectivity and to take the force of the material more seriously. More generally new critical geographies of architecture are urged to attend to the theoretical, conceptual and methodological intricacies of affect/emotion, materiality, immateriality and human subjectivity.

ENVISIONING THE LIVABLE CITY: THE INTERPLAY OF “SIN CITY” AND “SIM CITY” IN VANCOUVER'S PLANNING DISCOURSE

This paper describes the close relationship in urban planning practice between the “Sin City” motif of urban decay and the “Sim City” discourse on the livable and sustainable city. Stock images of urban dysfunction advance and legitimate urban reform and revitalization of the type imagined by Sim City discourse, but these alternative representations of the city are not simply contrasting; they are mutually constitutive, and in Canada their meaning depends on a second and mutually reinforcing opposition of American and Canadian identity. We discuss these general issues with reference to plans for the redevelopment of Granville Street in downtown Vancouver. We show how supporters of the plan, like their opponents, have cast their objections to the status quo in the terms of the Canadian discourse on the livable and sustainable city and the associated opposition to the Sin City represented by the example of American inner cities.