Definition

The word “gentrification”  describes various changes occurring in urban neighborhoods, including economic ones brought on by the influx of more affluent residents, who drive up rents and property prices and drive out the poor.

Although this process brings about several advantageous benefits, such as decreased crime rates, enhanced infrastructure, and economic development, it also marginalizes long-term inhabitants who are not wealthy. Thus, urban planning is a contentious political issue. The affluent are the only ones who primarily gain from it.

Gentrification and Ruth Glass

British sociologist Ruth Glass initially used “gentrification” in the 1960s. The term “gentrification” describes how wealthy individuals referred to as “the gentry” move into working-class areas and displace the less fortunate. Gentrification is not a straightforward or linear process. Glass witnessed community transformation in London in the 1950s, but neighborhood change in American cities is different.

The residential housing market and the renovation of existing houses were often highlighted in early definitions of gentrification, such as that of Glass. Since then, however, the description has been expanded to encompass working-class housing neighborhoods, freshly constructed designer neighborhoods, and undeveloped land, often in former industrial usage.

Three distinct explanations

Three main theories underlie the academic literature’s attempts to explain gentrification.

David Ley argues that the changing industrial structure in big cities is the primary cause of gentrification. The occupational class structure in inner cities shifts simultaneously as manufacturing-based industries give way to service-based ones, from one primarily based around manufacturing working class people to one increasingly dominated by white-collar professionals whose financial, cultural, and service industries are located in major cities.

Second, Ley and Tim Butler believe that changes in class composition have also occurred in a segment of this new middle class’s cultural orientation, preferences, and working patterns, predisposing them to live in the inner city rather than commute from leafy suburban areas. This is also related to the restructuring of industry in internal city areas. These academics argued that, as opposed to Smith’s notion of gentrification on a broader scale, the purchase of houses in the inner city was more driven by individual and demand-oriented factors. The entry of women into the new class of employment and the rise of smaller, adult-oriented homes ideal for urban neighborhoods are related to this occupational transition.

Finally, Smith contended that gentrification was a capitalist trend rather than a human one. Smith showed that the widening gap between the potential worth of inner-city houses and their underlying land prices was what drove gentrification. According to Smith, this disparity has created a widening “rent gap” that property-based investors, estate agents, and developers have taken advantage of by gentrifying affordable inner-city dwellings for financial gain.

Three waves of gentrification

Initial Wave

The 1960s saw the emergence of gentrification in the older core cities of North America, Western Europe, and Australia, although in very isolated forms. During this first stage, gentrification was directed by local and federal governments anxious to promote private investment to reverse the economic downturn in inner-city districts.

Second Wave

Following the worldwide economic slump of the 1970s, gentrification processes spread like wildfire across the older industrialized world as investors looked for fresh possibilities to make money in the real estate market. As a result, the second wave of gentrification occurred between the late 1970s and the early 1990s.

The deindustrialization, globalization of urban production systems, the increased concentration of corporate command and control capabilities in urban areas, and the rise of the so-called FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate) industrial cluster as significant drivers of urban economic growth were all profoundly ingrained economic changes that coincided with inner city reinvestment during this time.

At this time, gentrification’s spatial boundaries considerably grew as formerly underdeveloped areas, including New York City’s Lower East Side, were suddenly the focus of significant, high-end real estate development. As investor cash dried up at the beginning of the 1990s, several academics projected that gentrification would end.

Third Wave

The third wave of gentrification has started to take shape since the early 1990s recession as more areas, positioned more and farther from the city center, have seen considerable capital-led reconstruction. According to Smith & Hackworth, local and federal government organizations have encouraged and, in many instances, explicitly funded this third wave of gentrification in the US.

Interdisciplinary gentrification studies

A. Socioeconomics and real estate

Gentrification has drawn interest from various academic fields, particularly urban sociologists and geographers. Gentrification usually takes place in location-specific ways, although urbanists have long argued about its general characteristics and effects. Smith’s work emphasizes the crucial part that real estate money plays in gentrification’s impetus. In this way, Smith’s prominent publications surpass previous theories that linked neighborhood investments to middle-class residents’ rekindled interest in relocating to inner cities.

B. Materialism

But in the wake of and concurrent with Smith’s supply-side theory, other academics have reexamined the demand-side features of gentrification using a materialist perspective. According to David Ley (1996), for example, the countercultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s and the ensuing wave of urban redevelopment helped the emerging middle classes develop a broad aesthetic appreciation for urban living.

C. Studies of feminists

Like Liz Bondi (1994) and Damaris Rose (1984) highlighted the different gender patterns associated with gentrification, middle-class women’s shifting living circumstances were a contributing factor. The issue of how to balance the supply and demand sides of gentrification remains a persistent but fruitful intellectual conflict in this area of study.

D. Ethnography

Among others, Loretta Lees (2000) has worked to identify research gaps in gentrification and, as a result, has focused on international comparisons and ethnographic spatial analysis methods.

E. Art Historians

Gentrified neighborhoods have drawn the attention of art historians as grounds for creating new types of art, as inspiration for the arts, and as a source of political strife within the art world.

F. Urban planners

Gentrification has been viewed by city planners and architects less as a theoretical problem than as a chance to reevaluate important facets of urban design and urban development strategy.

Opportunity for the LGBT Community and Artists

Numerous ethnographic and demographic case studies focus on gentrifier subgroups, including LGBT people, college grads, single women, and young professionals. These studies establish categories of “early” or “marginal” and “late” or “super” or “yuppie” gentrifiers. Members of socially oppressed groups may therefore be able to secure their property and communal resources thanks to gentrification.

For instance, gays and lesbians often play a significant role in gentrification as they want to escape regions with overt prejudice and choose neighborhoods where they may engage in openly social and economic activities.

Similarly, artists searching for expansive open studio spaces typically congregate in old industrial areas and undertake substantial space improvements. In his study of SoHo in New York City, Zukin (1989) describes the classic instance of artists taking industrial warehouses with the support of the local government and landlords, which sparked waves of high-end gentrification.

Conflict theorists

In contrast to the majority of mainstream urban sociology, many authors on gentrification are influenced by radical or Marxist scholarly traditions. As a result, they frequently see middle-class urban reinvestment as an expression of growth machine politics and narrowly private accumulation strategies. It’s often believed that the conflict for neighborhood space, aesthetics, and resources is an example of current racial and economic conflicts in large urban areas.

Global reach

Gentrification, formerly limited to western cities, has now expanded everywhere. Around the globe, particularly in places like Shanghai, Sydney, and Seattle, there is evidence of neighborhood change and colonization, as shown by a rising middle-class concentration. Additionally, regional centers like Leeds in England and Barcelona in Spain can now see the process.

Eastern Europe, North America, Australia, and rural, industrial communities on the fringes of big cities in the UK, France, and the US are now experiencing gentrification. Its growth and academic efforts to understand its causes, dynamics, and effects will likely continue for the foreseeable future.

Example

White-collar employees relocate to a blue-collar area of a major metropolis to take advantage of cheaper housing prices and accessibility to emerging sectors. The older inhabitants are forced to leave the region owing to financial constraints due to the new members’ spending habits, which include painting homes, adding pools, and adding garages.