Define Gentrification. Using Two Comparative Examples Discuss The Different Explanations Of The Social Drivers Of This Phenomenon.

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Doris Stokes                          20560411,              WORD COUNT 2442           

18/10/2008.

Define Gentrification. Using Two Comparative Examples Discuss The Different Explanations Of The Social Drivers Of This Phenomenon.

The term ‘Gentrification’ is first attributed to Marxist sociologist Ruth Glass in 1964 when she uses it in her early analysis of urban change in inner London. As a Marxist, Glass was using the term ironically to poke fun at the snobbish pretensions of affluent middle-class (Hamnet, 2003). She described the distinct and radical patterns of urban change that were occurring during the late 1950s and 1960s. Working class quarters in boroughs like North Kensington were being bought by the middle classes and converted into elegant and expensive properties. This description which has been repeated worldwide is now more commonly known as ‘classical gentrification’ (Lees et al, 2008). Neil Smith gave an early definition of gentrification in 1982 as ‘the process by which working class residential neighbourhoods are rehabilitated by middle class home buyers, landlords and professional developers’ (Smith 1982, p139; Lees et al, p9, 2008). However writing in 2000 Smith demonstrated how the process of gentrification was a developing and changing concept when his definition had evolved to

‘The reinvestment of capital at the urban centre, which is designed to produce space for a more affluent class of people than currently occupies that space. The term coined by Ruth Glass in 1964, has mostly been used to describe the residential aspects of this process but this is changing, as gentrification evolves its self’. (Smith 2000, p294; Lees et al, p9, 2008).

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Here Smith is demonstrating that Glass’s original definition had become to narrow and needed to adapt to be relevant and to reflect the highly dynamic concept of ‘gentrification’. New concepts of new build gentrification, rural gentrification and contemporary gentrification need to be encompassed.

Politicians worldwide have resisted using the term ‘gentrification’ due the negative and emotional conations that the term can evoke, preferring to talk about inner city regeneration in the UK or Homesteading in the USA.

Other terms have also been used to describe gentrification, each term tending to reveal there own ethos and agenda towards the process (Smith, 1982). Although Glass first used the phrase gentrification there are arguably examples of gentrification taking place many years before 1964. In 1850s Paris slum housing was cleared by Baron Haussmann for the now famous boulevards which became the most exclusive part of the city (Smith 1996). Fredrick Engel’s in 1872 described the difficulties of workers when the land on which their rented homes were built increased in value ‘the result is that workers are forced out of the centre of towns towards the outskirts’ (Engels; Merrifield p43, 2002). Other examples include 1930’s New Orleans and the Georgetown area of Washington, D.C. The process also spread down the urban hierarchy spreading to provincial cities, towns and rural areas. Most commentators however argue that the process properly began in post war capitalist cities in the 1950s and 1960s such as New York and London (Lees et al 2008) and it is from these two cities that I will highlight the two examples of Barnsbury and Alphabet City, Lower East Side, New York to try and explain the social drivers of this phenomenon.

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The Great Depression was a worldwide economic downturn which started in 1929 and continued during the 1930s. This depression and the onset of the Second World War led to vast changes and restructured forms of capitalism very different to the unregulated laissez-faire model of the pre depression area (Kindleberger 1973). The driving forces behind post war capitalist development were based on changing economic, societal and political norms (Amin 1994, 3). This led to state sponsored sub-urbanization in the United States and Western Europe. Capital left the run down city centres many of which were bombed ravaged in Western Europe. Capital looked for more profitable locations typically in the suburbs. This process continued for the next 30 to 40 years as the inner cities became crippled by devalorisation (Lees et al, 2008).

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Pre War Barnsbury had previously been regarded as a middle class suburb but it rapidly went into decline after the Second World War with working class Irish, British Caribbean and other minority’s that influxed into the area. The middle classes fled Barnsbury to the new suburbs of London whose infrastructures were receiving government investment as part of the Greater London Plan for the post-war reconstruction of London this blue print was then followed by 1952 New Town Development Act.  The properties they left behind became multi-occupancy as demand for housing particularly rented types amongst the working class was greater ...

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