GENTRIFICATION AND THE GRASSROOTS: POPULAR SUPPORT IN THE REVANCHIST SUBURB

Abstract: Most existing research on neighborhoods facing gentrification has portrayed residents as resistant or politically quiescent. Drawing from a year of fieldwork in Dundalk, MD, I argue that developers and the neoliberal state will probably find popular support for gentrification as they reinvest in the politically divided industrial suburbs of the United States. Local homeowners and community associations have emerged as gentrification supporters for three interrelated reasons. First, many of them have drawn from a resurgent national conservatism to explain decline as an effect of government subsidies and “people from the city;” their desire to reclaim suburban space—a “suburban revanchism”—although avoiding accusations of racism makes gentrification‐induced displacement appealing. Second, the rebirth of urban neighborhoods and other industrial suburbs provides visual evidence of gentrification's success. Third, the neoliberal state's retreat from social programs and its emphasis on private‐sector redevelopment allay suspicion of government and enable collaboration between the local state, developers, and homeowners. The redevelopment efforts of two local organizations illustrate how residents have become indispensable partners in Dundalk's emergent pro‐gentrification coalition.     

DIVERSE IMAGERIES OF GENTRIFICATION: EVIDENCE FROM NEWSPAPER COVERAGE IN SEVEN U.S. CITIES, 1986–2006

ABSTRACT: This study indicates that newspaper coverage of gentrification is far more diverse than the gentrification literature predicts. Our analysis of 4,445 articles published between 1986 and 2006 in nine papers in seven U.S. cities with a population of one million or greater suggests that newspaper frames of gentrification range from those that are wholly supportive of gentrification to those that are strictly critical. Papers also regularly publish accounts of gentrification that reference both its perceived “costs” and “benefits.” We find that coverage changes over time and that newspaper frames vary in relation to depictions of place characteristics, gentrifiers, and long‐timers. As a result, this paper addresses questions in the gentrification literature about the content and tone of representations of gentrification, speaks to urban studies scholarship on culture's role in urban change processes, and reveals the mutability of the meaning and use of the term “gentrification.” Finally, it serves as a call for further studies of representations of gentrification, as well as future analyses of their influence.     

“GOOD” NEIGHBORHOODS IN PORTLAND,OREGON: FOCUS ON BOTH SOCIAL AND PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENTS

ABSTRACT: We conduct an empirical investigation of the social environment of “good” neighborhoods in physical form in a model of the “compact city,” Portland, Oregon and discuss the implications for design and evaluation of policies inspired by smart growth and new urbanist movements that focus on the urban form and transportation dimensions of neighborhoods, and of housing assistance policies designed to change the economic mix in neighborhoods. We conceptualize the physical and social dimensions of the “good” neighborhood environment and develop an approach to operationalization that uses publicly available data. Our findings indicate that for the most part, Portland has been successful in creating neighborhoods at several economic scales that feature not only the connectivity, accessibility, mixed land use, and access to public transit that characterize “good” neighborhoods from a physical perspective, but also a “good” social environment indicative of strong ties and collective efficacy. However, there are signs that in the process, Portland may be creating poverty areas that lack connectivity, accessibility, and access to public transit and a mix of destinations.     

New social movements and gentrification in Hamburg and Stockholm: A comparative study

Ottensen and Söder(malm) are old inner-city, working-class districts in Hamburg and Stockholm, respectively. In both quarters, the class composition of the population has changed since the 1960s in favour of the middle class. Parallel to this, the housing stock has been upgraded in physical, economic and aesthetic terms. Thus, in both cases, a gentrification process may be discerned. However, Ottensen and Söder have become very different places; one reason may be the role that new social movements have played in the struggle for the urban environment. The new social movements turned Ottensen into The Alternative Quarter (alternativer Stadtteil), and it is still known as such. This article shows how they did it and then compares Ottensen to the Söder case, where gentrification has gone deeper, particularly since the 1980s. Using Ottensen as a yardstick, the conditions are identified that made the new social movement less productive here in the struggle over space, despite the favourable conditions. The article thus foregrounds the differences in opportunity structures and the spaces available for the new social movements to reappropriate.     

NEIGHBORHOOD ATTACHMENT,SOCIAL CAPITAL BUILDING,AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION: A CASE STUDY OF LOW‐ AND MODERATE‐INCOME RESIDENTS OF WATERLOO,IOWA

ABSTRACT: This case study examines the importance of neighborhood identity and engagement in place‐based social networks within the neighborhood in fostering and stimulating neighborhood‐based participation in the urban political process. Scholars concerned with civic engagement have argued that there is a strong link between the informal ties known as “social capital” and citizen engagement in the larger community. If this linkage can be shown to exist in the neighborhood setting, then it can provide guidance to both scholars and practitioners in utilizing informal, place‐based networks to empower disadvantaged neighborhoods. Evidence presented in this essay, based on interviews with a representative sample of neighborhood residents in the small industrial city of Waterloo, Iowa, suggests that strong informal networks of social capital exist within neighborhoods, but that persons who are more strongly engaged in these networks are not necessarily more involved in the efforts of formal neighborhood associations. However, individuals who are involved in these formal associations are much more likely to be connected to the local and national political systems through voting and other forms of participation.     

社会经济转型期中国城市社会空间研究述评

1990年代以来国内外学者关注于中国城市社会分化、居住空间分异、社会流动、居住流动等问题的研究,并将其放在经济全球化的背景中予以考虑;中国城市社会空间研究逐步从宏观的社会描述转向社会空间演进机制的深刻剖析,中产阶层化、郊区化、"城中村"、边缘社区、城市贫困等敏感问题得到更多的关注,"社会--经济--制度"的三重转型成为这些研究的注脚.     

An Uneasy Match: Neoliberalism, Gentrification and Heritage Conservation in Bo-Kaap, Cape Town, South Africa

It is increasingly argued that gentrification is incorporated into public policy and the by-product of a range of contemporary neoliberal urban development policies intent on attracting investment capital. However, gentrification can also be the unintended outcome of well-meaning urban policy frameworks, such as urban densification, inner-city regeneration and urban heritage conservation but with arguably negative consequences. Focusing on Cape Town, the argument of this paper is that one of the outcomes of a neoliberalist approach to urban regeneration in the city centre is the impact it has on conserving the living and built environment heritage of the historic Bo-Kaap district. The last remaining inner-city neighbourhood that has not yet gentrified appears to be succumbing to this process. The outcome is a neighbourhood which is in economic and social flux and challenging the coherence of this once “indigenous” community.     

Gentrification as Corporate Growth Strategy: The Strange Case of Charlotte,North Carolina and the Bank of America

Abstract: In keeping with calls for gentrification research to show greater sensitivity to contextuality, this article uses Charlotte, North Carolina as a case study to illustrate a geography of gentrification in which motivations to gentrify and stage trajectories do not quite fit traditional expectations. In this mid‐sized Southern city, gentrification was first introduced in the early 1970s when corporate leaders recognized the importance of revitalizing central city space in a manner that would enhance their corporate identity and advance their strategic goals. Early stage gentrification in Charlotte was characterized by the production of gentrifiable space in one of the city's most deteriorated districts, the absence of marginal gentrifiers and traditional urban pioneers, unconventional profit motives, and significant deviations from traditional stage theory. Beyond providing an analysis of gentrification at a level of the urban hierarchy (and in a region) that has long been overlooked, the article contributes a critical and contextual perspective to our understanding of gentrification's causality and process.     

迁入者与创意街区的社会建构——基于一种绅士化的视角

面向新经济时代,大城市的经济复兴、都市更新和城市转型表现出与创意产业的紧密关联。创意产业的发展使得城市传统空间被重新利用,形成一种空间转换。在创意街区的社会建构过程中,迁入者引发内城的社会分化与文化重塑,导致文化价值的生产和消费转换创造出新的社会空间意义。城市绅士化使得迁入者通过对内城空间的再发现,一方面提升了传统空间的文化与社会价值,使得空间增值,另一方面更多经济资源的导入,使得市场与商业力量最终驱逐了创意与艺术,导致创意人群的疏离、创意街区的异化和创意城市的发展悖论。     

PUSHING THE URBAN FRONTIER: TEMPORARY USES OF SPACE,CITY MARKETING,AND THE CREATIVE CITY DISCOURSE IN 2000s BERLIN

ABSTRACT: In spite of the amount of urban development that followed the Fall of the Wall, Berlin's urban landscape has remained filled with a large amount of “voids” and disused sites, which have gradually been occupied by various individuals, groups, or entrepreneurs for “temporary” or “interim” uses (such as urban beach bars). This paper analyzes how, and why, such temporary uses of space have been harnessed in recent economic and urban development policies and in the official city marketing discourse in Berlin post‐2000, in the context of the discursive and policy shift toward the promotion of Berlin as a “creative city.” The gradual process of enlistment of new forms of cultural and social expression by policy‐makers and real estate developers for urban development and place marketing purposes has put pressure on the very existence and experimental nature of “temporary uses” and “interim spaces.” These have consequently been going through various trajectories of displacement, transformation, commodification, resistance, or disappearance, and in particular cases have become the focus of intense local conflicts.     

The flagship concept of the ‘4th urban environment’. Branding and visioning in Malmö, Sweden

In the process of turning the post-industrial city of Malmö, Sweden, into a knowledge-based, creative city, new urban planning strategies and visions are being developed. An important component of developing the “knowledge city” is the spatial conceptualization for renewal of urban life. One such concept introduced in Malmö is “the 4th urban environment” (det 4.e stadsrummet). In this article, based on critical urban studies, the development, branding, and practice of the 4th urban environment as a strategy to generate a creative economy and knowledge city is critically analyzed as part of a neoliberal planning discourse. The article raises the question, what kind of vision is “the 4th urban environment”? What is it an expression of; what does it mean for planning practice and to urban development? Contextualizing and investigating trends of neoliberal planning ideas are important to an understanding of the social and economic consequences of unequal power relations. The 4th urban environment and its application in Malmö is illustrative of existing neoliberal planning practices in a Nordic context, and in other similar economies with legacies of redistribution policies and long-standing leadership of the Social Democratic Party. This article focuses on what is articulated within discourses that re-present particular notions of space and place, to gain a better understanding of what neoliberal planning does to space.     

GENTRIFICATION AND THE RIGHT TO THE CITY: COMMUNITY CONFLICT AND CASINOS

Henri Lefebvre's right to the city concept is increasingly used to challenge the development prerogatives associated with neoliberal development. These challenges are more common as gentrification becomes a global urban strategy. This article is an empirical investigation that examines competing claims to community legitimacy and authenticity in a conflict over gentrification in a Philadelphia neighborhood. This conflict emerged in Fishtown when long‐time established residents went head to head with upper‐income gentrifiers over the location of a casino in the neighborhood. Place‐based identities and the temporal connection individuals had to Fishtown contributed to the differences in perspectives on the costs and benefits of the casino and on the legitimacy of long‐time residents versus newcomers to be representative voices on behalf of Fishtown. The findings illuminate problems in applying the right to the city to neighborhood struggles when communities are divided over what constitutes a benefit to the community. The right to the city may not be a universal claim, particularly within a neoliberal urban context.     

GATED COMMUNITIES AND SPATIAL INEQUALITY

ABSTRACT: In this article we analyze gated communities as a nexus of social and spatial relations within the context of urban inequality. We apply Tickamyer's (2000) sociological framework for incorporating space into the study of inequality, which allows us to substantiate the arguments that the process of gating increases urban inequality. The contributions of this article are three: (1) We generate a new systematic theoretical approach toward the study of gated communities, which we consider as middle range theory; (2) We argue that gated communities reproduce the existing levels of social stratification and that they also define a new, permanent differentiation order in the spatial organization of cities in the United States (in this respect we also arrive at six hypotheses, which can be tested in future research); (3) We introduce the term “gating machine,” where the combination of the interests and actions of local governments, real estate developers, the media, and consumers suggest that prevailing structural conditions assure the future proliferation of gated communities.     

Information-Age Landscapes Outside the Developed World Bangalore,India, and Guadalajara,Mexico

This article examines two so-called “silicon valleys” located in Bangalore, India, and Guadalajara, Mexico. Drawing its theoretical propositions from the global city literature and the informational/network society framework, it posits that the metropolitan edges of these cites contain new industrial landscapes inserted in a global system of production. This new urban form is dynamically shaped by the location decisions of multinational software and electronics corporations, government entrepreneurial activities, and amenities valued by the “information-age elite.” The author examines the local sociospatial implications of this new urban form and discusses the challenges facing these cities, which must balance their local social and environmental responsibilities with the polarizing effects of the global/informational economy.     

A ritual garment,the synagogue,and gender questions

ABSTRACT

The now-global presence of Samayapuram Mariyamman, a goddess from Tamil Nadu, has complicated discussions about her identity as a “local” deity of limited influence. This article details the contemporary veneration of the goddess in the urban, island city-state of Singapore. For the past thirteen years, her devotees in Singapore have observed a festival in her honor, christening it the “Sri Samayapuram Mariyamman Kul Varppu Celebrations” (KVC). This goddess festival is framed around the core ritual of kul varppu, a “porridge offering” to the deity, anchoring the event firmly within the votive tradition of devotional Hinduism. While this ritual has persisted in households over time, it has now been incorporated into, and stands at the center of a consciously organized, collective, goddess festival in an urban, multicultural, cosmopolitan context, and has acquired a fresh set of meanings. Its guiding principles rest in a commitment to the “ways of the ancestors,” a set of customary religious practices, which have been largely “forgotten” and that are being revived for the “benefit of future generations.” “Bringing back the old ways” is an idiom through which devotees articulate their revitalization efforts, manifest concretely in privileging ritual attention to folk Hindu deities. The article begins by offering an ethnographic grounding for this project, specifying the research trajectory and recording the methodological routes traveled. Next, the article narrates the form of the festival I observed in 2004 and 2005, followed by a turn to its material dimensions, emphasizing the cooking of the porridge, the reproduction of sacred space, and the movement of the deity within this. Coming to the present, the article ends by charting the shifts that have taken place in the festival's enactment over a thirteen-year period and in the organizing group's portfolio and agenda.     

Place-making or place-masking? The everyday political economy of “making place”

As redevelopment and gentrification strategies globally continue to be aimed at attracting wealthier residents and consumers in an effort to drive economic growth, concerns for and interventions in the interests of social equity appear decreasingly relevant. Government, private sector and community organisations have of course worked together in different times and places to implement programs that are more rather than less inclusive – the variations always depending on the spatial politics of the context. This paper examines contemporary discourses and practices of place-making in Melbourne, and asks whether ways of thinking about urban redevelopment as place-making in this time and place are likely to enable the inclusion of social equity in these urban “improvements”.     

ETHNIC DIVERSITY AND ITS IMPACT ON COMMUNITY SOCIAL COHESION AND NEIGHBORLY EXCHANGE

Putnam's “constrict theory” suggests that ethnic diversity creates challenges for developing and sustaining social capital in urban settings. He argues that diversity decreases social cohesion and reduces social interactions among community residents. While Putnam's thesis is the subject of much debate in North America, the United Kingdom, and Europe, there is a limited focus on how ethnic diversity impacts upon social cohesion and neighborly exchange behaviors in Australia. Employing multilevel modeling and utilizing administrative and survey data from 4,000 residents living in 148 Brisbane suburbs, we assess whether ethnic diversity lowers social cohesion and increases “hunkering.” Our findings indicate that social cohesion and neighborly exchange are attenuated in ethnically diverse suburbs. However, diversity is less consequential for neighborly exchange among immigrants when compared to the general population. Our results provide at least partial support for Putnam's thesis.     

中国中产阶层化过程、特征与评价——以南京为例

在城市更新改造过程中,中产阶层化现象开始在我国城市中出现。中国中产阶层化是在全球化背景下,由政府推动,投资者、金融机构和中产阶层等共同参与的社会空间再造过程。为了解我国现阶段中产阶层化的发育程度与演化机制,采取实地调研与问卷访谈等研究手段,对南京中产阶层化过程进行探讨。认为南京中产阶层化过程经历了孕育、发生和快速发展三个时期;宏观上表现为中产阶层向城市中心集聚、封闭社区整体植入等空间特征;微观上中产阶层化社区文化与阶层认同正在不断发育与成熟。在中产阶层化过程中,需要警惕如空间私有化、阶层排斥加剧与公平性缺失等社会负面效应。随着大规模城市拆迁接近尾声和《物权法》等法规政策的出台,中国以城市更新为契机的第一波中产阶层化过程即将进入平稳缓行阶段。     

RENEWING PEOPLE AND PLACES: INSTITUTIONAL INVESTMENT POLICIES THAT ENHANCE SOCIAL CAPITAL AND IMPROVE THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT OF DISTRESSED COMMUNITIES

ABSTRACT: The challenges confronting distressed communities in the United States are complex and multifaceted. Communities large and small have been significantly affected by a myriad of social, environmental, and economic forces, including a continuing decline in manufacturing employment, uncontrolled sprawl, and the transition to a global economy. The traditional choice between a “place‐based” theory of redevelopment strategy versus a “people‐focused” theory no longer seems feasible or appropriate. This article outlines sustainable development as an alternative strategy that combines a place‐based development strategy, a human development focus, and an environmentally mindful approach. It posits that there exists a direct positive relationship between the creation of social capital, the redevelopment of the built environment utilizing sustainable development practices, and community‐based organizations in distressed communities. Furthermore, the authors suggest that through community investment—a socially responsible investment strategy—institutions of higher education can facilitate the rebuilding of communities by providing financial capital while gaining a moderate yet secure financial return as well as a substantial social return.     

Climbing the city. Inhabiting verticality outside of comfort bubbles

Over the last couple of decades, urban sports have been studied – as well as, in many cases, celebrated – as critical forms of using urban space. Urban climbing, a practice also known as “street bouldering,” “buildering,” “structuring,” and “stegophilia,” has been much explored in this vein. While we acknowledge the importance of bringing to light the political and playful dimensions of the urban spatial experience, in this piece we would like to focus on a slightly different question. We approach it as a powerful means to probe and understand the finest constitution of urban environments and, more amply, urban morphology. By doing so, we wish, on the one hand, to zoom in as closely as possible onto the actual bodily practice of climbing, and, on the other, to attend its methodological implications in terms of a reflection on bodily techniques in the context of a natural history of the city. We describe urban climbing as a peculiar corporeal operation carried out at and, more precisely, on the limits of environmental control. In conclusion, the article suggests that, by highlighting the meaning of inhabiting a vertical open space of a peculiar kind, a close-up study of urban climbing might help to develop contemporary urban theory.