Gentrification in a Global Context

Abstract

Gentrification in a Global Context brings together fresh theoretical and empirical work on gentrification in the context of increasing changes and pressures focused on neighbourhoods in cities across the globe. Processes of class colonisation in the deprived locales of cities across the world now appear commonplace with the consequences often being a series of secondary social problems which have included the dislocation of the urban poor and a growing community conflict over local territories. This book provides a balanced re-assessment of a subject that has deeply divided commentators, policy-makers and community activists. While gentrification has appeared to physically improve neighbourhoods and has been linked to the wider economic development of cities it has also forced out existing residents leading to fundamental questions about the social cost of urban revitalisation. Gentrification in a broad range of countries across the globe is presented with authors both reconsidering well-trodden debates as well as new primary research. The causes and consequences of upward neighbourhood trajectories require a new contextualisation in the face of globalising economic shifts, neo-liberal urban policies, the need to promote re-development in de-industrial cities and the continuing growth of professional class fractions in many new national economies. The authors in this volume provide critical reflections on this much discussed phenomenon that give new light and energy to a contested form of urban change which continues to challenge observers.