“Resetting” the Neighbourhood: Residents’ Resistance to Place Destruction in Gränby, Uppsala

Abstract

By following tenants who resist the destruction of their common yards in a post-renoviction neighbourhood of Uppsala (Sweden), this article examines how the local resistance by marginalized communities intersects with the effects of the financialization of housing. The article explores the concept of unhoming, as a violent, structural, and multi-scalar process that, in the name of urban renewal, destroys the places of marginalized communities in the capitalist city. For residents in a post-renoviction neighbourhood, the real-life experience of “creative destruction” entails navigating paradoxical and conflicting discourses, inflicting material, immaterial and emotional harm to the residents. The local resistance play out as a demand for housing justice, and as a forced balancing between patient dialogue and more confrontative action, in an increasingly authoritative context. Finally, the article suggests the use of a theoretical frame of place destruction in the analysis of contemporary urban struggles.