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This paper proposes gentrification as an example of class habitus adjusting to a new field via a time-space strategy that involves conscious rational coordination of class agents on a new aesthetic 'focal point'. This approach suggests: (1) a much greater role for conscious rational processes in both the intentional and intuitive processes of class reproduction; (2) an understanding via gentrification of the symbolic significance of time-space in class processes; (3) the significance of individual class agents in the process of gentrification; (4) a view of gentrification that gives greater prominence to working-class taste and habitus. key words habitus gentrification intentionality rational action time-space-strategies

IntroductionFrom a range of perspectives there has been a long-standing interest in the connections between economic capital and neighbourhood, from the early work of the Chicago School on the impact of economic processes on the ecology of the city (Burgess, 1925) through Marxist explorations of the relationship between use and exchange value in neighbourhoods (Logan and Molotch, 1987), to a sustained research interest in contrasting landscapes of consumption (Jackson and Thrift, 1995). In addition to a concern with the effects of economic capital on neighbourhood there has been more recently an explosion of interest in social capital. Translated into a neighbourhood context this can be seen in terms of understanding the potentials of civic participation and social capital as important mechanisms in neighbourhood renewal (Putnam, 1994;2000) as well as a significant aspect of gentrification (Butler and Robson, 2001). The degree to which social capital is fostered at the neighbourhood level is of intense interest to policymakers. What has received much less attention in the literature are the links between neighbourhood and cultural capital. It is possible to argue, however, that it is the deployment and circulation of cultural capital that is the major force shaping the fates of neighbourhood in metropolitan areas today.The significance of the links between cultural capital and neighbourhood trajectories have been implicit in the gentrification literature for some time now. For instance, there seems to be a mutually reinforcing relationship between the deployment of cultural capital in certain urban neighbourhoods, and the enhancement of social capital and economic capital for the new middle-class gentrifiers in the process. The stage model of gentrification suggests a sequence from high to low investments of cultural capital and low to high investments of economic capital as gentrification proceeds. The high cultural capital of groups such as artists can act as a catalyst for neighbourhood transition. The fate of former manufacturing lofts in lower Manhattan, occupied by artists and then marketed for the new middle professional class is a case in point of the critical efficacy of first cultural and then economic capital in neighbourhood change (Zukin, 1982;1995). Ley ( 2003) also points to the significance of artists

This article focuses on the role of real estate agents as interpreters of the relationship between housing aesthetics (taste) and price. The research includes an analysis of housing advertisements, observation of housing auctions, and interviews with real estate agents in the gentrified inner western suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Adapting the work of Pierre Bourdieu on social class, the article argues that the relationship between housing taste and price captures the interaction of cultural and economic capital and that the intermediary role of the estate agent can be used to explore this. It concludes that the gentrification aesthetic is dynamic and increasingly demands economic capital at the expense of cultural capital (a gentrification premium) to maintain class distinction. Copyright Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001.

Drawing on qualitative interviews in an inner Bristol (UK) neighbourhood, this paper offers some preliminary observations on the housing trajectories and strategies of a group of onward-moving gentrifiers. This indicates the potentially restricted nature of gentrification activity in the life-course and in the housing trajectories of these gentrifiers. The evidence points, on the one hand, to the diffuseness of gentrification, with a range of 'marginal', 'community' and 'corporate' gentrifiers all moving within the gentrified neighbourhood. On the other hand, those leaving the neighbourhood for contrasting locations and housing aesthetics experience a constrained form of gentrification: an inability to keep all social fields in play at the same time. They trade off current aesthetic display for longer-term investment in schooling and class reproduction. The structural and spatial arrangements of housing and education fields in different cities are thus critical in understanding how gentrification is expressed in terms of cultural capital, pointing to a provincial form of gentrification.