This article argues against the allegedly inter-contextual character of gentrification within the new gentrification research agenda. The main argument is that gentrification is a concept highly dependent on contextual causality and its generalized use will not remove its contextual attachment to the Anglo-American metropolis. The second argument is that looking for gentrification in increasingly varied contexts displaces emphasis from causal mechanisms to similarities in outcomes across contexts, and leads to a loss of analytical rigour. The third argument refers to the ideological and political impact of equating ‘gentrification’ with, and projecting its neoliberal frame on, the different forms of urban regeneration across various geographical and historical contexts. As gentrification becomes quasi synonymous with urban regeneration, it becomes less useful to the analysis of urban socio-spatial change and, since the use of this term seems no longer avoidable in academic and broader discourse, its implicit contextual assumptions should be constantly exposed.
Vertical social differentiation is presented in the recent literature as an important element of reduced segregation in South European cities, and the supporting evidence originates mainly from Athens. The authors of this article question the claim about the common form and function of vertical social differentiation across South Europe, as well as its opposition to community segregation, and try to reveal the specificity of the processes leading to its formation in Athens. Since the mid-1970s, the dominant process of urban growth in Athens has been middle-class suburbanization. This process has reinforced community segregation and, at the same time, has triggered a filtering-down process in wide areas around the CBD, formerly occupied by upper and mainly intermediate professional categories. Interclass vertical segregation has subsequently appeared in these areas, where intermediate professional categories and lower middle-class households are now predominant. The fact that these areas do not represent a real choice for any of their resident groups shows that this vertical cohabitation has been the unintended consequence of changing segregation patterns, and hardly the outcome or the corollary of a growing process of sociospatial homogenization. Copyright Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001.
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