Comparative Approaches to Gentrification: A Research Framework

Abstract

Comparative research on gentrification is on the rise, especially since gentrification is no longer confined to historical, central neighbourhoods in First World countries, but also appeared in rural, new‐built areas and Second World countries. In this paper we present our comparative approach to investigate gentrification processes in four European cities (Arnhem, Istanbul, Vienna, Zurich), which differs from previous studies in its use of assemblage theory as research framework. The multi‐layered framework discerns three levels: ‘metrics’, ‘interpretations’, and ‘practices’. We argue that many comparative studies mainly focus on metrics, while researching interpretations and practices instead – and how these three levels influence each other through processes of actualisation and counteractualisation – would enhance our knowledge on gentrification. In doing so, we aim to provide a precise account of the nested relations of different layers of empirical reality and thus respond to various calls in the debate to intensively examine ‘geographies of gentrification’.

Gentrification of peri-urban spaces in France ‒ the surroundings of Nancy

“…And the gentrification process has at the same time evolved in its forms and concomitant research approaches (see Hackworth/Smith 2001;also e.g. Bridge 2003;Doucet 2014;Lagendijk/van Melik/de Haan et al 2014). The concept has been extended to other elite-forming processes involving many different actors and including multiple forms of transformation of used space over and above traditional working-class residential areas.…”

“…Against this background, this article aims to establish an analytical link between two socio-urban phenomena usually isolated from each other in research: on the one hand, the process of gentrification, designating a movement of displacement of the working and/or lowermiddle by upper-middle and upper social classes 2 , accompanied by changes in housing, or more generally changes of a neighbourhood or even an entire city (Glass 1964;Hamnett 2003;Bridge 2014;Doucet 2014;Lagendijk/van Melik/de Haan et al 2014); on the other hand, the process of peri-urbanization, which goes hand in hand with urbanization encroaching ever further on rural territories through the paradigmatic residential type of the (detached) single-family house with garden (Jaillet 2004;Bretagnolle 2015;Cusin/Lefebvre/Sigaud 2016;. Our article focuses on the connection between residential choices made by wealthy households wishing to live in single-family houses surrounded by large wooded grounds and the form taken by gentrification in peri-urban areas.…”

Assembling Urban Regeneration? Resourcing Critical Generative Accounts of Urban Regeneration through Assemblage.

“…Assemblage thinking has a growing influence across urban studies as analysts appreciate its ‘highly developed sense of urban complexity of the unities and disunities of the stabilities and instabilities and especially the complex and heterogeneous networks of connection and association out of which the city as a social and as a physical entity is formed and sustained’ (Bender , 317; and see Dovey , McCann and Ward , Acuto , Brownhill , Farber ; Lagendijk et al ). Assemblage's relational ontology understands the urban as constituted by constellations of elements configured into dynamic arrangements of relations and composed into ‘some form of provisional socio‐spatial formation’ (Anderson and McFarlane , 124).…”

“…Some critical analyses have begun to explore these expansions (see Ward ; Lees ; O'Callaghan ; Brownhill ; Lagendijk et al . ). In this paper, we build on this work to analyse how assemblage theory can inform an expansive reconceptualisation of regeneration to reposition it as a performed, emergent and diversely constituted practice, enacted in the socio‐material ‘frictions’ and negotiations of the everyday.…”

“…Following Lagendijk et al . (), we approach urban regeneration as an open conception, without assuming pre‐defined prepositions about actors, roles, practices, materials or mechanisms but regarding it as assemblage of processes centred on producing the above‐mentioned improvements.…”