Re-placing displacement in gentrification studies: Temporality and multi-dimensionality in rural gentrification displacement

The agencies of landscape in rural gentrification: Impressions from the wood, the village and the moortop

“…Bryson & Wyckoff, 2010;Hines, 2010aHines, , 2010bHines, , 2012Nelson & Hines, 2018;Nelson et al, 2010Nelson et al, , 2015Phillips & Smith, 2018a;Phillips et al, 2020;Qian et al, 2013;Solana-Solana, 2010;Smith et al, 2019a;Sutherland, 2012Sutherland, , 2019. As discussed elsewhere (Phillips & Smith, 2018a,b;Phillips et al, 2021), this spatial extension has raised questions about the transferability of the concept of gentrification across different contexts, with there being both calls to value gentrification as 'travelling theory' (e.g. Clark, 2005;Lees, 2012;Lees et al, 2015Lees et al, , 2016 and to resist it on the grounds that it leads to, at best, 'thin theory' (Bernt, 2016, p. 637), that is made increasingly abstract and variegated to accommodate its application to new contexts, and may be politically problematic due to its reproduction of metropolitan colonial relations between the Global North and the Global South (e.g.…”

“…The third landscape, the ‘moortop’, relates to research conducted in a village in Calderdale, Yorkshire. This village was primarily selected for study to encompass a post‐industrial countryside to contrast with the agricultural countrysides of the other case study sites and because Calderdale has significant numbers of creative, technical and welfare professionals within its middle‐class residential population (see Table 2 and Phillips et al., 2021), marking it out from many rural areas presented as subject to gentrification by a more ‘generic’ middle class of managers and professionals. In addition, the area had been the subject of studies highlighting both important cultural and sexual dynamics to its gentrification (Smith & Holt, 2005; Smith, 2002) and the significance of the area's landscapes in the enactment of rural gentrification, with Smith and Phillips (2001, p. 459) arguing that there was ‘a physical and cultural gulf’ between gentrifiers attracted to settlements in the valleys and those that liked villages, hamlets and isolated dwellings on or close to the area's ‘moortops’ (Figure 2).…”

The mobilities and immobilities of rural gentrification: Staying put or moving on?

“…On the contrary, one in‐migrant household can spark profound effects on a rural place through the acquisition of multiple plots to build a large house. This is clearly salient to the rural context given the increasing diffusion of processes of rural supergentrification in some exclusive rural places (Phillips et al, 2021; Smith, Phillips, Brooking, & Kinton, 2019).…”

“…Indeed, in many rural locations, there was relatively modest developments of new‐build housing between 2001 and 2011, which did not significantly boost the supply of rural housing for latent rural intramigrants or in‐migrants, although it is noteworthy that there has been increasing new house building during the 2011–2021 period in rural areas, particularly within commuting distance of towns and cities. Gentrification practices can also act to reduce housing supply, through, for instance, the ‘knocking together’ of properties to form a single, larger home, and the extension of properties to a size that does not suit, or is too expensive, for potential in‐migrants (Phillips et al, 2021).…”

“…One of the important ways that understandings of rural out‐migration, as well as intramigration and in‐migration, have been enhanced is via studies of rural gentrification (e.g., Stockdale, 2016; Sutherland, 2012, 2019). This burgeoning scholarship demonstrates how and why settled, low‐income households often out‐migrate due to the displacement tendencies of rural gentrification (Phillips et al, 2020, 2021). Key factors include a lack of affordable rural housing due to rising property prices or rents; declining liveability due to loss or changes in service provision; and feelings of dispossession and being out of place due to the entrenchment of new consumption practices (Phillips & Smith, 2018a, 2018b; Smith & Phillips, 2001).…”