Wilderness gentrification: moving ‘off-the-beaten rural tracks’

Idyllic Ruralities, Displacement and Changing Forms of Gentrification in Rural Hertfordshire, England

“…It was decided to focus on just three of the villages because, as shown in Figures 2 and 3, the other location, Watton-at-Stone, had seen large population increases soon after Pahl conducted his study and is now officially classified as 'rural town and fringe', rather than rural. Our research also made extensive use of UK Census data, some elements of which are used in this paper (for more details, see Smith et al, 2018. Whilst questionnaires are often viewed as instruments of quantitative research, as McGuirk and O'Neill (2016) have observed, they have long been used to generate both quantitative and qualitative data, a feature which prompts them to identify them as a form of mixed-method research.…”

“…This form of gentrification appeared to be evident in Tewin Wood, an area of woodland close to the village of Tewin that, as Pahl (2008b: 105-106) records, was part of a large landed estate until 1919, after which it "became available for new house-building", that was clearly in evidence when Pahl undertook his research: at the time of the survey, the woods echoed to the sound of Tudor beaming being hammered into place, as a firm of North London builders created 'a choice of standard, split level and continental designs in woodland setting'. (Pahl, 1965: 45) Many mock-Tudor buildings are very much still in evidence in Tewin Wood today, but comments from residents indicated that some had been demolished and much larger buildings constructed in their place (see Figure 5; and also Smith et al, 2018). There were clear expressions of concern about the extent of these new-builds and the social and environmental transformations that were viewed as accompanying them: in the next 20 years I would predict that every bungalow will be developed […] it's just becoming a developer's paradise.…”

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

“…To distinguish between different forms of gentrification, we then constructed a typology of rural gentrification using a metaphor of cheese strength (i.e., mild to vintage) (see Smith et al, 2018). Output areas with a percentage of persons with degree or above qualification of 32.3% or above were defined as gentrified (8,909 output areas in total) based on descriptive analyses of the dataset and other datasets (e.g., property price transactions).…”

Comparative ruralism and ‘opening new windows’ on gentrification

“…While we have both argued that notions of nature and the natural may be important constituents of symbolizations and senses of rurality ( Phillips et al, 2008 ; Smith and Phillips, 2001 ), both nature and rurality are complexly and variously constructed and apprehended ( Phillips, 2014 ). Just as we have argued that attention could usefully be paid to the significance of different rural landscapes in processes of gentrification ( Phillips and Smith, 2018 : 20; see also Smith et al, 2018 ), so we would argue that the presence and differences in ‘more-than-human’ natures or environments need to be recognized. The restored natures of formerly polluted ‘brownfield’ sites exhibit differences, as well as similarities, with the natures of public parks, intensive agriculture and wilderness, and these are probably poorly served by dualistic constructions of rurality and urbanity.…”

“…We would also argue that in any scaling of gentrification studies, attention needs to be paid to the presence of a range of scalar representations, including ones that that take less abstracted forms, and also to lived experiences of scale. We have recently made use of indices of low-population density and low-connectivity to urban centres of employment to identify areas of wilderness gentrification ( Smith et al, 2018 ), stressing that while these indices connect to popular representations of wilderness as places devoid both of the presence of and connections to centres of large scale human settlement, these locations are symbolized in a range of ways and people can find wilderness experiences in areas relatively proximate in abstract space. Howitt’s (2002) argument that consideration of scale needs to connect to studies of lived experiences would seem to be of clear significance here, with a further window of opportunity being to inject scale into discussions of lived space and representations of space that have emerged in gentrification studies (e.g Phillips, 2002 ; Davidson, 2009 ; Davidson and Lees, 2010 ).…”