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Reading Gentrification
Reading Gentrification
What is gentrification?
Urban Society
• In the modern city people have different
identities
– Ethnicity
– Gender and sexual orientation
– Occupation, social class
• Identity connected to social status, power,
wealth
– Social distance, social rank
Urban Space
• Different social identities tend to produce
different social spaces
– Adapted to a pattern of identities
– Expressive of social status
• Social space becomes structured by social
status, identity
The Classic North American City
• The higher-status people create(d)
comfortable suburbs
– Escaping the unpleasantness of the modern
city
– Avoiding lower status people
• Inner-city areas became low-status,
avoided by high-status people
Gentrification
• Somehow those of higher social status have changed their attitude towards the inner city
– Become willing to live in the inner city
– Become less attached to the suburbs
• Higher status people ‘gentrify’ the inner city
– Taking over the housing, derelict industrial land
Gentrification
• What provokes the change in higher-
status attitudes toward the inner city?
– Changes in the economics of urban land?
– Changes in the pattern of urban disamenity?
– Changes in the nature of urban social status
and identity?
– Some combination?
Neil Smith’s Theory
• Higher status people invest in living space
in the suburbs, disinvesting from the inner
city
• Over time the inner city becomes relatively
cheap
• Eventually it is cheap enough to attract
high-status re-investment
• More of a description than an explanation
Urban Land Economics
• Inner city space was always fairly expensive
– Crowded slums
• Most of the inner city space was owned outsiders
– Higher-status suburbanites, banks, financial institutions
– Higher status people never really disinvested from the inner city
Disamenity
• The modern industrial city did become
unpleasant in the inner areas
– Congested, crime-prone
– Noisy, smelly, smoky, hot
• But the suburbs also have disamenity
– Traffic congestion and gridlock
– The time and expense of auto-dependence
Disamenity
• Some of the traditional disadvantages of
the inner city have faded
– Less smoky, smelly, dusty
• As have some of the traditional
advantages of the suburbs
• But some of the disadvantages remain
– Downtown crowded, has more crime
Social Status and Identity
• Social conformity a feature of the classic
North American suburb
– People were heterosexual, monogamous,
conformed to the majority culture, orderly,
followed expectations
– Workplaces were predictable, jobs and
careers stable
– N. America a powerful mass-producing, mass-
consuming society
Social Status and Identity
• Classic suburban architecture was
modernist
– Ranch-style bungalows, picture windows
– Modernity fashionable
• Old becomes unfashionable
– Especially in the inner city
Social Status and Identity
• The classic inner city accommodated the
poor and the low-status/ethnic
– Manufacturing and service economy offered
access to blue and pink-collar jobs
– Inner city accommodated poverty with social
services, programmes for those in deep social
need
Social Status and Identity
• Urban society now recognizes a greater
diversity of identities
– It has become OK, even cool to be ethnic
• Other identities enter the mainstream:
– Gay, Lesbian, Trans etc.,
Social Status and Identity
• Old-style stability of society and of the
workplace has ended
– People follow multiple careers, jobs
– Employment becomes more flexible, complex
– Growing importance of creative and
knowledge-workers
– Intimate partnerships, families become more
complex
Economic Change
• Manufacturing employment declines in the
city, contracting industries release vacant,
contaminated industrial land
• New economy depends on information
and creative knowledge
– Attracted to inner-city telecommunications
hubs
– Attracted to districts where creatives live
Social Status and Identity
• Nostalgia now dominates suburban
fashion
– Fake Victorian homes, theme subdivisions
with nostalgic flavour
– Retro bathrooms, kitchens, furnishings
– Ethnic furnishings, clothing, food for those
who are not really ethnic
– Vacations to exotic destinations
Disillusionment with Modernity
• People search for ‘authenticity’ outside of
the mainstream of modernity
– Interest in exotic places, cultures, customs
– Interest in hand-made and artisanal goods
– Interest in nostalgia, heritage, old-ness
– Interest in alternative forms of entertainment,
culture
– Social conformity traded for individual self-
expression
Disillusionment with Modernity
• Search for ecological authenticity
– Alternative foods from outside the industrial
food system
– Greener ways of living
• Search for social authenticity
– Interest in revived forms of local community
The Inner City
• Gets socially reshaped by these changes
• Becomes a place where higher-status people create living space for themselves
– Searching for authenticity
– Creating sub-cultural niches for themselves
– Setting up individually-meaningful living arrangements without regard for social convention
– Etc.,
St Jamestown
• Once a high-status suburb, which
deteriorated after 1910
– Low social status by 1950s
• City allowed Swiss money to expropriate
and redevelop St Jamestown for ‘luxury’
high-rises in the 1960s
– An attempt at gentrification
St Jamestown
• By the 1970s the St Jamestown high-rises and old low-rise accommodated a growing gay and lesbian community
– Seeking safe, tolerant space in the bohemian inner city
• From mid-1970s gay and lesbian couples become key figures in the gentrification of Cabbagetown
– Few kids, more money to spend
St Jamestown
• By the 1980s the ‘luxury’ St Jamestown
high-rises have become cheap housing for
the poor and the ethnic
• The remaining old low-rise housing is
getting gentrified
St Jamestown
• The mystery of how housing intended for
high-status people ends up being
occupied by low status people
• And vice-versa
The Hipster
• A classic inhabitant of the gentrified inner
city
• Hipster:
– A subculture of those making excessive
efforts to achieve authenticity through
expressive individualism
– A derogatory term, defined by outsiders
Gentrification
• Involves displacement
• Higher-status people displace lower-status
people
• Poor inner-city blue-collar communities get
wiped out by newcomers and their money
• As cheap inner-city areas vanish many
poor people become homeless
Gentrification
• First phases of gentrification depended on
the capital resources of individual
gentrifiers
– Fixing up their own homes
– Sometimes aided by public money
• Tended to recycle the old low-rise
landscape
Gentrification
• Later phases of gentrification attract
serious global capital
– Able to build high-rise and complex multi-use
structures
– Able to tackle contaminated industrial sites
– Able to disrupt existing low-rise
neighbourhoods and earlier waves of
gentrification
Gentrification
• Specialised gentrification developers have
emerged
– Who jump-start gentrification with festivals,
artists, creatives
– Who ‘authenticate’ development by re-
purposing heritage structures
– Who ‘authenticate’ development with
environmental theming, LEED certification,
green building
Toronto
• Decline in manufacturing created derelict zones along railway corridors
• 1990s Mayor Barbara Hall allowed redevelopment and re-use of these zones
• Rail corridors included two major telephone hubs vital for Internet data centres:
– King & Parliament
– King & Strachan
Toronto
• Toronto’s inner city industrial land,
grouped around the Two Kings became
the basis for a condo-loft-conversion dot-
com-new media landscape
– Distillery District
– Liberty Village
• Liberty Village,
2000
Liberty Village
• ArtScape recycled industrial lofts for cheap
studio space for artists
• Remaining industrial buildings converted
into lofts, redeveloped with new structures
– Aimed at ‘creatives’
Liberty Village Today
Wychwood Barns
• Condo developer at Bathurst & St Clair
fronts the money to convert disused
streetcar barns
– ArtScape Wychwood Barns
• Accomodates artists, NGOs, alternative
foods market, urban agriculture, use-
intensive urban greenspace
– A boon to gentrification
Distillery District
• Derelict industrial buildings flagged for
heritage-themed gentrification in the 1990s
• ArtScape brings in artists, artisans,
sponsors festivals and events for creatives
– Craft shows where you can buy pictures of
the Distillery District to hang on your Distillery
District condo walls
Loft Conversions
• Conversion of industrial lofts to residential
begins in NYC in later 1960s
• Reaches Toronto in the 1980s
– Spreads in 1990s, 2000s
• Genuine industrial lofts now in short
supply
– Toronto developers faking them with exposed
brick
• Liberty Village again
Reading Gentrification
• Like landscape, Gentrification is more
complex than it appears
• Connected to large, deep-seated changes
in western society
– People becoming uncomfortable with the
assumptions of modernity
– But capitalism finds ways to make money out
of it just the same
