Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Notes on the editors
- Notes on the contributors
- Foreword
- One Introduction: ‘gentrification’ – a global urban process?
- Two Unravelling the yarn of gentrification trends in the contested inner city of Athens
- Three Slum gentrification in Lisbon, Portugal: displacement and the imagined futures of an informal settlement
- Four City upgraded: redesigning and disciplining downtown Abu Dhabi
- Five Confronting favela chic: the gentrification of informal settlements in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Six Rethinking gentrification in India: displacement, dispossession and the spectre of development
- Seven The prospects of gentrification in downtown Cairo: artists, private investment and the neglectful state
- Eight Widespread and diverse forms of gentrification in Israel
- Nine The endogenous dynamics of urban renewal and gentrification in Seoul
- Ten Value extraction from land and real estate in Karachi
- Eleven Gentrification in Buenos Aires: global trends and local features
- Twelve Promoting private interest by public hands? The gentrification of 223 public lands by housing policies in Taipei City
- Thirteen The making of, and resistance to, state-led gentrification in Istanbul, Turkey
- Fourteen Gentrification, neoliberalism and loss in Puebla, Mexico
- Fifteen Capital, state and conflict: the various drivers of diverse gentrification processes in Beirut, Lebanon
- Sixteen Gentrification in Nigeria: the case of two housing estates in Lagos
- Seventeen Gentrification in China?
- Eighteen Emerging retail gentrification in Santiago de Chile: the case of Italia-Caupolicán
- Nineteen Gentrification dispositifs in the historic centre of Madrid: a reconsideration of urban governmentality and state-led urban reconfiguration
- Twenty When authoritarianism embraces gentrification – the case of Old Damascus, Syria
- Twenty-one The place of gentrification in Cape Town
- Twenty-two Conclusion: global gentrifications
- Afterword The adventure of generic gentrification
- Index
Afterword - The adventure of generic gentrification
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 March 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Notes on the editors
- Notes on the contributors
- Foreword
- One Introduction: ‘gentrification’ – a global urban process?
- Two Unravelling the yarn of gentrification trends in the contested inner city of Athens
- Three Slum gentrification in Lisbon, Portugal: displacement and the imagined futures of an informal settlement
- Four City upgraded: redesigning and disciplining downtown Abu Dhabi
- Five Confronting favela chic: the gentrification of informal settlements in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Six Rethinking gentrification in India: displacement, dispossession and the spectre of development
- Seven The prospects of gentrification in downtown Cairo: artists, private investment and the neglectful state
- Eight Widespread and diverse forms of gentrification in Israel
- Nine The endogenous dynamics of urban renewal and gentrification in Seoul
- Ten Value extraction from land and real estate in Karachi
- Eleven Gentrification in Buenos Aires: global trends and local features
- Twelve Promoting private interest by public hands? The gentrification of 223 public lands by housing policies in Taipei City
- Thirteen The making of, and resistance to, state-led gentrification in Istanbul, Turkey
- Fourteen Gentrification, neoliberalism and loss in Puebla, Mexico
- Fifteen Capital, state and conflict: the various drivers of diverse gentrification processes in Beirut, Lebanon
- Sixteen Gentrification in Nigeria: the case of two housing estates in Lagos
- Seventeen Gentrification in China?
- Eighteen Emerging retail gentrification in Santiago de Chile: the case of Italia-Caupolicán
- Nineteen Gentrification dispositifs in the historic centre of Madrid: a reconsideration of urban governmentality and state-led urban reconfiguration
- Twenty When authoritarianism embraces gentrification – the case of Old Damascus, Syria
- Twenty-one The place of gentrification in Cape Town
- Twenty-two Conclusion: global gentrifications
- Afterword The adventure of generic gentrification
- Index
Summary
“Oh, no, we don't have any gentrification here”, said this eminent researcher of the rise of the Taiwanese middle class. On only my third visit to Taipei, I was not inclined to challenge his reply, though the ongoing and newly completed large redevelopments I saw as he drove me around Taipei some 10 years ago did stir doubt. Gentrification cannot be simply read off the urban landscape as if visible in a momentary view. So, who was I to jump to conclusions? Nevertheless, I imagined that these redevelopments – state- or market-led (or both), commercial or residential, inner-city or suburban – involved the massive accumulation of rentseeking capital, the displacement of homes and livelihoods, and the suffering of many people who pay those costs of ‘improvement’ that fail to appear on financial balance sheets or glossy plans for ‘revitalisation’. In addition, I wondered what the victims of the process in Taipei called it, if not ‘gentrification’. What particularities might a vernacular term for the process highlight?
A decade and a dozen visits later, research into urban development in Taipei in collaboration with Taiwanese colleagues tells me that this was not sheer imagination, a travelling theory about a travelling problem. Gentrification is part of Taipei's contemporary geography and history (Jou et al, 2014). However, as could be said of gentrification in Swedish cities in the early post-war period, when massive urban renewal projects were carried out with strong social-democratic legitimacy, and as Ley and Teo (2014) have observed more recently in Hong Kong, public debate and media discourse on urban transformation did not engage with the concept of gentrification. My knowledgeable Taipei guide spoke prior to ‘an ontological awakening’ spurred by growing inequality (Ley and Teo, 2014).
Ruth Glass introduced her now-classic analysis of London with: ‘London can never be taken for granted. The city is too vast, too complex, too contrary and too moody to become entirely familiar’ (Glass, 1989, p 133). The same can be said of Abu Dhabi, Athens, Beijing, Beirut, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Cape Town, Damascus and the other cities included in this volume. The rich empirical analyses presented here reflect how gentrification is characterised by particular social, economic, cultural, political and legal contexts.
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- Global GentrificationsUneven Development and Displacement, pp. 453 - 456Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2015
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