Introduction
The gentrification literature has long been dominated by studies of gentrification in Western European and North American cities (Lees, 2012). In addition, investigations and conceptualisations of gentrification in the Global South have tended to make use of a conceptual toolbox developed for explaining gentrification in Anglo-American cities. This ignores the various important issues that scholars have highlighted and discussed in the literature regarding the peculiarities of processes of gentrification in cities in the Global South. These include: the formalisation of hitherto informal housing and labour markets (Shin, 2009a; Winkler, 2009; Kuyucu and Unsal, 2010); the state and market making land ready for gentrification by international developers through red-lining and ground rent dispossession (López-Morales, 2011); the state's higher capacity and propensity for repression (Cabannes et al, 2010); the peripheralisation of low-income residents (Wu, 2004; He and Wu; 2007; Shin 2007; Islam, 2010); and the infiltration of clientelism into pro-gentrification policies while eliminating populist-clientelist policies for neoliberal ones (Bartu and Kolluoglu, 2008). These ‘Southern’ peculiarities deserve our scholarly attention.
Moreover, the comparative imagination in the gentrification literature has, until more recently, been restricted to the cities of the Global North (eg Lees, 1994; Slater, 2004; Carpenter and Lees, 1995), leaving cities outside of these ‘cores’ off the research agenda. Harris's (2008) comparative work on London and Mumbai was perhaps the first to counter this trend in the gentrification literature in any significant way. Likewise, Lees (2012) has underlined the need for a fresh comparative urbanism of gentrification, one that will ‘begin the task of decentring the dominant narratives of gentrification from the Global North’ (p 6), thus potentially refining gentrification theories. Indeed, a comprehensive focus on the different dynamics, actors and processes involved in gentrification in different cities, and even in the same city, is needed to shed light on the different geographies of gentrification within the Global South. To face this challenge, there is a need for a much more grounded approach in researching different geographies of gentrification. Understanding the local political contexts – the actually existing neoliberalisms in different cities/regions/countries, the role and power of the state, elite coalitions and so on – that give rise to urban policies promoting gentrification, together with research into the strategies of actors facing gentrification, is a crucial part of this grounded approach.