ABSTRACT

This book pays homage to Neil Smith’s ideas, offering a critical approach and rich collection of insights that draw on Smith’s work for inspiration and debate. With interdisciplinary and international contributions from leading experts, the book demonstrates the impact of Smith’s ideas on understanding the role of urbanisation in general and gentrification, in particular, in contemporary society. The book demonstrates how gentrification varies significantly from city to city, across different cultural and political-economic regimes, and in terms of the timing of urban transformations.

This collection provides a forum for debate for those working in urban regeneration and citizenship, and those directly affected by the processes and problems arising from gentrification. It will be of interest to students and scholars in urban geography, urban sociology, cultural studies, and wider social and urban theories.

part I|39 pages

Neil Smith

part II|55 pages

On gentrification and the rent gap theory

chapter 5|12 pages

Gentrification

Disaster, necessity, opportunity? Notes for a critical use of the concept

chapter 6|8 pages

Toward a theory of gentrination

Global capital flows and the reshaping of the global semi-periphery. The cases of Greece and Brazil 1

chapter 7|11 pages

Making rent gap theory not true

part III|66 pages

Dispossession and class struggle

chapter 9|15 pages

From Boise to Budapest

Capital circulation, compound capitalist destruction and the persistence of homelessness

chapter 11|10 pages

The class gap in gentrification

A political reading of the rent gap hypothesis

chapter 12|10 pages

The new urban frontier of everyday evictions

Contemporary state practices of revanchism

chapter 13|11 pages

Capturing urban rent through evictions

Home dispossessions in the historic centre of Palma (Majorca) 1

part IV|60 pages

Policies and strategies

chapter 14|14 pages

Financialised rent gaps and the public interest in Berlin’s housing crisis

Reflections on N. Smith’s ‘generalised gentrification’

chapter 15|13 pages

Beyond the ‘revanchist city’

When public policies softly support gentrification in the name of social mix. The case of Inner Paris

chapter 16|7 pages

Urban regeneration, rent and labour

Insights from Barcelona’s ‘knowledge district’

chapter 17|13 pages

A disappearing world

The ever-expanding ‘frontier of gentrification’ through the eyes of Porto’s historic centre long-time residents

chapter 18|13 pages

Architecture of violence

‘Anti-beggar architecture’ as the ‘eureka’ of urban regeneration 1

part V|57 pages

Activism and resistance

chapter 19|16 pages

The urban frontier

Gentrification as ideology and class politics in the remaking of marginal urban space

chapter 21|13 pages

Alternative narratives from an invisible city

Gentrification, counter-proposals and women activism

chapter 23|11 pages

Revanchism and the racial state

Ferguson as ‘internal colony’

part VI|15 pages

Neil Smith and beyond

chapter 24|15 pages

Gentrification and the urban struggle

Neil Smith and beyond