ABSTRACT
That gentrification is a “chaotic concept” (Sayer 1982) was discussed in Chapter 2 of this volume. Although the process is commonly seen to involve the physical renovation of dilapidated housing in inner-city locations along with an upwards socioeconomic transition, a tenure transformation from renting to owning, and a demographic and possibly a racial transition, it is quite clear that not only are all these analytically distinct processes, but that also they can be identified as operating in isolation from one another in different areas of different cities at different times. To this extent, therefore, gentrification, as it is currently understood and defined, must be seen as constituting no more than an historically and spatially specific manifestation of a set of more general transformation processes which are not always found to be acting in conjunction and which can and do take other forms.
