ABSTRACT
Varied definitions of gentrification have emerged over the past four decades since it was first defined by sociologist Ruth Glass (1964) through her observations of the transformation of multi-unit housing into single family, middle class homes in London neighbourhoods. While debates over definitions of gentrification, from both critical and celebratory perspectives, have unfolded over the last few decades in gentrification scholarship, current and widened approaches to defining urban gentrification in theory and practice are enormously cogent for understanding the formulation and, in particular, the implementation of contemporary urban policy and planning. Two particularly dominant discourses, urban regeneration and sustainability, have emerged from urban policy and planning, urban growth and increasing assemblages of government, private sector and civil society actors in urban agendas and development. Complex similarities between the conceptual agendas of urban regeneration and urban sustainability policy and planning exist despite appearing to have conflicting objectives – sustainability to mitigate urban environmental problems and urban regeneration to stimulate growth through the development and re-use of urban spaces. Yet, the synchronicity between the two policy and planning agendas in relation to how these are defined and implemented by governments and actors beyond the state have profound effects on how urban spaces are planned and developed within a broader context of neo-liberalized, profit-centred urban growth. Certainly, gentrification is not an explicit policy and planning agenda and the term is argued to be viewed by mainstream urban policymakers and planners as an overtly critical ‘dirty word’ that dampens celebratory perspectives on gentrification (Slater, 2009; Slater, Curran, and Lees, 2004; Smith, 1996; Wyly, 2015). It is employed by critical scholars and other public actors to unveil the problematic outcomes of ‘well-intended’ urban development plans and projects. Gentrification is a particularly important lens for enquiry into the uneven development of spatial production in cities, social exclusion and displacement, and environmental injustice. In this chapter, the connections between urban regeneration and sustainability policy and planning agendas, and the roles of governmental and non-governmental actors and institutions in the development and 22implementation of policy and planning initiatives, will be explored through a discussion of how these two policy directives have become more entwined and how they relate to urban gentrification processes. These associations are particularly evident in policy and planning directives of urban intensification, succinctly defined as the densification of built form and population activity in cities (Jenks, Burton, and Williams, 1996), that have been widely adopted and implemented in cities over the past two decades as way to produce more sustainable urban form and encourage regeneration largely through public– private alliances in planning and development.
