Abstract
This book is a noteworthy effort to break down the traditional theoretical framework that linked, from the outset, the study of gentrification to the Anglo American model city of the Global North. The book’s driving idea is ‘to move the gentrification literature in the direction of a properly global urban studies’ discussing ‘the extent to which ‘gentrification’ is a global process’ (p. 1). For this purpose, the book assembles 20 case studies focusing on the Global South. They respond to diverse explanatory factors, reveal different evolutionary paths from the hegemonic pattern of the North city and expand the conceptual limits of gentrification. In this sense, the editors do not seek to be ‘comparative’ in a traditional fashion, but rather ‘exploratory’ and, in many ways, unstructured, submitting the globalness of the concept of gentrification to thorough questioning and, potentially, allowing for the development of new lines of analysing urban change.
The book speaks to different audiences; to advanced readers by demonstrating the complexities of undertaking comparative urban analysis, and to junior readers who are provided with a strong grasp of theoretical debates and useful case studies. The book is structured in such a way that it begins with an insightful introductory chapter where the comparative perspective is introduced next to an epistemological debate on the limits of gentrification and its global dimensions. Some precedents are briefly reviewed, noting that many of them were located in the Global North. The editors place particular emphasis on the work of Maloutas (2012) who, despite discussing some of the epistemological limits of current urban theorisations on gentrification, is criticised for ignoring the 1990s terminological debate which claimed a stronger global diversity, as well as for his three necessary conditions for gentrification – gentrification aesthetics, a well-defined middle class and post-industrialisation – all pointing towards an oversimplified idea of gentrification.
The 20 chapters are deliberately mixed in order to ‘flatten any regional or city hierarchies that might emerge’ (p. 10). Moreover, theoretical or conceptual insights do not always follow regional lines without denying that there are regional areas with specific characteristics as, for instance, the so-called ‘Latin American gentrification’ (Janoschka et al., 2013). We can find a vast number of cities around the world experiencing intensive and uneven processes of capital-led restructuring, with significant influxes of upper- and middle-income people and large doses of class-led displacement from deprived urban areas. Indeed, ‘the chapters show the uneven development of global gentrification connected to planetary urbanisations, and a significant number of these are in the vein of neo-Haussmannization through processes of accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, 2003)’ (p. 441).
Despite the wide range of topics, we can point to a first axis being the ascendancy of neoliberal policy ideas, especially: revanchist policies and practices in public space aimed at propping up or instigating gentrification, as in the case of Puebla (Chapter 14); representations of culture and ethnicity in the Paseo project, Athens (Chapter 2), where gentrification dynamics enmesh with urban fears over illegal immigrants, drugs users and the homeless; Madrid (Chapter 19), where a process of privatisation and ‘securitisation’ by different ‘dispositifs’ of public space is unfolding; Karachi (Chapter 10), with large-scale developments on the Karachi coast; or in Taipei (Chapter 12), with its extensive commodification of public housing.
Furthermore, the editors highlight the complex processes of transnational mobility of gentrification or its endogenous emergence. First, it does not always move from North to South. In this regard, the case of Karachi is significant: gentrification processes are linked to different spatial networks, as the money and design ideas behind the proposed large-scale developments on Karachi’s coast are provided by Dubai-based companies. Second, the process sometimes emerges in an endogenous way as part of city-making in times of condensed urbanisation and late industrialisation, as in the case of Taipei. Liling Huang claims that with the commodification and deregulation of public housing in the 1980s a large number of public housing units were transformed into upmarket commodities on the real estate market. The state sold them into gentrification, turning them into enclaves for the wealthy and elite professionals, also pushing up housing prices in the surrounding areas. The case of Seoul (Chapter 9) is also revealing. Here, aggressive large-scale redevelopment programmes in Gileum ‘New Town’ led to the displacement of low-income residents in a dynamic that Seong-Kyu Ha calls ‘renewal-induced gentrification’.
Third, it must be noted that it is not only policy makers that drive gentrification, but other factors such as the global mobility of people. Amiram Gonen addresses the diversity and wide spread of gentrification in Israel (Chapter 8) and describes how Israelis living in gentrified areas of cities like London and New York City are taking ideas about gentrification with them to Israel. A fourth aspect concerns the contradictions in the indigenous logics of accumulation, and how ‘urban politics play a pivotal role in producing, slowing down and resisting gentrification’ (p. 442). In this regard, Mohamed Elshahed investigates the urban renewal processes in Cairo (Chapter 7), claiming that political, historical and economic specificities have emerged in recent years hindering the development of a classical process of gentrification.
On the other hand, as Eric Clark (2005) – who contributes the book’s afterword – once suggested, gentrification is not confined to the inner city. As we can see in the chapters on Israel and Egypt, gentrification can be suburban and rural as well. Likewise, gated communities in urban peripheries can exemplify gentrification in the same vein as those in city centres. This dialectical play between these different parts of the city is introduced in the case of Abu Dhabi (Chapter 4), Cairo (Chapter 7) and Buenos Aires (Chapter 11).
Urban policy is central to these processes of gentrification. It is understood from the chapters, again in opposition to the interpretation of Maloutas, that urban regeneration and urban renewal globally have become major facilitators of gentrification. Chapters such as those on Taipei or Seoul testify: that although the ‘actually existing’ gentrifications in the Global South do not necessarily resemble those previously found in the Global North, it is obvious that they are embedded in contexts that are largely characterised by the state-led class restructuring of urban space intertwined with speculative land/housing markets and a growing lack of affordable housing and spaces for social reproduction. (p. 443)
Moreover, slum/favela gentrification has become a significant feature of gentrification in the Global South since the 1990s, as ‘slums’ have become increasingly subject to urban policies that aim to demolish them in the name of progress and modernisation (infrastructure provision, urban beautification or real estate projects for high-income groups). Significantly, many low-income settlements known as ‘slums’ or ‘favelas’ are often more resilient to gentrification – see Chapter 5 about ‘slum tourism’ in Rio de Janeiro – due to their fragmented land and tenures. Relatedly, discussions exist about terms such as ‘slum gentrification’, ‘favela chic, ‘sub-gentrification’ and so on in the cases of Lisbon (Chapter 3), Rio de Janeiro (Chapter 5), India (Chapter 6), Lagos (Chapter 16) and Cape Town (Chapter 21).
To date, the extant gentrification literature has been largely dominated by discussions of residential gentrification, but ‘other’ gentrifications, such as commercial or tourist ones, have become increasingly important processes – even more so than residentially-driven ones in certain neighbourhoods – in many cities worldwide (e.g. Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile and Madrid).
The struggle against gentrification is well analysed in the case of Istanbul (Chapter 13) and is demonstrated in successful cases of civil resistance in Karachi and Seoul. This trend connects with a critical review of the very concept of the ‘right to the city’ as a Western term, as it is argued in the chapter on India. However, in other geographies such as in Latin America, social movements use the concept of the ‘right to the city’ alongside ‘gentrification’ to support their claims. The book provides a number of different examples of halted gentrification due to war and civil unrest (Damasco and Cairo), public protest (Seoul and Karachi) and economic crisis (Madrid and Athens).
As conclusion, the authors assume that ‘there are multiple gentrifications in a pluralistic sense rather than “Gentrification” with a capital “G”’ (p. 442). Gentrification is global to the extent that urban spaces around the world are increasingly subject to global and domestic capital (re)investment in order to be transformed into new uses that cater to the needs of wealthier inhabitants. Indeed, ‘it has become an important process in the growing inequality of cities and societies worldwide’ (p. 442). This book shows that statements about gentrification arriving in the Global South and East need to be rethought and that there is no simple trajectory.
Finally, the authors set out the main conclusions of the ‘comparative urbanism’ that gentrification studies now demand, warning, however, that this work is no more than just a first step, a foray, urging continuations in this line of research. I hope, in further research, a broader geographical scale can be brought to bear, including medium-sized cities with their live and complex processes of gentrification.