Abstract
This article offers a new typology (and therefore understanding) of gentrifiers, dividing them into four ideal types: Shruggers, Agonisers, Upgraders and Activists. Based on 32 in-depth interviews and focusing on the political aspect of gentrifiers’ behaviour, namely their agency, the article suggests that gentrifiers’ attitudes towards agency are affected by two main factors: their sense of efficacy, and their interest in remedying the allegedly negative political and urban outcomes of gentrification. These two factors yield the above-mentioned four ideal types of agency among gentrifiers. In addition, I find that the duration of their residence in the neighbourhood moderates gentrifiers’ attitudes and perceptions, thus affecting their behaviour.
Scholars increasingly emphasise the presence and significance of agency in gentrification processes. Against this background, the present article suggests a new typology of gentrifiers’ attitudes towards agency. Defined as ‘middle-class people who moved into disinvested neighbourhoods in a period during which a critical mass of other middle-class people did the same, thereby exerting economic, political, and social pressures upon the existing community’ (Schlichtman et al., 2017: 4), the common understanding of gentrifiers emphasises their class and the time of their move into gentrifying neighbourhoods as key factors.
As such, ‘stage theory’ is probably the most commonly embraced theory of gentrification. It suggests that gentrification passes through different phases over time, and that ‘the characteristics and attitudes of people moving into the neighbourhood vary depending on when they moved in’ (Kerstein, 1990: 621). While the first gentrifiers cherish a neighbourhood’s diversity, authenticity and unique architecture, later arrivals are generally middle-class gentrifiers looking for a high quality of life and socioeconomically similar neighbours. Stage theory suggests that first-stage incomers 1 (‘urban pioneers’) should retrospectively be referred to as gentrifiers as well, even if at the time of their move they did not form a critical mass and therefore did not exert a salient effect on their urban environment.
Using this framework, scholars have categorised gentrifiers according to demographic characteristics such as ‘visibility and tenure, occupation and income, political outlook, cultural affiliation, and household composition and lifestyle’ (Caulfield, 1989: 618). Alongside typical professional and managerial middle classes (Hamnett, 2003), researchers also emphasise other marginal groups as gentrifiers (Caulfield, 1994; Ley, 1996; Rose, 1996). Indeed, scholars have focused on artists (Ley, 2003), the gay community (Lauria and Knopp, 1985), students (Smith et al., 2014) and Bohemians (Rose, 1984), who are often searching for cheap rents, large working spaces, community life and authenticity. These social groups are frequently understood as middle class through a Bourdieu-inspired relational lens of social habitus and symbolic and cultural capital, although not necessarily from an economic perspective (Bourdieu, 1987). Their move may subject long-term residents to cultural, political or social marginalisation, which in turn may result in ‘displacement pressure’, leading to actual displacement (Marcuse, 1985: 207).
While these accounts are invaluable in understanding the ‘chaotic concept of gentrification’ (Rose, 1984), they depict gentrification as a pre-determined process that leaves little room, if any, for agency. Many explanations of gentrification interpret the process as an essentially structural one, viewing gentrification as the outcome of economic and/or political power structures (Smith, 1982). These theories, most notably ‘the rent-gap’ theory (Smith, 1987), help understand the role of banks, developers, investors and authorities in channelling capital into formerly neglected places, hence these banks, developers etc. are referred to as ‘the production camp’. Nonetheless, such explanations fail to explain what makes people, especially early-stage gentrifiers, move to such areas. Other explanations of gentrification shed light on the perspective of the ‘consumers’, adopting an agency-centric approach (the ‘consumption camp’). According to these explanations, gentrification is an indication of people’s changing tastes, values and preferences (Ley, 1996).
While this debate still resonates in gentrification research, most scholars today regard gentrification as a ‘product of cultural choice under given conditions’ (Shaw, 2008: 1718), hence ‘both production and consumption perspectives are crucially important in explaining, understanding and dealing with gentrification’ (Lees et al., 2008: 190). Nonetheless, both camps regard long-term residents as well as gentrifiers as fixated in their roles, rather than viewing them as agents acting out of free will, capable of translating their motivations into actions that bring about desired outcomes (Bandura, 1997).
Indeed, the scholarly focus on the causes and effects of gentrification has allowed little room for the study of agency and resistance within the process (Lees and Ferreri, 2016; Lees et al., 2010: 525). Addressing this gap, a growing body of contemporary research examines manifestations of agency in gentrification, revealing the implications that individual and group actions might have in mitigating, slowing down and resisting gentrification processes.
To mention just a few recent accounts, De Araújo and Da Costa (2017) demonstrate how the inhabitants of the Varjão in Brazil worked together to resist governmental attempts to evacuate the area, conducting a campaign characterised by solidarity that resulted in a different form of urban development, which the inhabitants viewed as positive. Berrey (2015) examines the diversity discourse in Chicago and how local activists employ it to resist gentrification in Rogers Park. Finally, Pathon’s (2014) comprehensive study of the relationship between structure and agency through the concept of hegemony challenges the common outlook on working-class agency in gentrification processes in Partick, Glasgow, arguing that the essential agential characteristics attributed to social groups in gentrification literature limit the possibility of understanding individuals’ motives and actions.
The above studies concentrate on long-term residents’ agency in the face of gentrification (and at times joint struggles conducted by long-term residents and incomers). Other studies focus on gentrifiers’ agency. Among them, Brown-Saracino (2009) distinguishes between gentrifiers and ‘social preservationists’ who actively try to preserve the neighbourhoods’ old characteristics, including their original residents. Schlichtman et al. (2017) use an autoethnographic methodology to examine the motivations and dispositions that guide individuals in their housing choices, demonstrated by six perceived cultural orientations of gentrifiers. Donnelly (2018) focuses on the ‘gentrifier dilemma’– being part of a process to which they object – suggesting three narratives that gentrifiers use to reconcile this dissonance.
Building on stage theory and previous studies, this article is interested in how people act as well as how they justify their actions. Following Schlichtman et al. (2017) and Donnelly (2018), I examine gentrifiers’ motivations, perceptions, strategies and narratives as a first step in understanding their attitudes towards gentrification and agency. These studies informed the first part of the typology, which addresses incomers’ motivations and perceptions. Nonetheless, following Brown-Saracino, I acknowldge that many gentrifiers ‘fail to put the ideology to practical use’ (Brown-Saracino, 2004: 136). However, rather than focusing on a specific group of gentrifiers (social preservationists in her example), I endeavour to understand how different types of gentrifiers perceive and practise their agency. Based on a case study comprised of 32 in-depth interviews conducted with gentrifiers in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel, the following offers an alternative typology of gentrifiers’ attitudes towards agency, classifying them according to their everyday practices and patterns of behaviour, together with the reasons they offer for these: motivations, intentions and perceptions of their urban environment. I should, of course, hasten to add that this typology is yet to be examined in other case studies. Thus, I offer this typology both as an analysis of the case of Tel Aviv-Jaffa and as food for thought for further research.
Method and background
The suggested typology is based on 32 in-depth, semi-structured interviews that were conducted between 2013 and 2017 in two neighbourhoods in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality in Israel – Jaffa 2 and Shapira. Both neighbourhoods have experienced severe ‘systematic disinvestment’ (Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality, 2002: 111) and neglect at the hands of the authorities, and both are in the midst of gentrification processes, to different degrees. 3 In both neighbourhoods, ‘common’ urban phenomena, such as gentrification, are embedded in a broader conflict. The Shapira neighbourhood absorbed a massive flow of migrant workers as well as asylum seekers from Africa in recent years, followed later by heavy gentrification processes. Jaffa is a mixed quarter of Arabs (Israeli Palestinians) and Jews in which the implications of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are immediately evident. This racial and ethnic social mix is rather unusual in the Israeli urban environment and could thus be understood also through gentrification literature interlinking post-colonialism, race and gentrification (Atkinson and Bridge, 2004). In the Israeli context (especially in Jaffa, but also in Shapira), gentrification is sometimes referred to as ‘Judaisation’, a process seeking to achieve a Jewish demographic, geographic and cultural dominance (Marom, 2006; Yiftachel and Kedar, 2003).
The interviewees – all Jewish, from a variety of demographic backgrounds, genders and occupations, aged 25–50 – represent incomers who moved to the areas over the past 12 years, at different stages of the gentrification process. 4 A third of the inter-viewees were recruited based on personal acquaintance. Another third were recruited through the snowball approach. The last third were recruited through the neighbourhoods’ Facebook pages and various social events, where I approached them and introduced the research. Each interview lasted between 90 and 150 minutes, and all interviewees were informed of the study’s goals.
The interviews were divided into two parts. The first part was dedicated to understanding interviewees’ outlooks regarding urban processes: how they perceive these processes, as well as their role in them. The interviewees were asked to describe urban changes they had witnessed and these changes’ causes, and to locate themselves within them. The second part of the interviews applied a more structured approach in order to maintain a coherent comparative perspective. This included questions concerning the interviewees’ daily, weekly and monthly routines, such as: ‘Where do you shop?’‘Where do your children go to school?’‘Do you take part in any political activity in the neighbourhood?’ and ‘Describe your social interactions and activities’. Subsequently, the interviewees were asked to rationalise and explain the reasons behind these practices, linking back to the first part of the interview and their notions about the changing urban environment. The second part of the interviews provided the basis for the list of practices presented in Table 1. Only practices that were mentioned in three or more interviews were included in the list.
A selection of practices carried out by the different agency types as reported in the interviews.
After transcribing the interviews (to ensure confidentiality, interviewees were given pseudonyms), I analysed each interview, dividing the data into three themes: notions and dispositions about the neighbourhood and urban processes, especially gentrification (and his/her role in it); lists of practices and daily routines; and the rationalisations and motivations ascribed to each practice. The practices reported can be roughly divided into the following categories: consumption; education; 5 social and political involvement; community and cultural life; and acts of commitment and sense of belonging.
In order to discover how individuals practise their agency, and not (only) how they perceive it, I started by comparing the practices between interviewees. Naturally, interviewees reported a range of different practices; however, it is interesting to note that the same practices were rationalised very differently among interviewees with somewhat, or at times very, different notions about the neighbourhood and gentrification.
This is evident, for example, with regard to grocery shopping. Though this is a mundane practice, ‘retail gentrification’ literature highlights the effect of the changing business landscape on long-term residents. While many local businesses are forced to close due to high rents or a change in the locale, other businesses change their language, products and aesthetics in order to attract gentrifiers, in addition to raising prices, often making long-term residents feel unwelcome. This results in economic, social and cultural displacement (Monroe Sullivan and Shaw, 2011).
When asked about their daily grocery shopping routine, the interviewees’ answers fell into three main categories: (1) shop mostly at local businesses; (2) consumption determined by price (usually chain stores and supermarkets); (3) shop in specialised local stores (such as spice shops or butcher’s shops).
Twenty-four interviewees reported that their grocery shopping is determined by price, product range, personal preferences and convenience. As such, they mainly prefer cheaper and bigger chain stores and supermarkets (usually wholesale venues outside the neighbourhood), though some shop locally for reasons of convenience. Nonetheless, when reflecting on their practice and its consequences, seven of these interviewees admitted that their practice does not reflect their principles: they actually believe they should buy more from local businesses in order to help the neighbourhood maintain its special character.
Interviewees who buy mostly at local businesses offered varied rationales for their choice. Some explained that they are too lazy to drive to cheaper chain stores outside the neighbourhood, instead shopping at local businesses close to their homes. However, others expressed a desire to support local independent businesses, which are struggling due to gentrification and other urban processes. They consider this preference to be a communal and sometimes ideological decision, describing the grocery stores as vibrant community hubs where new residents can get to know their neighbours.
This simple example reveals that people’s everyday practices vary significantly, as do the motivations behind them. Counterintuitively, it indicates that people with very different motivations and rationalisations end up performing the same practice. Buying in local shops, for instance, at times denotes strong agency, while on other occasions it is a by-product of other considerations, or completely disregards the urban context. Even more interestingly, we must ask why people who share the same motivations and beliefs (e.g. buying in local shops will help support them) perform different practices.
This leads to two questions – what motivates individuals to act in a certain way, and what stops them from acting in the way they believe will fulfil those intentions? To answer these questions, I examined interviewees who perform the same practices and interviewees who share the same motivations. When these differed, I returned to the first part of the interviews, tracing interviewees’ dispositions and beliefs about their changing urban environment. This analysis, detailed in the next section, yielded the typology.
Forming the typology
The gentrifier’s dilemma?
When asked to reflect and locate themselves within the urban processes around them, many interviewees voiced ethical and moral concerns about their role in the processes, expressing the ‘gentrifier’s dilemma’ (Donnelly, 2018). Others, conversely, appeared indifferent, apparently not regarding the issue as a personal moral dilemma. These interviewees’ motivations and intentions could be traced to acting in a way that increases their personal well-being regardless of the urban context. Alternatively, others’ motivations were rooted in their moral disposition towards the gentrification process in the neighbourhood, a process in which they participate as incomers. When addressing the moral wrongs they associate with gentrification, most interviewees referred to the actual displacement of long-term residents (Marcuse, 1985), as well as other forms of displacement, such as ‘un-homing’ and ‘other instances of involuntary mobility’ among long-term residents (Elliott-Cooper et al., 2019: 12). Similarly, some interviewees referred to a variety of additional associated consequences, such as social exclusion, polarisation and homogenisation, which exacerbate inequality (Kohn, 2013) and undermine the authenticity and distinctiveness of the areas due to the transformation of public, social and commercial spaces (Davidson, 2007: 494–497). 6
Some individuals are morally indifferent to the allegedly problematic consequences of gentrification processes, regarding them as actual urban regeneration schemes; indeed, they focus solely on certain positive outcomes of these processes, such as the improvement of infrastructure and spatial and social features (Byrne, 2003). Such disregard for the negative outcomes may stem from general indifference, though at times it is due to lack of knowledge. This group is depicted in the literature as ‘bad gentrifiers’, exhibiting the attitudes and lifestyle of ‘classic gentrifiers’ (Shaw and Hagemans, 2015). Similarly to Schlichtman et al.’s capitalist type, Roy from Shapira only regrets that he was not quick enough ‘to make money from the changing neighbourhood’ (Schlichtman et al., 2017: 133): I really don’t mind being a gentrifier. I’m actually looking to buy a place here now. I think it’s natural, this is how the world works, and I’m only sorry that I didn’t buy a place here 10 years ago. I don’t feel any remorse; I came here because I can have a bigger house for the same rent.
Some of those classified as morally indifferent attribute value judgements to urban processes, referring to them as good or bad. However, these value judgements are described as facts external to the interviewee, not personal dilemmas. As Ryan argues: ‘[Displacement] is a kind of reality that is a little sad, but … it doesn’t keep me awake at night.’ Others simply do not feel they have the right or power to interfere in the neighbourhood’s affairs, for better or worse. They use the displacing responsibility strategy –‘shifting responsibility for the process of gentrification onto another group of actors’ (Donnelly, 2018: 387) – to morally disengage themselves from the process. As Danna explains: They [the locals] suggest I’m trying to transform the place they live in, but that’s not true – it’s all the municipality’s doing … When a group from outside the neighbourhood comes and tries to make a change, it intimidates me. It doesn’t matter what kind of change it is or who the people are. They have a will to change; I don’t have any will, or right, to change this place.
Another evident approach is what Donnelly (2018: 383–385) refers to as ‘reframing the outcomes’– stressing the benefits of gentrification for both the local community and the gentrifier. As Karen reflects: Although it’s not politically correct to say it, the change in the human landscape, which results in wealthier incomers who happen to be Jewish,
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helped improve the quality of life. So, on the one hand I’m part of [the problem], and on the other hand everybody is enjoying the positive implications.
These individuals claim that the influx of a wealthier Jewish population – to which they themselves belong – helped direct funds and attention to the local communities’ needs and problems. Addressing the impact of Jewish incomers, Ethan notes: ‘It’s good that the new population is more politically visible, [because] while they are changing the human pattern, there is also better transportation, and now the authorities are upgrading the streets.’
Conversely, gentrification processes and their outcomes make some feel morally uncomfortable. As gentrifiers, these individuals feel a degree of responsibility and guilt for the process. Rachel refers to gentrification as ‘worrying processes that are hard to watch and be part of, whether you want to or not’. Some of them used the ‘differentiating self’ narrative; indeed, distancing themselves morally and politically from ‘“bad gentirfiers”… allows gentrifiers to restructure their role in the neighbourhood into a beneficial one’ (Donnelly, 2018: 385). For example, Tammy, who has been living in Jaffa for close to a year, explains: I think we are the right kind of gentrifiers – politically conscious, not looking to make money from real-estate … I welcome anyone who thinks that we can suggest a different model [of Arab–Jewish coexistence] here compared to the rest of this city … Sure, there are complexities, but we can make it happen … I see people coming here trying to save some money, feeling cool, pushing the locals out, and I differentiate myself – I’m not like that. It is important for me to make it clear … I live in a political reality to which I object […] and in this reality I have to balance things out: I balance local politics, the local policy, by offering alternatives through my genuine will and effort to establish a new form of neighbourly relations …
For others though, the ‘differentiating self’ narrative is no longer sufficient in the face of gentrification. As Jason comments, ‘gentrification goes on ever more forcefully and we are clearly part of the problem’. These interviewees feel that their status as members of privileged groups – whether in terms of economic status, education level or ethnicity – makes them responsible for the changes their presence causes in the neighbourhoods. They lament certain aspects of the situation – for example, social, cultural and demographic displacement – which contradict their personal political, moral and social beliefs.
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Ron, who has resided in Jaffa for 10 years, offers a harsh self-examination: I think the important question is what you do – how you communicate with your neighbours, which protests you join, how you influence the education system and how you feel about this place … People who move to Jaffa now because it’s cheap and cool make me sad. They don’t understand the consequences of their actions … I guess they and I are the same, but I do things, I try. That’s the only difference. Maybe some of them have really good intentions, but it’s what you do that counts in the end … And I don’t think things are going to get better here, they are going to get worse … I look around and feel like an ant, what have I done in the last 10 years? … How did I let this happen? But on the other hand we marched, we demonstrated, educated … When I look back on this year, I feel there was an OK balance – my presence here is still positive rather than negative, given all the things I did.
These are examples of interviewees’ responses to the question concerning their motivations. Individuals’ moral stances on gentrification probably begin to develop before they move to these neighbourhoods. However, the interviewees generally considered their actions to be motivated by certain urban processes that they noticed around them; indeed, moral motivation often translates into action (Bandura, 1997; Rosati, 2016). Understandably, those individuals who are less concerned by gentrification’s outcomes do not make an effort to influence the communal state of affairs, instead focusing on their personal well-being (which, of course, could also involve communal activities affecting the urban environment). In general, the findings reveal that incomers with the same moral stance do not always perform the same practices. These differences cannot be explained solely by their initial moral standpoints. They are also linked, as I shall show, to the sense of efficacy.
Efficacy and perception
Turning to the second question – what prevents incomers from acting in the way they believe will fulfil their intentions? – I analysed statements by interviewees who shared the same motivations and moral disposition but differed in their practices. 9 I traced these changes to their perceptions and notions regarding the reasons for the urban changes around them.
One group of interviewees described the urban processes underway around them, primarily gentrification, as an outcome of the existing global (and not necessarily national) economic power structures, siding with the ‘production camp’. Furthermore, they consider the processes to be inevitable. As Alan notes, ‘This process is not exclusive to Jaffa – it happens in every city in the world. It is part of the Western Capitalist culture … Essentially, money is involved … That’s what underlies everything.’
They frequently use terms like ‘market forces’ and ‘the invisible hand’, and argue that ‘this is how the economy works’, depicting gentrification as an inherently neoliberal and global process on which the individual has very little impact (Smith, 1996: 55). As Greg concludes in reference to real estate developers in the area, ‘I am used to the way market forces operate. This is their business, and it’s legitimate.’
This outlook on gentrification could be seen as yet another strategy for ‘displacing responsibility’ (Donnelly, 2018: 387–388). Four interviewees express a genuine belief in some form of ‘social ecology’–‘They are deeply deterministic, holding that cities have natural stages of decline and improvement in their organic “life cycles” and, therefore, legitimising existing or imminent urban conditions as unavoidable’ (Shaw, 2008: 1714).
Naturally, when an individual believes that greater processes determine the course of events in the city, she will have little, if any, belief in the individual’s efficacy in the urban sphere.
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As Bandura (1997: 3) argues, ‘[i]f people believe they have no power to produce results, they will not attempt to make things happen’. For this reason, even those individuals who find the urban processes around them disturbing do not channel these sentiments into action. As Maggie summarises: I don’t really have a sense of efficacy … I guess I’m just more sceptic. I do see some grassroots initiatives around me, people are trying to make a difference, make the neighbourhood nicer. I don’t think they are making much of a difference.
Ian, an agoniser, directly connects the lack of internal efficacy to large scale economic forces: I am definitely part of this neoliberal process … and … I help to generate more money for the richest. But it’s the same as any other gentrification process in the world … I can’t do anything about it. Even if I dedicate my life to this cause, quit my job, and use my expertise to fight these processes, I couldn’t restrain it, not to mention stop it. […] You can decide not to live here, but that won’t change anything either. Once the economic snowball starts rolling – there’s no stopping it.
At the other end, a second group of interviewees perceive the urban processes around them as agency-driven. They side with the ‘consumption camp’, tending to think that their behaviour and actions can indeed affect their surroundings. They possess a higher sense of internal efficacy regarding their urban environment, leading them to behave ‘differently from what environmental forces dictate rather than inevitably yield[ing] to them’ (Bandura, 1997: 7). These individuals are more proactive and oriented to changing and shaping their environment for – as they see it – the better. Ron says: ‘At the individual level you have a choice … You have a responsibility not to obey – to build something else … not just disobedience but constructing something else at the same time.’
While not denying the role played by the economy and politics in the urban sphere, these individuals attribute most urban processes to human agency – they are the outcomes of acts essentially driven by people’s tastes and preferences, whether intentionally or not. As Gabe notes with regard to power structures, ‘I don’t think this is only an economic process … I don’t like conspiracy theories … When such a big demographic change happens, usually people make it happen.’ Subsequently, referring to individual acts: ‘I, as one person, cannot change the system; but of course I can have an impact on the system. The system is made of people.’
Perceiving the urban processes as agency-led has a two-pronged effect on this group. They regard themselves as part of the processes but at the same time believe they can affect the process itself, at least to some extent. Most are highly self-reflective, acknowledging ‘that their … urban activism is occasionally an activity of the privileged rather than of those most directly affected by gentrification and social exclusion’ (Gurr, 2017: 131). Rachel describes her part in local protests: Obviously I am as much responsible for the gentrification of this place as any other young, Jewish middle-class individual who moved here. Every newcomer tilts the scale; we are the reason this place is changing … Sure, there are many problems, but it feels like in our little bubble we might actually make a difference, we are fighting for the life we believe in … I feel optimistic.
A typology of gentrifiers’ attitudes towards agency
Figure 1 reveals two themes according to which the interviewees were divided: the horizontal axis displays how individuals perceive urban social and economic processes and locate themselves within them – namely, whether they regard these processes as primarily agent-driven or structural. The vertical axis of the graph, by contrast, exhibits agents’ moral disposition towards the gentrification process in the neighbourhood, a process in which they participate as incomers. ‘Shruggers’ perceive the urban processes as primarily structural and therefore assume that an individual’s moral stance does not have a significant impact on political results; thus, they are morally indifferent to them. ‘Agonisers’ perceive urban social and economic processes as primarily structural, yet they feel moral discomfort. ‘Upgraders’ regard urban social and economic processes as primarily agency-driven; nevertheless, they are morally indifferent to them. Finally, ‘Activists’ view urban processes as primarily agency-driven and are morally uncomfortable with them; therefore, they try to help initiate change.
A typology of gentrifiers’ attitudes towards agency.
This does not imply that those who regard urban processes as agency-led completely ignore structural forces or vice versa. Indeed, the interviews suggest that this is not a binary distinction but rather a spectrum: the various practices appear at different points around or on the axes, not necessarily only at their extremes. A specific individual might have a stronger or weaker perception of the axes’ titles. Interestingly, the duration of individuals’ residence in the neighbourhood affects how they justify and explain their practices.
Duration and self-conviction
How can we explain the location of various gentrifiers on these axes? Can we achieve a better understanding of their position along the axes; namely, will they be located close to the meeting point of the two axes or nearer the extremes?
Referring back to how Tammy and Ron justify their involvement in the process of gentrification (see page 7), the contrast between Tammy’s confident statements and Ron’s contrite assessment is quite clear. Arguably, this difference results from the duration of their residence in the neighbourhood. Unlike stage theory, which relates to the period during which incomers entered the neighbourhood (e.g. urban pioneers), duration refers to the amount of time that the individual has resided in the neighbourhood and thus spent within the process of gentrification, regardless of when she joined it.
Although the practices reported by the interviewees are often very similar, their level of conviction regarding their moral stance and/or efficacy decreases as time passes. People who have resided in such neighbourhoods for more than two years tend to express their opinions more reluctantly, while those who are newer to the neighbourhoods for the most part convey their attitudes more decisively. 11 In terms of the above-mentioned axes, gentrifiers who have resided in the neighbourhoods for longer periods are closer to the centre of the axes than the newer incomers. This applies to individuals’ moral stance regarding urban processes as well as their sense of efficacy and how they perceive the reason for change in their urban environment.
Interestingly, the degree to which duration of stay is influential varies between the types, as does its effect. It does not have a strong impact on shruggers, who are quite aloof from the outset. However, as demonstrated by the extracts from Ron and Tammy’s interviews quoted above (page 7), duration generally affects activists’ sense of efficacy (internal and external): the longer the duration of their residence in these neighbourhoods, the less efficacious they feel. This is caused by the emergence of a feeling that their actions do not yield the desired change as time passes and gentrification continues. Though they report some successes, their general approach is less sanguine, at times even frustrated, or purely sceptical about the future of the neighbourhoods.
Moreover, although activists who have resided in the neighbourhoods for both long and short periods exhibit a strong sense of internal efficacy, the longer their period of residence, the weaker their sense of external efficacy becomes. They are concerned about the long-term effectiveness of their actions, and some wonder, as Olivia puts it: ‘whether we are ultimately just advancing the social and political transformation to which we object’.
Among the agonisers and upgraders, the duration of their stay most significantly affects their moral stance, pulling each type to the opposite pole. The change in their level of conviction can be attributed to a more thorough understanding of the complexity of places and processes, having lived in the neighbourhoods for longer periods. Though representatives of neither type report a shift in their initial opinions or practices, their exposure to daily life in the neighbourhoods and their improved understanding of reality’s complexity make them less certain that they are right.
Table 1 provides a list of selected practices carried out by the different types. In order to demonstrate how the axes’ themes and the duration of stay affect the different types, the next section elaborates on how the different groups perceive and justify some of these practices.
Gentrifiers’ attitudes towards agency in practice
Shruggers
Shruggers do not tend to establish strong community or neighbourhood relations, viewing their neighbourhood’s different populations as estranged from one another. Roy, for instance, identifies three main social groups in Shapira –‘work-migrants, old residents and young hipsters’, and refers to this social mix as ‘weird’, which makes him withdraw from any local social engagement or activities. For most members of this group, living in such neighbourhoods is a phase rather than a long-term commitment. They send their children to what they consider better schools and kindergartens, even if these are semi-private and far from their neighbourhood. Three out of five shruggers view Shapira and Jaffa as ‘unsuitable’ for raising children. As Ethan notes: ‘I don’t think this is a place for children. There are teenage gangs here … they do what they want. I wouldn’t want my children to grow up here.’ For Greg, the urban changes and the new mixed population pose a problem: ‘I wouldn’t want to raise my children in an over-liberal community. I’m sorry. I want them to grow up in a normal one.’
Upgraders
Upgraders show a greater tendency to cultivate a social and communal life. Mia lists the activities that gave her a sense of community when she first moved into the neighbourhood: ‘Getting to know people like me so fast, doing things together – building a composter, creating a garden, initiating events in the neighbourhood (…) starting our own private community in the neighbourhood.’ Roughly two thirds of this group’s members participate in or initiate various community endeavours, such as communal gardens, neighbourhood festivals and ad-hoc activities and events. Such projects are usually initiated and attended by other incomers, though some are community-wide. This group’s members explain their participation as stemming from personal interest (e.g. in gardening), but also as a way of generating a more communal and social way of living. When describing the future of the neighbourhood, Debbie envisions ‘a lively and magical community of people who care’. When asked about the identity of these people, she continues, ‘I guess most of them will be people like me, who fell in love with this place. I enjoy the current mix of people, but when I talk about my community, I think about people like me.’
Four out of seven upgraders say they made efforts to improve the cleanliness and safety of the streets, usually by complaining to the municipality. Two are also active in local protests about issues such as education (e.g. the lack of day care facilities) and the neglect of south Tel Aviv-Jaffa. Nonetheless, upgraders’ moral stances seem to blur somewhat as they stay in the neighbourhood longer and become more conscious of the possible effects of their actions. Debbie, who has been living in Shapira for six months and is very active in local environmental groups, says: We are making utopias become reality in this neighbourhood. Making the desert bloom … I don’t like all of this ‘right to the neighbourhood’ discourse. Someone has more right to this place because they lived here before? I just don’t understand the logic of this argument … Some of the people enjoy what we do and some don’t … That’s just the way it is.
Consider, in contrast, the reflections of another upgrader, Nancy, who is a member of the same environmental groups and has resided in the neighbourhood for about four years: I moved here from the city centre and immediately became very active in various local initiatives … We totally upgraded the place, made it beautiful, communal, more desirable, and then more people came … And I am all for positive urban transformation, but now I find myself ambivalent … At the beginning it was very clear to me what’s right and what’s wrong, but now I’m not sure – right for whom? For me and my friends? For the foreigners? For the locals? I don’t want Shapira to become a neighbourhood only for the rich … and now I think this is what I am doing.
Although upgraders reveal similar attitudes to those of shruggers regarding education, a third of them send their children to local educational facilities if these have a good reputation. Such establishments are often private or semi-private schools, some with mixed populations. Some interviewees who self-identified as politically left-leaning noted the importance of sending their children to kindergartens or schools with mixed populations, 12 although, as Kelly emphasises, not at any cost: ‘Some principles are important to me, but I won’t follow them at my daughter’s expense.’
Agonisers
Agonisers establish social ties with their neighbours (both gentrifiers and locals), feeling a sense of community, or social life, that they attribute to the place. As Moira highlights: ‘I understood the uniqueness of this place and space really fast; [it’s] very different from any other place I’ve lived in (…) a shared sense of togetherness.’ Though not all agonisers consider Jaffa or Shapira as a place they would live forever, their sense of commitment to the place, whether in the short or long term, is usually strong. Five out of 11 take part in local initiatives such as festivals and protests, mostly as participants rather than initiators. Four agonisers mentioned that they sometimes sign petitions concerning local issues, such as public transportation and education, though at least one person (Kacey) considered such actions ‘meaningless … done only to make myself feel better’.
They perceive education as a means of going beyond street politics, as ‘a first, if mild, step towards joint living’ [Jason] – referring to joint Arab and Jewish communities – and thus tend to send their children to local, usually mixed, schools. Nevertheless, the duration of their stay in the neighbourhoods affects agonisers’ attitudes to education. Despite perceiving the heterogeneous communities as the greatest advantage offered by the neighbourhoods, longer-term agonisers are more sceptical. This is evident in the reflections of Keith, who has lived in Shapira for six years: Honestly, I have a problem raising my daughter here; I haven’t come to terms with it yet … It’s important for me that she shouldn’t grow up seeing only children like herself, but I don’t see it as achieving anything for her to grow up in a dirty, violent place. Exposing her to this at such a young age is just sacrificing her, it doesn’t help anyone … If the local public education facilities won’t change, I won’t put her on the front line of political battles when I’m not even sure I fully identify with them anymore.
Activists
Much like Brown-Saracino’s social preservationists (Brown-Saracino, 2009), activists tend to be well embedded in the communal and social life of their neighbourhood. They cultivate strong social ties with their neighbours, whether locals or incomers. Like the upgraders, they are also inclined to initiate and participate in local groups and initiatives, such as communal gardens and local festivals. However, in contrast to the upgraders, activists channel ‘cultural and leisurely activities directly into political action’ (Monterescu, 2013: 5). The members of this group also engage politically by petitioning the municipality, joining locals in community struggles and protests about topics ranging from housing and security issues to basic municipal rights and broader political protests. Five out of nine view the struggles as their own, while the others differentiate themselves from the local residents: despite offering support, these are not their battles. Four stress the unique local features of these struggles, identifying themselves as what Monterescu (2013) called ‘radical gentrifiers’– gentrifiers against gentrification. In Ron’s words, activists are ‘raising awareness to what’s going on here … strengthening local voices … standing side by side with locals in all sorts of racial situations, of police brutality’.
Activists perceive local and mixed education as one of the most important motivations for moving to an area. They constantly compare the mixed schools with their own segregated childhood. For example, Liam says: ‘I was raised in a place that was very homogenous, very white. I think it’s a gift for my child to see children of different colours, backgrounds and speaking different languages.’ Such parents feel that mixed schools might give their children advantages they did not have, even if they do not succeed in realising the genuine, mixed society for which they hope. As Yana explains: We were not raised in these circumstances … When it becomes [my son’s] natural environment, the differences [between ethnic groups] will be less significant and maybe it will be easier for him to see beyond those differences and live in some mode of coexistence that we hope will succeed here one day.
However, most parents who have been living in the area for longer periods acknowledge that while it provides an opportunity for encounter, long-lasting relationships between different ethnic groups ‘do not come naturally’, as Liam puts it, and despite real efforts the mix does not always extend to afternoon activities.
Conclusion
This article suggests a new typology of gentrifers’ attitudes towards agency, based on an examination of how their perceptions of gentrification and their moral intentions translate into practices. The fieldwork reveals that gentrifiers can be classified according to individuals’ perceptions of the urban processes around them, their sense of internal efficacy (their perceived ability to make an impact on the processes) and their moral dispositions towards these processes. Additionally, the duration of residence in the neighbourhoods also moderates individuals’ reflections about their urban environment and their level of self-conviction regarding their acts.
As noted above, while Schlichtman et al. (2017) emphasise gentrifiers’ narratives, Donnelly (2018) focuses on narratives of liberal progressivism and Brown-Saracino (2009) examines the agency of a specific group of gentrifiers, this study offers a complementary perspective. It enhances the narrative-based research of gentrifiers by examining everyday practices, and it adds to specific group-based research by broadening our understanding of why individual gentrifiers act differently despite similar intentions. This is especially interesting with regard to groups that oppose gentrification – agonisers and activists.
By conceptualising four ideal types of gentrifiers’ attitudes towards agency – shruggers, agonisers, upgraders and activists – this article improves our understanding of the way gentrifiers act in their urban environment, and why they do so. Indeed, viewing gentrification as a process and not merely an outcome enables individuals to manifest their agency and shape their reality. Furthermore, the findings highlight how the duration of stay in gentrified neighbourhoods impacts incomers’ sense of internal efficacy, their understanding of the process and their moral disposition towards it. The latter adds a complementary angle to the stage theory, by showing that new gentrifiers might share the same motivations and behave similarly to early-stage gentrifiers. Further investigations in other urban settings should facilitate a more detailed account of each type; explore whether the different types are perceived differently by long-term residents; and examine whether different urban (and national) settings affect the way gentrifiers perceive urban processes and react to them, both morally and practically.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I thank the many interviewees for sharing their time and thoughts. Noam Gidron, Nimrod Kovner, Tamar Hofnung and Lior Glick all offered their helpful comments on previous drafts of this article and I am indebted to them. I am especially grateful to Avner de Shalit for his going encouragement and wisdom. I thank the journal’s editor and reviewers for their helpful remarks and suggestions. Finally, I would like to extend my gratitude to the Minerva Centre for Human Rights at the Hebrew University and its Human Rights under Pressure programme for their ongoing support throughout this project.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
