Between a soft and a hard place: Southern European gentrification for short-term populations

Focusing on a selected case study in a central area of the city of Turin in north-western Italy, the main aim of this article is to discuss fifth-wave gentrification processes within the framework of austerity urbanism in Southern European cities. Based on semi-structured interviews, participant observation and digital re-photography, the paper discusses how short-term populations are used as shock troops to sanitise and cleanse rebellious and poor neighbourhoods. More specifically, the contribution explores the material and symbolic dynamics, or what we might call the hard and soft interventions of gentrification, through which public-private partnerships attempt to produce cities for increasingly affluent (short-term) users and to erase conflicts and undesirable urban populations, also claiming an aesthetic dimension. The first part of the article situates the analysis within the literature on fifth-wave gentrification and the debate on Southern European cities, while the second part draws on semi-structured interviews and visual digital methods to examine hard and soft interventions of gentrification, namely evictions and real estate redevelopment on the one hand, and graffiti and mural art on the other, in a central, multi-ethnic area of Turin, where local authorities and private investors have teamed up to design an upscale restructuring for short-term populations.