Community,Aesthetics,and Authenticity: The Retail Curatorship of a Rapidly Gentrifying Australian Streetscape

Introduction

This article explores the role of retail mix and transformation and the battle for authenticity in the gentrification of an inner city neighborhood in Brisbane, Australia. Change to retail mix is one of the more obvious markers of gentrification and the way in which these changes take place and their subsequent effect on the social, cultural, and aesthetic character of gentrifying neighborhoods is well-documented (Bridge & Dowling, 2001; Sullivan & Shaw, 2011; Zukin et al., 2009). In this article, we take a different perspective by engaging with retailers themselves. Retailers and hospitality owners have a special position in proximity to the public realm and their subjective interpretations and theorizations of space are important to properly grasp their ability and desire to preserve or enhance it (Sutton, 2010; Zukin, 1995). With the assistance of visual methods, we seek to understand retailers’ constructions of what constitutes “authentic”retail and public space in a rapidly gentrifying streetscape (Belina, 2011; Koch & Latham, 2013).

West End (Figure 1), in Brisbane, Australia’s third largest city, is an inner city neighborhood that has slowly been transformed from its industrial beginnings by gentrification since the early 1990s. It was originally established as a working class neighborhood in the mid-19th century, servicing industrial and port facilities. After World War II, significant numbers of poor Greek migrants moved to West End to take up unskilled work and cheap housing, followed by an influx of Vietnamese and other migrants in the 1970s. This period also coincided with the establishment of West End’s bohemian reputation as students and artists, first wave gentrifiers, moved in for cheap rents and access to Brisbane’s universities. The rise in property prices and subsequent “owner occupier” or second wave gentrification of West End commenced in the 1990s following the transformation of Brisbane’s inner South after the 1988 Brisbane World Expo (Walters & McCrea, 2014). Third wave of “top-down” gentrification, characterized by large, high-priced apartment developments, with little obvious connection to the historical or aesthetic vernacular, commenced in the second decade of the 21st century as a result of rising inner city property prices and enabled by government “compact city” policies (Searle, 2010).

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Figure 1.

West End Brisbane (Boundary Street runs approximately North South through West End peninsula).

In this article, we focus on effects of this early stage of third wave “top-down” gentrification as the retail character of Boundary Street—the main shopping street of West End—transforms from what could be characterized as an early “bohemian” mix of traditional everyday businesses, low-priced food outlets and bars, and alternative commercial activities such as therapies and music stores, into a more self-consciously fashionable retail street with a hipster ethic including myriad coffee shops, higher priced eateries, boutique breweries, and vintage clothing stores (Hubbard, 2016). The effects of these changes to the diverse communities of West End have been contentious (O’Connor, 2016; Walters & McCrea, 2014). The reminders of an earlier gentrification process are still embedded in the street and, as we shall establish, in the community’s particular subjective construction of “authenticity” as integral to maintaining diversity in public space. We argue that the perspectives of retailers, particularly their different interpretations on the social environment, the aesthetics and the authenticity of Boundary Street provide an effective window into the moment when the values of a gentrifying neighborhood change from social to aesthetic.

Authenticity and Gentrification

The term “authenticity” can be problematic. There is a sense in which the term becomes redundant almost as soon as it is required, that is, true authenticity does not reflect on itself. However, the term has a currency and has become particularly contested when applied to gentrification. Zukin (2011) uses the term as a claim to a link with the past of a neighborhood and it is in that sense we will use the term here—as a subjective construction, or a claim, by our research participants locating themselves in the historical trajectory of West End. Authenticity implicates an “author” directly with a particular work; and the right to be connected with their creation (Beverland & Farrelly, 2010). In the flux of the city, an authentic experience is understood as a means of differentiating real or authentic neighborhoods from the placelessness of standardized retail and residential offerings created by capital and imposed on much of the city. The quest for authenticity, particularly for early gentrifiers, can be tied to the preservation of authentic architecture but also the respect and preservation of the culture embodied in the original occupants of the gentrifying neighborhood, as the “authors” of that authenticity (Brown-Saracino, 2009).

Zukin (1995) qualifies the aesthetic nature of the changing social city in spatialized interactions controlled by political, economic, and legal arrangements which use space and its history of use and consumption to make claims of authenticity. Authenticity is used somewhat more cynically by the market to incorporate and commodify history and culture as part of the value proposition or “brand” of a product (Rius Ulldemolins, 2014). It is in this way that third-wave property developers are using the history of West End to market apartments and new retail, drawing heavily on terms such as “eclectic,” “bohemian,” “artsy,” and “hip” to attract consumers to the area.

Reisinger and Steiner (2006) argue that authenticity is almost a hopelessly conflicted term if a single stable definition is required. As they note (Reisinger & Steiner, 2006), “If object authenticity can mean objectively real, socially constructed, and cynically manufactured, how is anyone to know what it is meant to mean?” (p. 81). However, these various meanings are all germane to the way that we will present authenticity in its social, aesthetic, and cynically commodified ways in this article. The difficulty of the term should not deter from its use as an explanatory vehicle provided its subjective construction is maintained.

This quest for, and contest over, authenticity in gentrifying neighborhoods takes place in streetscapes and public spaces encountered as a setting for social production and cultural consumption. The spatial study of street-level interactions was first developed theoretically by the Chicago School and then developed by authors such as by Zukin (1995) through studies of New York gentrification; and the social territory of the public realm by Lofland (1998). Through gentrification, urban public space has been transformed by the shifting economies of the market value for space and the cultural tastes of gentrifiers. The transformation of the inner city street can be seen as a reflection of fluctuating needs, from the democratic to the domesticated by business, loiterer, hawker, and pedestrian (Zukin, 1995). Lofland (1998) provides a critical analysis of how the public realm as a built environment is shaped through time and place, linking the aesthetic nature of the built environment to its use value. The spatial logic and placement of artefacts in streets and the public realm of the city contain important clues for understanding social interactions as spatially embedded. Zukin (1995, 2008), in observations of ongoing gentrification practices and the contest over authenticity in New York, describes these artefacts in terms of a symbolic economy created for consumption of fashion, music, and food and which then subsequently become the raw materials in the quest for authenticity in neighborhoods undergoing top-down gentrification by abstract capital (Lefebvre, 2003; Pugalis, 2009). In these places, everyday rituals of engagement for the diversity of commercial, and noncommercial life begin to give way to more predictable and commercially focused space (Amin, 2008).

Public spaces that are being given over to more private commercial interests remain public as far as they have a cartographic openness that enables a public thoroughfare. However, much of that space can become liminal or unlived through the removal of accommodating amenity such as street furnishings, shade, and spaces to loiter (Allen, 2006; Amin, 2008). Or, with the collaboration of government, these places are undergoing a process of sanitization which makes them ostensibly “safer,” but less accommodating of difference (Mitchell, 1995). They also lose evidence of a social history and the possibility of surprise for the visitor offered by more chaotic urban forms (Lofland, 1998). Allen (2006) describes the manipulation of these spaces, such as Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz, which, rather than securitizing the space using defensive intimidation, are designed for the “seduction” of the consumer, not the creation of an active public realm. These spaces have taken what is common, accessible, and local; and replaced it with sites structured around an imperative either to consume or to be isolated (Allen, 2006; Atkinson, 2003; Zukin, 1995).

Changes to retail offerings are a vivid sign of gentrification and are often used as a sign of encroaching displacement. Hubbard (2016) describes retail strips as “key battlegrounds of gentrification” between the “original” or “local” residents of gentrifying areas and newcomers. New businesses appropriate retail spaces that can no longer continue in their original form due to rising rents, retirements in family businesses and the opportunity to supply material needs for a more affluent incoming class of resident and visitor. Each new wave of residential type stakes its claim on these areas and their amenities.

On Boundary Street, a green grocer, a deli and a shoe store are all that remain of the pre-gentrification era and all have updated their offerings to cater to a changing demographic. The original pub has been completely renovated and now caters to a party crowd rather than regulars. Boundary Street now booms with independent cafes and “street food” restaurants, acai bowl bars, ramen eateries, multiple microbreweries, book stores, and vintage fashion outlets.

Trends in neighborhood retail strips have been analyzed previously by Bridge and Dowling (2001) using the example of Sydney to emphasize the importance of independent restaurants and cafes to all gentrifying landscapes. They also highlight niche consumption practices provided by retail districts as indicative the time and mechanisms of gentrification in each area (Bridge & Dowling, 2001). As retail gentrification occurs, retail becomes less instrumental and more whimsical, fashionable or niche and access to everyday goods and services for the surrounding residents is overlooked to reflect current trends (Sullivan & Shaw, 2011). This disruption of space anticipates the demands of the incoming gentrifying class, displacing those who are no longer relevant to them.

Practices of top-down or third-wave development are often seen as pastiche, a commodification or a moral abrogation by those who were originally responsible for creating places that appeal to values of diversity and inclusion (Atfield, 2016; Walters & McCrea, 2014). Values of community are also commodified and then rolled into discourses of “freedom” and “safety” (Kattago, 2014).

In the following sections, we will explore the place of retail, changing expectations and cultures in a gentrifying neighborhood from the perspective of retailers themselves. Retailers’ use of the streetscape is an extension of their vision of Boundary Street and is practiced within the social landscape they wish to sustain. Our visual analysis will explore claims by participants that while most small business owners see themselves somehow as “curators” of a culture in spaces to which they belong (Sutton, 2010), some are able to make a more convincing claim than others. In our research, we found two distinctive forms of curatorship evident in our interviews. The first was a social curatorship, concerned with a legacy of diversity and inclusiveness and provided the most tangible link with what they saw as the disappearing ethos of Boundary Street. The second, a group of more recent business arrivals on Boundary Street, we have called the “voyeurs” who were interested in curatorship of an aesthetic heritage, more than a social one, in keeping with the sustainability of their individual businesses. These newcomers fit more with a more commercial perspective on the street, and were eager to preserve the look and feel of the street, but for new and different reasons.

Method

Analyzing the role of street life, of how small businesses engage and evaluate it, can reveal the contradictions between aesthetic appeals of a public space and an appreciation of the consequences of its adaptation. Visual methods are able to prompt responses to change in public space, where photographs perform as a “third party” to which participants can respond (Lapenta, 2011). This constructionist technique suits the question of change in the process of public space and the subjective understanding of place as a constitution of memories, power, and identity—both collectively and personally produced (Lefebvre, 1974; Steets, 2016). In this study, photographs were used to evoke memory and the description of the ways the Boundary Street streetscape had been seen, changed, and lived in by the participating retailers. Although the photographs included only participants’ businesses and environment, the reminders of change in the photographs allowed participants’ memories to extend to other parts of the street, helping them provide their own subjective theorizations of change.

Images were presented to business owners in a photo elicitation interview, structured around a discussion of the role of spatial change that retailers had seen and produced, and were given as prompts to situate the context of the conversation as memory focused on an object. Using Google Maps to produce historical street views, we were able to use photos that depicted the same part of the street over a number of years (Figure 2). Interviews were structured in two parts; first by taking a background of how the participant had come to run a business in West End, and what changes they had seen over the time they had been there. Then using the photosheets from Google Maps participants could relate their conceptualization of the space with the changes over time and the different uses of the space, including their own.

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Figure 2.

Example of photosheets used in interviews depicting family run pharmacy taken over by a franchise pharmacy, a family fish and chip restaurant in replaced by an acupuncturist and at the time of the interview, a boutique brewery. Public seating is removed and then replaced in 2015.

Participant businesses were chosen according to business type, length of tenure, and by how their position on or near Boundary Street would create engagement with the street. Where possible, the gender and age of the business owner or manager were considered to give some diversity in representations of how the street is enabled through practice. Business owners (15 in total), along or adjoining Boundary Street, West End, participated in semistructured interviews that lasted from 30 to 60 minutes. The participants represented a bookstore, a vintage clothes store, a real estate agency, three bars, three cafes, a vinyl record store, a live music venue, a green grocer, a delicatessen, and an independent comic book shop (Table 1).

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Table 1.

Breakdown of Participants: Their Reference Number, Date of Business Establishment, and Classification in This Analysis.

Business type	Reference number	Date of business establishment	Classification
Independent Bookstore	P1	1997	Curator
Microbrewery	P2	2015	Voyeur
Independent Record Store	P3	2013	Voyeur
Café and Bar	P4	2015	Voyeur
Fruit Shop	P5	~1998	Curator
Real Estate Agent	P6	1983	Curator
Craft Beer Bar	P7	~2010	Curator
Traditional Deli	P8	1980	Curator
Café	P9	2003	Curator
Vintage Boutique	P10a/b	2014	Voyeur
Café	P11	2001	Curator
Indie Comicbooks	P12	2016	Voyeur
Music Venue	P13	~2012	Curator
Relaxed Bar	P14	2005	Curator

Our visual analysis will explore claims by participants that small business owners see themselves as “curators” of the culture in spaces to which they belong (Sutton, 2010). This means that retailers’ use of the streetscape is an extension of their vision of Boundary Street, and practiced within the social landscape they wish to sustain. However, there were two distinctive forms of curatorship evident in our interviews. The first was a social curatorship, concerned with a legacy of diversity and inclusiveness. The second, a group more recent business arrivals on Boundary Street, we have called the “voyeurs” who were interested in curatorship of an aesthetic heritage, more than a social one, in keeping with the sustainability of their individual businesses.

“The Curator”: Authenticity and the Changing Aesthetic

In this first section, we highlight the way the business owners saw change from their vantage points in the photos used in interviews. Using these photos to remind them of changes to the streetscape, each of the business owners reflected on their own idea of the changing aesthetic of West End’s street life over time. Owners of older businesses had a more nuanced and historically informed understanding of the aesthetic changes that gentrification had brought, and were more concerned about social impacts that these changes had brought than newer business owners. We label this group “curators” as they looked to preserve an authentic vision of the street through maintaining or enhancing what was already there for existing and incoming residents and visitors to Boundary Street. The curators were assisted by the photographs, but were also drawing on nostalgic memory, what Ocejo (2011, p. 306) calls “the community ideology of early gentrifiers,” used to prevent social and cultural displacement.

A curator retailer spoke about how her own view of space had changed as gentrification made its mark on the sort of people that West End was now attracting. She felt that others might be co-opting the space’s aesthetic for their own values:

It’s changed a lot from being a hippy area like it was when I first moved here eight years ago . . . lots of hippies. No shoes. Now [that she has a business] I think it’s more artists and musicians not necessarily people who wanna live on a commune, but artisans and the creatives of the local area and this is the hub for them. This is where they are all doing really cool shit. I just think, in my mind, it’s changed. But now it’s like everyone’s cashing in on how cool it is and Montague Road [in the top-down gentrifying part of West End] is going to be full of “cool development” and I dunno, it’s just a bit “wanky” now. . . . It was cool and then everyone came in and cashed in on the cool. (P10a)

Likewise, a bar owner of 11 years did not feel the “designer” graffiti on some newer establishments was “authentic” but rather, was appropriating the aesthetic for an assumed profitable vision. “If a bar was trying to fit into West End it’d have [real] graffiti; and none of these places are associating with the grunginess,” P14 argued.

Curators spoke of public space in terms of their own contribution to the whole, an investment of the self, and saw resistance to the area’s potential to change in those terms:

West End to me, there are only a few business owners who can say that it’s part of us. There are some business owners in the area who are purely coming here just to make money. Everyone wants to make money, don’t get me wrong, but there’s a different feeling. We care about what happens in the area. (P8)

Longstanding business operators also took a curatorial approach to using public space, developing and sustaining the aesthetic of Boundary Street by establishing explicit uses for footpaths (sidewalks); and an experiential awareness of the spaces around them as a part of their connection to that space. P8 described how his role as a business owner and resident in West End gave him the insight into the aesthetic values of West End’s street life. He emphasized its value for both the community and the businesses by “emphasising the role of local, people who used the footpath; that they broke down the boundaries between their business and the streetscape, became involved in the public nature of the street life, and showed pleasure in sustaining it” (Figure 3). Similarly, a long-term book store owner, who had been a resident since the 1980s, reflected on the ways her shop had engaged with the street using installations, table stalls, and performances:

I just like breaking down the divide between public and private, between retail and the footpath. . . . Anything that kind of personalizes the public space and makes people break down those barriers . . . anyone who may not feel like they are entitled to go into a bookshop . . . having things on the footpath helps to break that kind of thing down. (P1)

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Figure 3.

Depicts the life of Boundary Street as curated and become through spatial practices on the footpath. Public furniture allows a diversity of locals to loiter among through the use of the streetscape by fruit sellers.

Curated approaches to the spatial aesthetic can be likened to the domestication of space, using the cultural work of early gentrification that took place in sympathy with the social needs of the community context in West End (Schlichtman & Patch, 2014). This worked to produce Boundary Street as common space rather than privatizing the location of a shop as different from the context in which it was located (Koch & Latham, 2013).

P6, a representative of the established Greek business community for the past 50 years, also articulated this social responsibility to neighborhood, reflecting how changing the aesthetic of one of his former cafes had affected those who made common use of the street and the social practice of his store:

When more people came in and we cleaned everything up, they [the marginalized] stopped coming. And my wife said “sweetheart just have a look at why Kevin and Keith are not coming in here anymore.” They said “we didn’t think you wanted us.” My hair stood up. I said “why would you think that?” And they said, “oh well you’ve just cleaned it all up and made it look nice.” And that’s not what I wanted. . . . [P6]

He described the value of providing an inclusive culture in the use of space, and how easily space could be disrupted by “cleaning it up.” Curatorship worked to allow alternatives within inevitable change rather than be manipulated or lost to the top-down gentrification process.

The curatorial use of space was respectful of the effect that one’s commercial role had on the surrounding space. These business owners understood that physical changes to familiar space could be off-putting for the existing community. Curators described establishing a use of the space (their own and that of the street) that was sympathetic the community; as part of retaining a sense of place during change (Pyythinen, 2009). In this way, the visual appeal of Boundary Street was enhanced by the use of public space, created on the basis of common perception and action (Julier, 2005). Marginalized residents—many of whom are homeless and/or indigenous, used the public spaces near these shop fronts to gather and socialize without reproach.

P5, a green grocer, and a curator, heralded the coming of the new wave of business owners and what she perceived as a threat to local businesses, saying that “it’s always been very little franchises [independent retailers] on this strip, but now there’s more space available for what bigger businesses need” (P5). P5 concluded that this was the “natural” development of the street as businesses reflected the perceived needs of development capital. The more diverse and smaller businesses were losing their ability to hold onto the street.

We’ve lost a mix of business over the years; we had a lot more different businesses over the years, more butchers, fruit shops and green grocers. It used to be a place where people could do all their shopping. Now it’s changed. (P8)

P8 reflected this as a loss of street life as local people were no longer able to do their everyday shopping on the strip where there once had been butchers, hardware stores, and multiple grocers.

This subjective understanding of an aesthetic of the past was manifest in a lack of upkeep of retail properties which added of the authenticity of “shabby-chic” buildings (Zukin, 2008). His description of place and use of the term “authentic” as a value for how West End needed to be preserved was the product of his experience of the identity of place as an early gentrifying suburb over 20 years ago and the aspects of his own identity invested in the street. The discourse of “authenticity” has what Zukin (2011) describes as a “schizoid” value in its variety of interpretations and applications; and as a term that allows for claims to collective identity (Amin, 2008). Regard for shared aesthetic values that were authentic to this space maintained the trust of their original customer base for these long-term businesses, as opposed to outsider forces of gentrification.

Another café and bar owner pointed out on the photographs a newer group of businesses opening in the area (Figure 2), as changing aesthetics both caused by and causing increasing rents and a loss of locals and their choices:

There’s no personable space, it just doesn’t fit. But that’s the new West End and prices are super high. Doing pork belly cubes on a bed of asparagus spears for $300 [sic]. That’s not West End, where’s the tofu! (P4)

The curators perceived the authentic social experience of Boundary Street as threatened by the commodification and homogenization of what they represented as their vision and personal investment in the space.

Voyeurs

“Voyeurs” is the label we have given to participants who were newcomers (within the past 3 years) to Boundary Street and, like the curators, valued both the aesthetics and the authenticity that Boundary Street offered. However, unlike the curators, who saw the street both in terms of subjective investment in community and a set of social norms that sustained it, the voyeurs saw themselves as attempting to emulate the existing aesthetic of Boundary Street as a value proposition for their new businesses. It is here that we can see a rupture in how “authenticity” is considered and used, where it moves from achievement to strategy. This is not to say that the voyeurs were not sincere in their commitment to the neighborhood, which we shall discuss further below.

Although these people may have also seen themselves as curators of the Boundary Street aesthetic, and in one sense they were, there was much more of the aesthetic than the social about their understanding of their own role in the street. We have called them “voyeurs” because in comparison with the longer term curators, they viewed Boundary Street and its spatiality from a distance, as something that had been created by others, in which they now found themselves invested. These people were operating businesses such as independently published books, vintage clothing, or niche hospitality venues.

During the interviews and observations, these businesses were constructed by their owners in terms of a perception that they needed to be responsive to the demands of a recently understood style, to appease their eclectic clientele, and fit into what they perceived West End to represent. Unlike the curators, in considering the changes to the streetscape’s visual role the voyeurs had eyes on themselves rather than any community or public realm. For example, a new hospitality business manager looked at the photosheet and commented that he did not see much change to his street front but noted that a popular business had been priced out of the area. He said,

I think it’s modernizing, and you see how there’ll be clearer tints of color or the signage and stuff like that, that’s probably stuff like, a reflection of the way things go, [but] we’ve still got our own take on everything. (P2; Figure 2)

He described the use of public space in terms of his own premises, which he saw as contributing to the authenticity of the design of the building: “all the original, the art deco frontage is all original and stuff like that, it’s definitely the idea to keep it original or make it more original than it was when we started” (P2, Italics added).

While some voyeurs were simply interested in maintaining their livelihood on the basis of the appeal to a market that had drawn them to West End originally, others were, ironically, alert to a shift in demographics and even newer businesses that they felt were disingenuously commodifying the authentic aesthetic of the local practices of those they regarded as “West End people.” In this way, there was some discourse of community from the voyeurs, but it tended to conform to the more exclusionary form observed by Deener (2007) in his ethnographic work on retail gentrification of Venice in Los Angeles. For example, P10 (two women) who had been running a vintage fashion boutique for 5 years on Boundary Street saw themselves as aesthetic curators. They said that when they had made the decision to start their business the area still felt “a bit sacred—while there was a focus on other areas of the city—West End had a highlight on it because now they know how cool and happening and trendy it is” (P10a). Her business partner responded that the Boundary Street night markets recently played a role in signifying a cultural and economic shift in the use of and attitudes toward how space is used: “It brought so many people here. . . . It gave people a fresh view that West End is a cool place to go out and it’s not just some hippies on the street being weird” (P10b). This representation of space was blind to any social heritage in West End. The comment depicted the arrival of more fashionable or wealthy set of people as an improvement on the naturally “grungy” aesthetic that had been a marker of authenticity.

In contrast, curators demonstrated how older businesses saw and used space in Boundary Street to their common advantage and by doing so saw themselves as empowered to represent the vision of authenticity they project to the voyeur or newcomer who were changing businesses and threating the diversity and therefore the authenticity of the neighborhood. P14, referring to the same Boundary Street open air night markets that P10 described above, said, “That really started the community feeling again and that’s why we picked it up again. We thought that was what West End needed and it was a great use of space.” This part of the curator’s discourse worked to change and produce new space with regard to their authentic social vision of Boundary Street, resisting the co-opting of space for purely aesthetic reasons and a new vision of “authenticity” by top-down developers. Although ironically, it was a large real estate developer that made the space for these markets available, using the markets to promote its apartment development as “authentically West End.” The developer then closed the markets down without warning in order to continue with its transformation of the land into luxury apartments.

Where P10 attempted to differentiate themselves from a former aesthetic and an incoming one, they still looked and used the space as voyeurs. Through producing an apparent authentic aesthetic and use of space, which they believed their business would flourish in a local community that appreciated their particular style:

Voyeurs saw the streetscape as an aesthetic reflection of their own desire for self; or through a more self-absorbed view of changing space, rather than any historical sensibility. As change progressed through West End, a hospitality owner of 3 years, saw herself as taking advantage of an opportunity within the market to appeal to the new and affordable. She believed that maintaining an aesthetic grip on the area was achieved through “creating” inclusivity and a hip atmosphere as a reflection of her own perception of West End’s condition, now at risk through the homogenization that comes with third-stage, or top-down, gentrification:

We are at risk of losing that younger indie and quirky set [like myself]—I hate that but it is a quirky jammed-together thing. Copper beer taps and matching chairs and that sort of thing, it’ll crush all the creativity out. And only money will be left. (P4)

The role of public space and diversity also differed between curators and voyeurs. P8, a long-term resident and operator of a traditional delicatessen on the strip, saw that the facilitation of open and accommodating public spaces was crucial for businesses, residents, and customers, old and new. In the photo elicitation interview he said: “I understand that when we have clients who come from outside the area, they see certain things and I have to tell them that it’s just normal. They think, ‘ok great, that’s West End’” [P8]. P12, a voyeur running an indie comic book store, was conscious of this attitude by the curators. He observed that businesses were more comfortable engaging with the commons, the longer they spent on Boundary Street:

Spaces [businesses] that have stayed use public space a fair bit. There’s some new spaces [in] the alley ways and car parks because of need. These spaces are a little bit institutional in the streetscape culture. There must be longevity in reaching out to the public here. (P12)

Though the voyeur participants appreciated the history and social importance of Boundary Street’s public space, they brought their own sensibilities and needs to this engagement, in contradiction to what could be considered the dominant discourse of the wider West End community (Walters & McCrea, 2014). P10, a vintage clothing retailer, politely opined that in terms of the sociability of street life, the use of space by the homeless and alcoholics was confronting to her: “We have a nice green space next to us but it’s also inhabited by a lot of people who are drunk through the day and screaming and I see so many fights from up here” [P10a]. Her desire for accessible green space revealed a bourgeois ideal of limited freedom to use public space, where the interests of private property are preserved (Belina, 2011). It reflected her priorities, guided by her business and in the interests of her own safety, to be managed independently of her desire for inclusivity.

Similarly, as a voyeur who was beginning to settle in, P4 explained that while street life sometimes affected her business, she limited the impact of neighboring public housing on her business by engaging visibly with decorations and comfortable, camp aesthetics to establish social boundaries and promote safety without enforcing exclusion.

It’s about the safety and comfort of my customers, because I’ve definitely had my customers harassed which makes my business look bad. . . . Having said that I’ll cover the fence in lights and make it look as nice as possible and keep the lights on . . . I think we have a problem with how dark it is out here. (P4)

Often the inevitable securitization of more affluent space makes it less publicly engaged, as seen in Allen’s (2006) study of the privatization of Potsdamer Platz in Berlin where he describes the process as desensitizing the eyes and ears of the street for surveillance. Although long-term West End locals were seen by participants as creating the appeal and authenticity of the street through their contribution to the space, Boundary Street is a visible hospitality precinct for those with disposable incomes, which draws attention away from the community that gave it its authenticity in the first place. The loss of variety in business types, and the growth of hospitality businesses decreased the number of “eyes on the street” and the social viability during the day.

The photo elicitation process provoked many of the participants to project the social life of the street, or loss of it, onto the images. Those who did so equated the loss in particular types of visible people to the loss of street life. Buskers and other “undesirable” locals were “cleaned up” from public space (Figures 4 and 5). Decreasing visibility of those who created the appeal of Boundary Street’s was, for some business owners, a sign of the development and regulatory attention that a wealthier area would bring.

When you come to West End you expect to see art, you expect to see diversity and all the rest. You know, all the walls done they’re all blank and it’s pretty disappointing but that’s Brisbane and Queensland in general. (P13)

We are at risk of losing that younger indie and quirky [like myself]—I hate that but it is quirky jammed together thing—to a copper beer taps and matching chairs and that sort of thing, it’ll crush all the creativity out. And only money will be left. (P4)

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Figure 4.

Widened footpaths by franchise businesses. Building facades are updated by older businesses to keep up in the “new” Boundary Street, and previously public seating is now privatized.

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Figure 5.

Sidewalk area between “People’s Park” and Boundary Street. Depicts Indigenous radio kiosk, and diversity of retail in the background. Previous public seating in this area has raised disputes. Banner above kiosk reads “Free Food here every Wednesday 4pm.”

As Hwang (2016) argues, visualization of public spaces is established by boundary making and the negotiation of space is a relational practice. Space is transformed by the social, and fluctuations in the uses of spaces result in changes to the externalized representation of the public (Lefebvre, 1974). Where concrete spaces frame ability to relate and construct relationships, the perspectives of small business owners can be understood through their discursive description of the streetscape and how this shapes who benefits its adaptation.

Conclusion

In this article we used photographs depicting changes in the streetscape of Boundary Street West End to elicit constructions of the streetscape through late stage gentrification by small business proprietors. The photographs were useful for their ability to both directly remind participants of physical changes, but also allowed them extrapolate to the rest of the street focused their memories of change, and nostalgia for what had passed (Ocejo, 2011). Their aesthetic vision of the authentic was used to give context to a collective memory and a legitimacy from which to make normative observations about the past present and future of Boundary Street. From the interviews, we identified two broad categories of proprietor, the “curators” who had been in West End for longer, who had seen the process of gentrification from the outset or at least from its first stage. The curators had far more of their identity invested in the street and this underwrote what they perceived as the disappearing authenticity of Boundary Street, expressed in social as well as aesthetic terms. The curators saw their businesses as part of an ecosystem of commercial and noncommercial activity and these participants had a less self-conscious understanding of what it meant to be “authentically West End.” Independent small business owners, who self-identified as “original,” used the change to reproduce the street in ways that were satisfactory to them and their social environment, through acts of curation to break the boundaries of private and public space on the street, to sustain the vision as inclusive.

Those who had arrived later in the process, the “voyeurs,” while often running similar businesses, deployed the idea of authenticity as an existing characteristic of Boundary Street and therefore as an asset to their business. These newcomers were respectful of the heritage of the street, and they established the aesthetic features of their businesses in homage to what they interpreted the ethos and authenticity of Boundary Street. Accordingly, it might be too strong to accuse the voyeurs of commodifying the authenticity of West End, given this largely respectful standpoint and their efforts to fit in to what they perceived as the prevailing ethic of Boundary Street. However, from the photo elicitations it was clear that the character of Boundary Street that they had inherited from the curators was a business advantage, something to nurture, aestheticize and from which to profit.

The commodification of authenticity needs to be reserved for what we have termed the “third wave” of gentrifiers; the luxury apartment developers, national franchisees, and large entertainment venues that are making their presence felt in the neighborhood. The marketing campaigns of these businesses create simulacra of a sanitized bohemia, of an edgy lifestyle destination replete with cool music, food, and coffee, but without the constant work required of residents and institutions to create space for the marginalized and unruly (Walters & McCrea, 2014). It is these representatives of abstract capital which make the most urgent use of the term “authenticity” and which will eventually grind any place-based originality from neighborhoods such as West End through the parochialization of tastes by a wealthier class of consumer (Gunder, 2005; Lofland, 1998).

The idealization of place brings with it defensive declarations, articulated against a perceived threat to the collective memory, and revealed when a site is put at risk, which can often be too late (Amin, 2008). People moving into areas at times of top-down gentrification are curious to understand how tastes and location choices informed by the cultural work of business in an earlier version of their neighborhood (Sutton, 2010). Previous occupants and their cultural and ethnic histories have given the neighborhood the aesthetic character that they now find attractive, but this will inevitably change. A claim to authenticity must not only be an appropriation or crisis of memory; but the protection of what remains in the social life of the street. Our research has contributed to an understanding of the attitudes informing the use of space by small business owners, their aesthetic approaches to producing accessible public space and their orientation to local community and culture depending on length of tenure.