This book pays homage to Neil Smith’s ideas, offering a critical approach and rich collection of insights that draw on Smith’s work for inspiration and debate. With interdisciplinary and international contributions from leading experts, the book demonstrates the impact of Smith’s ideas on understanding the role of urbanisation in general and gentrification, in particulate, in contemporary society. The book demonstrates how gentrification varies significantly from city to city, across different cultural and political-economic regimes, and in terms of the timing of urban transformations.

This collection of texts provides a forum for debate for those working in urban regeneration and citizenship, and those directly affected by the processes and problems arising from gentrification. It will be of interest to students and scholars in urban geography, urban sociology, cultural studies, and wider social and urban theories.

Abel Albet is an Associate Professor at the Department of Geography, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain.

Núria Benach is an Associate Professor at the Department of Geography, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain.

See:

https://www.routledge.com/Gentrification-as-a-Global-Strategy-Neil-Smith-and-Beyond/Albet-Benach/p/book/9781138234253

http://espaiscritics.org

Contents:

 

Foreword

David HARVEY

 

Part I. Neil Smith: A tribute

1. Neil Smith and gentrification

Abel ALBET and Núria BENACH

2. A political-geographic project against capitalism: An essay on the work of Neil Smith

Luz Marina GARCÍA HERRERA and Fernando SABATÉ BEL

3. The apocryphal diary of Neil Smith

Fernando SABATÉ BEL

 

Part II. On gentrification and the rent gap theory

4. The state of gentrification has always been extra-economic

Hamish KALLIN

5. Gentrification: Disaster, necessity, opportunity? Notes for a critical use of the concept

Francesco INDOVINA and Oriol NEL·LO

6. Toward a theory of gentrination: Global capital flows and the reshaping of the global semi-periphery. The cases of Greece and Brazil

Antonis VRADIS

7. Making rent gap theory not true

Eric CLARK

8. Rent gap theory is a political resource

Ernesto LÓPEZ-MORALES

Part III. Dispossession and class struggle

9. From Boise to Budapest: Capital circulation, compound capitalist destruction, and the persistence of homelessness

Don MITCHELL

10. Revanchism, ignorance and class struggle in austerity Britain

Tom SLATER

11. The class gap in gentrification: A political reading of the rent gap hypothesis

Marc MORELL

12. The new urban frontier of everyday evictions: Contemporary state practices of revanchism

Vickie COOPER and Kirsteen PATON

13. Capturing urban rent through evictions: Home dispossessions in the historic centre of Palma (Majorca)

Sònia VIVES-MIRÓ and Onofre RULLAN

Part IV. Policies and strategies

14. Financialised rent gaps and the public interest in Berlin's housing crisis: Reflections on N. Smith’s ‘generalised gentrification’

Laura CALBET i ELIAS

15. Beyond the ‘revanchist city’: When public policies softly support gentrification in the name of social mix. The case of Inner Paris

Anne CLERVAL

16. Urban regeneration, rent and labour: Insights from Barcelona's 'Knowledge District'

Greig CHARNOCK, Hug MARCH, Thomas PURCELL and Ramon RIBERA-FUMAZ

17. A disappearing world: The ever-expanding ‘frontier of gentrification’ through the eyes of Porto’s historic centre long-time residents

João QUEIRÓS

18. Architecture of violence: ‘Anti-beggar architecture’ as the ‘eureka’ of urban regeneration

Sonia Maria Taddei FERRAZ, Luis Gustavo Rosadas CAMPOS, Mayra Duarte LIMA, Paula Ramos Corrêa Carvalho de MENDONÇA and Leticia Lyra ACIOLY

Part V. Activism and resistance

19. The urban frontier: Gentrification as ideology and class politics in the remaking of marginal urban space

Catharina THÖRN and Katarina DESPOTOVIC

20. Alternative geographies for social action in Medellín

Eryka Y. TORREJÓN CARDONA

21. Alternative narratives from an invisible city: Gentrification, counter-proposals, and women activism

María del Socorro PÉREZ RINCÓN FERNÁNDEZ

22. The onslaught against the Greek squatting movement and the value that it produced

Myrto DAGKOULY-KYRIAKOGLOU

23. Revanchism and the racial state: Ferguson as ‘internal colony’

Deborah COWEN and Nemoy LEWIS

Part VI. Neil Smith and beyond

24. Gentrification and the urban struggle: Neil Smith and beyond

Núria BENACH and Abel ALBET