Geography
The impossibility of gentrification and social mixing
Document Type
Book Chapter
Abstract
Whereas gentrification once represented an unjust process of social cleansing, it is now widely viewed in policy circles as a progressive social-policy tool. Bringing the middle classes into ‘socially excluded’ areas is seen as a way in which the poor and anti-social can be incorporated into a tolerant and prosperous society. This chapter examines how these notions and their political logics have been constituted in London, in the UK. Drawing on in-depth research in a number of Thames riverside areas of new-build gentrification, it offers insight into how these policy prescriptions have impacted on different neighbourhoods. It is argued that the neighbourhood-based social relations emerging in affected areas show a lack of mixing and therefore signal an important social policy failure; but also that mounting urban changes are simultaneously generating worrying displacement pressures.
Publication Title
Mixed Communities: Gentrification by Stealth?
Publication Date
2011
First Page
233
Last Page
250
ISBN
9781847424952,9781847424921
DOI
10.51952/9781847424952.ch015
Keywords
gentrification, urban neighborhoods
Repository Citation
Davidson, Mark, "The impossibility of gentrification and social mixing" (2011). Geography. 119.
https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_geography/119