Abstract
In this chapter, we examine an issue never far from the mind of social scientists and commentators interested in cities: gentrification. After considering key contributions to debates over the gentrification of cities, we explore what the arrival of the ‘gentrifying frontier’ on LG has meant for residents of the estate. More specifically, we explore the consequences of rising property prices and a changing cultural setting for owner-occupiers, private renters, landlords and council tenants. Exploring these consequences of course entails a consideration of what role, if any, members of each group have played in processes of gentrification.
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Notes
- 1.
Here, of course, we draw on Portes and Zhou’s (1993) concept of segmented assimilation. This states that members of different immigrant groups become assimilated to different segments of society.
- 2.
For a similar discussion in the context of gentrification in US cities, se e Smith (1996: 144).
- 3.
Here Sheridan referred to a growing number of people who either ‘buy to leave’—that is, purchase a property as an asset which they leave unoccupied until its value has risen and selling becomes an attractive option—or very wealthy buyers who intend to occupy the property for a short period each year.
- 4.
Rightmove is the largest online portal of property for sale and rent in the UK. It is accessible through a website and mobile phone/tablet application.
- 5.
‘Edgy’ is a slang term meaning trendy yet shabby, characteristics often associated with areas experiencing the early stages of gentrification.
- 6.
A number of cheap barber shops have sprung up in and around central London over the last fifteen years. These compete with one another on cost, with the cheapest charging just £6 for a dry cut.
- 7.
Sheridan’s comments above also hint at this possibility.
- 8.
A letter to a local London newspaper provided further support for such differentials. The council tenant of a two-bedroom, 61 square metre flat located in a central London borough wrote: ‘The neighbouring flat, same size, long since sold to a number of absentee landlords, has been divided up into a four-bedroom property with each miniscule space individually rented out for more than my entire flat. How about that for greed eh!’ (quoted in Camden New Journal 2017).
- 9.
A key consideration here has traditionally been concern over quality of schooling (see Hamnett 2003: 186–187).
- 10.
Ben and Dave were not alone. Research published by campaign group Fifty Thousand Homes has found that 70 per cent of Londoners between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-nine feel that the cost of their rent or mortgage makes it difficult to work in the city (cited in Minton 2017).
- 11.
Here Karim alluded to legislation, introduced in April 2016, which forced buyers to pay a stamp duty surcharge of 3 per cent on the value of a property if it was not their principal residence. This, indeed, had the effect of significantly reducing the number of buy-to-let mortgages taken out by investors. From a peak of £4.4 billion in March 2016 (as investors rushed to beat the new charges), buy-to-let lending had fallen to £900 million by April 2017 (Maidment 2017).
- 12.
Google Earth is a computer programme that uses satellite imagery, aerial photography and a geographic information system to create a simulacrum of the earth.
- 13.
Properties such as this were acquired by Northtown Council as part of its municipalisation programme of the 1960s and 1970s.
- 14.
- 15.
The explosion in the number of private renters has led to declarations that the idea of a ‘property-owning democracy ’ is dead (Rampen 2016).
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Rosbrook-Thompson, J., Armstrong, G. (2018). Habitable Space? The Price of Gentrification. In: Mixed-Occupancy Housing in London. Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74678-4_6
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