It's not Just a Question of Taste: Gentrification, the Neighbourhood, and Cultural Capital

Gary Bridge
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Gary Bridge: School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol, 8 Priory Road, Bristol BS8 1TZ, England

Environment and Planning A, 2006, vol. 38, issue 10, 1965-1978

Abstract: In this paper I explore elements of the relationship between deployments of cultural capital and neighbourhood change. Based on research in a gentrified neighbourhood of Bristol, England, I argue that for gentrifier households with children the need to reproduce (institutional) cultural capital in the education market can conflict with the desire to display (objectified) cultural capital via the gentrification aesthetic in the inner-urban neighbourhood. In the trade-off between aesthetics and education, education wins, resulting in a much more conventional suburban, exurban housing/neighbourhood career for onward-moving gentrifiers. I conclude by suggesting a more diffuse, provincial form of gentrification in which the different strands of cultural capital can conflict in urban space (rather than the smooth reproduction of cultural capital assumed by the idea of a gentrification habitus). It confirms that the intergenerational reproduction of an (urban) new middle class is likely to be confined to large metropolitan areas.

Date: 2006
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:38:y:2006:i:10:p:1965-1978

DOI: 10.1068/a3853

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