Probing the symptomatic silences of middle‐class settlement: A case study of gentrification processes in Glasgow

Kirsteen Paton

City, 2009, vol. 13, issue 4, 432-450

Abstract: This paper critiques the use of gentrification within urban policy by examining gentrifiers’ neighbourhood practices. Strategies of gentrification are increasingly used to attract people and capital to places of 'decline’ in order to combat the effects of uneven development. Policy experts and governments believe middle‐class settlement creates 'cohesive’, socially mixed communities. However, such a strategy may have serious unintended and paradoxical consequences. Despite widespread application we know little about the outcomes of gentrification within urban policy. This paper seeks to rectify this by critically examining the hegemony of gentrification. This is explored empirically by examining the practices of gentrifiers. Hegemony normalises governance, which essentialises middle‐class settlement and legitimates their residential practices, over those of working‐class communities. Analysis of changes in the Park area in Glasgow reveals that incoming residents’ choices and practices centre around the consumption of segregation. The paper argues that bringing middle‐class groups into the debate and foregrounding their autonomy not only helps in aiding the evaluation of these policies; it elucidates how their practices actually impact upon working‐class communities, the supposed beneficiaries of their arrival.

Date: 2009
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DOI: 10.1080/13604810903298524

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