Gentrification

Gentrification means transforming a working-class or vacant urban area for upper-income, residential or commercial use. Since its inception in the 1960s, the term gentrification has been a bone of contention among researchers, politicians, policymakers, commentators, activists, and the like. Until the 2000s, gentrification research was almost wholly confined to cases from the North Atlantic region besides Australia, while academic debates orbited around its causes rather than its effects. Later, gentrification research has focused more on the effects of the process rather than its causes, and it has encompassed different cities of the world. At the same time, current researchers call attention to different forms of displacement and exclusion of low-income settlers, loss of the right to the city, changes experienced at metropolitan or regional levels, changes in consumption patterns by residents, widespread housing unaffordability as exacerbation of urban segregation, massive erasure of informal urban areas and settlers, anti-gentrification movements, among other critical issues.