Property Ownership, Tenure, and Displacement: In Search of the Process of Gentrification

Abstract

Despite three decades of continuous research on gentrification, there are a number of areas where understanding of this process still remains quite rudimentary, especially with respect to the actual process of gentrification itself. The author seeks to focus attention upon this issue by examining how historic change to property ownership and tenure structure of housing induced by gentrification impacted upon the unfolding of this process in the inner Sydney suburb of Glebe from 1960 to 1986. By using an empirical analysis he reveals that a synchronisation existed between the market behaviour of small-scale property owners, working-class incumbent upgraders, and middle-class homebuyers and renters which had a significant bearing upon both the timing and the extent of gentrification activity in the case study. In addition, once a less orthodox method of measurement was employed, social replacement was found to operate alongside social displacement. The implications of these findings suggest that the process of gentrification is much more complex than has been previously inferred in the empirical literature and that this particular form of neighbourhood change can follow a number of possible trajectories, as has been more recently asserted in cross-cultural research.

Housing Liberalisation and Gentrification: The Social Effects of Tenure Conversions in Amsterdam

“…There have been several studies which have shown the effect of tenure conversions on stimulating gentrification (Hamnett & Randolph ; Murie ; Murie & Musterd ; Engels ; Millard‐Ball ; Kennett & Forrest ). Like much of gentrification research, these studies have a tendency to focus on social economic transformation, that is, changes in income or class over time.…”

Tenure change in London’s suburbs: Spreading gentrification or suburban upscaling?

“…Even trajectories ending with the Private Rented Sector can be understood in this way, as has been argued in studies highlighting the multiplicity of tenure trajectories in gentrifying areas (DeGiovanni and Paulson 1984;Engels 1999;Paccoud 2017). For the six tenure changes described above, Outer London upscaling outnumbers that in Inner London (324 vs 266 OAs).…”

Globalisation, Gentrification and Spatial Hierarchies in and beyond New South Wales: the Local/Global Nexus

“…The two study sites examined in this research were the suburb of Glebe in Sydney and the suburbs of Cooks Hill and Newcastle East in Newcastle, hereafter referred to as Inner Newcastle unless otherwise specified. These study sites were selected on the grounds that both have well documented gentrification histories (see Horvath and Engels, 1985; Engels, 1999; Rofe, 2000; 2003; 2004; Bridge, 2001). This is important because the aim of the broader research agenda was to study the emergence of the gentrifying class as an élite global community and not to study the gentrification process per se .…”