Who Are the Gentrifiers and How Do They Change Central City Neighbourhoods? Privatization, Commodification, and Gentrification in Bucharest

Abstract

Our understanding of gentrification outside of the Anglo-Saxon core is relatively undeveloped. In order to contribute to a more de-centered approach, we ask who are the gentrifiers and how do they change central city neighbourhoods in a post-socialist context? The answers are explored through a mixed-methods approach, using both quantitative and qualitative data: construction permits analysis, census tract data, field trips, and interviews with tenants, former owners, and real estate agents. Findings indicate that gentrifiers vary in nature. They include state tenants, former owners, marginal gentrifiers, political capitalists, and institutional investors. Through their actions, central neighbourhoods have gained younger, more educated, and smaller households. Beyond this case study, we emphasize the usefulness of rent gap theories, the need to study displaced households, and the potential of property rights to enrich theories of gentrification.

The modern mahala: making and living in Romania’s postsocialist slum

“…Overall, postsocialist Bucharest produced a space in which the Bucharester lives on average in 19 m 2 . My survey, on the other hand, discovered extremes where people live in less than 4 m 2whereas Chelcea, Popescu, and Critea (2015) indicate that central districts have average surfaces of 29 m 2 per person (see Table 3). Even if Ferentari-level overcrowding was by no means a policy aim, it was also not prevented by housing policies nor addressed by private initiatives.…”

Evictions as infrastructural events

“…The owners managed to regain all the buildings at 50 Vulturilor Street in 2002 and flipped the property for about 1.8 million Euros to a Norwegian real estate investor. His intention was to demolish the original structures and build luxury condominiums, a common form of new-build gentrification in Bucharest redrawing the class geography of its central neighborhoods (Davidson, 2018;Chelcea et al, 2015;Bürkner & Totelecan, 2018; see Figure 2). During the Global Financial Crisis of 2007 construction plans stopped, but the investor's lawyers managed to get eviction orders for all residents in 2014.…”

Assemblages of Urban Leisure Culture in Inner‐City Bucharest

“…Around 2010, the scenery changed dramatically, reversing the pattern of abandonment, commercial decay and spatial concentration of poverty (Chelcea et al, 2015). After years of neglect, public support for redeveloping the area now became evident.…”

“…We had to abandon our initial assumption that the sudden awakening of the inner city might be related to Romania's EU membership, in particular to incoming investment capital and the growing presence of cosmopolitan gentrifiers (cf. Chelcea et al, 2015). After all, it had been plausible that access to European funds might have prompted the local administration to apply for urban regeneration funds.…”

“…After a lengthy period of social and economic stagnation following system change, new social, economic and political impulses have become clearly visible, especially in the oldest part of the capital--the historical neighbourhood of Lipscani. Formerly derelict streets showed signs of revitalization resulting from small-scale private investment, developing gentrification and a new street culture (Chelcea et al, 2015).…”