Gentrification

Harvey emphasizes the importance of analyzing cities as processes rather than just things.  Gentrification is one example of this dialectical relationship between the urban and the urbanizing process. These processes themselves must not only be considered to be shaping and shaped by the city, but also must be considered within a global context. As industrialization has been decoupled from urbanization, Smith argues that generalized gentrification has taken over as a production function and capital accumulation strategy. Gentrification has been recast as a positive process of reintegrating residents into the urban core of the city and as an environmentally friendly policy of developing on brownfields. New terms for gentrification like “urban regeneration,” sugarcoats this process of displacement. Just as Harvey argues that the urban cannot be separated from broader social, political, and economic trends, neither can the process of gentrification. Gentrification is just one of the many urbanizing processes that are disempowering individuals, marginalizing communities, and producing pollution and environmental degradation. As society continues to transform form rural to urban, these processes will affect more and more of the world’s population.  As opposed to the 19^th Century where urban problems were confronted with an attitude of social reform, the current negative trends are often ignored and treated with indifference and apathy.