Postscript

Abstract

This postscript to the Special Feature describes the explicit and implicit temporalities of gentrification in gentrification theory. It asks whether the papers in this collection affirm or disrupt the accepted understanding of gentrification as a phenomenon that emerged in the postwar years in the context of urban deindustrialization. It argues that a robust definition of gentrification, which identifies the historicity of the phenomenon and its temporal boundaries, is required in order to avoid the co-optation of gentrification definitions and theories and the ‘naturalization’ of gentrification. And, lastly, it suggests that critical history writing and historiography can contribute to gentrification studies’ project of denaturalizing the process by grounding it in long-term processes with a historical dimension.

Keywords:

• gentrification
• gentrification studies
• history
• critical history writing
• historiography

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Maroš Krivý and the issue’s editors for commenting on a draft of this paper and to Isabelle Doucet for her support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Some of the terms used here are mine, not Marcuse’s.

2 I am referring here narrowly to ‘definition’ as a concise explanation that is expected to distil the key characteristics of a term. Influential definitions of gentrification are referred to and operationalized by a wide array of academics and non-academics, too often in disregard to other criteria, conditions or explanations that accompany such definitions.

3 In a 2014 working paper, for example, a group of researchers argued (Venerandi et al. 2014, 31) that ‘Urban gentrification is here [in the working paper] seen as a natural and cyclical force underpinning the evolution of cities’ – despite consulting key gentrification literature.

4 The gentrification of already gentrified neighbourhoods suggests a continuous process without disinvestment and points to rent gaps no longer premised upon local housing markets. This could also imply a broadening of the term, which, combined with reducing gentrification’s association with deindustrialization, ostensibly enhances the relevance of the term to non-Western cities.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tahl Kaminer

Tahl Kaminer is Reader in Architectural History and Theory at Cardiff University.