Gentrification as a Global Strategy

Abel Albet is an Associate Professor at the Department of Geography, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. Núria Benach is an Associate Professor at the Department of Geography, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain.

Foreword Part 1: Neil Smith: A Tribute 1. Neil Smith and gentrification 2. A political-geographic project against capitalism: an essay on the work of Neil Smith 3. The apocryphal diary of Neil Smith Part 2: On Gentrification and the Rent Gap Theory 4. The state of gentrification has always been extra-economic 5. Gentrification: disaster, necessity, opportunity? Notes for a critical use of the concept 6. Towards a theory of gentrination: global capital flows and the reshaping of the global semi-periphery. The cases of Greece and Brazil 7. Making rent gap theory not true 8. Rent gap theory is a political resource Part 3: Dispossession and Class Struggle 9. From Boise to Budapest: capital circulation, compound capitalist destruction, and the persistence of homelessness 10. Revanchism, ignorance and class struggle in austerity Britain 11. The class gap in gentrification: a political reading of the rent gap hypothesis 12. The new urban frontier of everyday evictions: contemporary state practices of revanchism 13. Capturing urban rent through evictions: home dispossessions in the historic centre of Palma (Majorca) Part 4: Policies and Strategies 14. Financialised rent gaps and the public interest in Berlin's housing crisis: reflections on N. Smith's 'generalised gentrification' 15. Beyond the 'revanchist city': when public policies softly support gentrification in the name of social mix. The case of Inner Paris 16. Urban regeneration, rent and labour: insights from Barcelona's 'Knowledge District' 17. A disappearing world: the ever-expanding 'frontier of gentrification' through the eyes of Porto's historic centre long-time residents 18. Architecture of violence: 'anti-beggar architecture' as the 'eureka' of urban regeneration Part 5: Activism and Resistance 19. The urban frontier: gentrification as ideology and class politics in the remaking of marginal urban space 20. Alternative geographies for social action in Medellín 21. Alternative narratives from an invisible city: gentrification, counter-proposals, and women activism 22. The onslaught against the Greek squatting movement and the value that it produced 23. Revanchism and the racial state: Ferguson as 'internal colony' Part 6: Neil Smith and Beyond 24. Gentrification and the urban struggle: Neil Smith and beyond