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Gentrification in the Athenian Context: the Gas Neighbourhood Case Study
Abstract
Discourse on the phenomenon of gentrification has mainly focused on western cities of the US, Canada and the UK. However gentrification is experienced worldwide. Nonetheless as the socioeconomic and political context is different in each city, the process develops differently in each case with regard to the distinct background. However, research about gentrification in the Mediterranean region is limited. From this viewpoint this article deals with the gentrification process of the Athenian inner district of Gas. Although gentrification is privately led, the role of the State is crucial for the development and implication of this urban trend. Governments, central and local, facilitate this process and encourage private investments as in the short term they gain benefits and economic profits. However, in Gas the attraction of outside capital in special forms such as entertainment amenities overruns the local potential. This change in land-use results in the displacement of the local population, thus encouraging the conquest of the city’s core by the middle and affluent income classes. The article highlights the process of gentrification in this inner city area of Athens. Its basic purpose is to draw some general conclusions of the gentrification process in the Southern European context of Athens.
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This paper explores the process of displacement fromgentrification in three areas in central London. Taking as itsfocus the recent stress in policy documents on the need for mixedcommunities, the paper argues that extensive gentrification inthe case study areas threatens the sustainability of communitynetworks and of those services which excluded groups rely on.Drawing on disparate sources of data, the paper pieces together apicture of the scale and experience of displacement. It arguesthat there is a need to rethink the laissez faire policytoward neighbourhoods and the desirability with which many viewinfluxes of wealthy households into previously poor areas.
Does gentrification help or harm residential neighbourhoods and what are the implications of this evidence for current urban policies? This paper reports on a systematic review of the English-language research literature on gentrification which attempted to identify the range of costs and benefits associated with the process. It is concluded from this that existing evidence on gentrification shows it to have been largely harmful, predominantly through household displacement and community conflict. The paper then turns to the question of whether current UK urban policy developments are likely to engender gentrification. It is argued that, on the one hand, the language of gentrification processes have been used widely in regeneration policy documents to suggest positive forces for local housing and neighbourhood change. Meanwhile, policy instruments designed to deliver an urban renaissance suggest responses to the problem of gentrification in particular regional contexts and the promotion of gentrification itself in other localities. The paper concludes that the aims of an inclusive renaissance agenda appear to have been discarded in favour of policies which pursue revitalization through gentrification and displacement.
In comparison with international experience Greek spatial policy is exceptionally relaxed. This is true both regarding strategic large‐scale planning and land use control. In the absence of planning, the main mechanisms shaping territorial organization and land development are general (non‐geographically specific) building regulations which permit high building densities in both urbanized areas and the countryside, illegal subdivision of the land and unauthorized construction. Despite its negative environmental impact, this system is characterized by a high level of internal stability. On the one hand, it has the support of the majority of Greek society, and on the other hand it suits the political system's needs and priorities.
The literature on the Western city as a site of “actually existing neoliberalism” has done much to expose the injustices wrought by new modes of urban governance. In particular, this literature has highlighted the increasing exclusion of minority groups from the spaces of the central city. To date, however, there has been little sustained exploration of the gendered dimensions of this process. In this paper I offer such a gendered reading, suggesting that neoliberal policy serves to recentre masculinity in the cityscape at the same time that it encourages capital accumulation. I demonstrate this by noting some of the forms of revenge currently being exacted on prostitute women in Western cities, reading such actions as symptomatic of urban policies that serve both capital and the phallus. In conclusion, I suggest that the conceptual framework of neoliberalism is useful for making sense of contemporary urban restructuring, but only if we recognise that the resulting city can be mapped along axes other than those fixated on capital and class.
Gentrification has changed in ways that are related to larger economic and political restructuring. Among these changes is the return of heavy state intervention in the process. This paper explores heightened state involvement in gentrification by examining the process in three New York City neighbourhoods: Clinton, Long Island City, and DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). We argue that state intervention has returned for three key reasons. First, continued devolution of federal states has placed even more pressure on local states to actively pursue redevelopment and gentrification as ways of generating tax revenue. Second, the diffusion of gentrification into more remote portions of the urban landscape poses profit risks that are beyond the capacity of individual capitalists to manage. Third, the larger shift towards post–Keynesian governance has unhinged the state from the project of social reproduction and as such, measures to protect the working class are more easily contested.