3 - Urban Processes - Segregation and Gentrification Flashcards
(17 cards)
Define segregation.
The enforced separation of different racial groups(Oxford English Dictionary, 2025)
Name different types of segregation.
Social(e.g. people) & spatial(e.g. areas)
Explain how different types of segregation can take place through residential urban segregation.
Social - homogenous groups of people - Stamford Hill(Jewish community) & Wimbledon(South African community)
Spatial - live in separate areas - Apartheid in South Africa & Redlining in the US
What are some causes of urban segregation?
Legal - institutional frameworks e.g. apartheid
Economic - increased land and housing prices - e.g. US ‘ghettoes’
Social - self segregation - gated communities in rich areas in LICs e.g. South Africa
What is a key theory of urban segregation from the 1920s?
The idea of the industrial city - Chicago School model - Park/Burgess(1925)
Explain the 1960s theory of the neo-liberal city.
(Alonso, 1965) - The idea that income is key in determining spatial distribution of people - rich people outbid poor for space
Explain the 1960s theory of the colonial(pre-industrial) city and name an example.
(Sjoberg, 1960) - Preferential parts of the city(with water, transport, electricity) reserved for the colonisers(e.g. British in India)
Evident in Cape Town - location of main job centres coincides with where White South Africans reside
Briefly explain the theory of the global city.
The idea of the global city is rooted in the idea of a city being affected by globalisation(TNCs, services etc)
How did Wacquant define the ghetto?
(Wacquant, 2007) - describes the ghetto as a concatenation(series of interconnected things) of mechanisms of ethnoracial control founded on the history and materialised in the geography of the city, rather than the Americanised definition of poverty
Define suburbanisation.
The process of towns growing out to engulf villages or rural areas that exist around them
What is a suburb defined by?
Spatial - urban edge
Physical - large homes, green
Socio-economic - middle-class and white
Cultural - suburban ‘lifestyle’(white picket fence)
Name the three main time periods of suburbian history.
Emergence of Suburbia(1750-1940) - elites escape urban ills & suburbs are socially homogenous - e.g. Clapham initally established as suburb to London
Postwar Suburbia(1940-1970) - boom in construction and lifestyle with class/race-based polarisation
Recent Suburbia(1970-present) - changing demographics
What differs suburbanisation from slum developments?
It can be argued that the line between slum and suburb is determined by the government - informality is a modality of governance - Keil(2015) notes how the Indian government allow the contructions of ‘new towns’ on Kolkata’s periphery while simultaneously criminalising and demolishing the city’s squatter settlements
Describe the process of gentrification.
Glass(1964) - middle class people buy into a depressed neignbourhood, forcing low-income residents to move out of an area as they are outpriced and displaced - this continues until the working-class character of the area is gone and the population consititues mainly of middle-class people with services catered towards the middle class(e.g. in Hackney, independent coffee shops very popular)
How does the neigbourhood transform due to gentrification?
Value of properties increases & the type of residents go from working class to middle class
Why are gentrifiers attracted to inner-city areas?
Proximity to city for young professionals and cheaper land value than other middle class areas
What are some example of post-colonial gentrification scholarship?
Davidson(2007) - planetary gentrification is a capital-led colonisation of urban space related to globalisation and neoliberalism
Ghertner(2011) - gentrification state-enforced - Delhi’s Bhagidari scheme in 2000 intentionally moved the middle class into formerly working class areas, therefore state heavily implicated in creating/gentrifying political participation
