The Dictionary of Human Geography

lower-income population. The process was
first named by Ruth Glass, as she observed
the arrival of the ‘gentry’ and the accompany-
ing social transition of several districts in cen-
tral London in the early 1960s. A decade later,
broader recognition of gentrification followed
in large cities such as London, San Francisco,
New York, Boston, Toronto and Sydney
undergoing occupational transition from an
industrial to apost-industrialeconomy. But
more recently gentrification has been identi-
fied more widely, in smaller urban centres, in
Southern and Eastern Europe and also in
some major centres in Asia and Latin
America (Atkinson and Bridge, 2005).
Explanation of gentrification has moved in
several directions. One account focused upon
housing marketdynamics, in particular the
powerofcapitalto shapelandscapechange
(Smith, N., 1996b). Another emphasized the
rapid growth of a ‘new class’ of private- and
public-sector professionals and managers in
post-industrial societies, who were drawn to
urbane inner-city locations (Ley, 1996). Re-
lated to this occupational change was the
movement of women into the new class work-
force, and the growth of smaller adult-
oriented-households well suited to central
neighbourhoods. By the mid-1980s, the suc-
cessful re-colonization in the olderinner city
by the middle class was well established, and
more recent developments have been the ex-
tension and intensification of gentrification in
new forms, including loft conversions, the
massive development of obsolete industrial
land, frequently on waterfront sites, such as
the London Docklands, and also the deepen-
ing of wealth in formerly gentrified areas, a
process named ‘super-gentrification’ by Lees
(2003) from studies in New York and London.
The sustained interest in gentrification re-
search for more than a generation has resulted
in part from its engagement with a number
of important conceptual categories including
class,gender,and,mostrecently,race,pat-
terns and styles ofconsumption, housing and
other service needs, social polarization and the
governancepractices ofneo-liberalismin the
global city. In addition, it has been a forum
where competingepistemologicaland theor-
etical positions have met (Hamnett, 2003).
Gentrification has been seen ambivalently.
Positive impacts include new investment in
areas often requiring significant land use and
service improvement, the enhancement of the
urban tax base, and the creation of new
(though typically low-income) service jobs in
such fields as the restaurant and arts sectors,

home renovation, cleaning and security. But

against this has been the massive loss of af-

fordable inner-city housing for lower-income

groups, an integral element of the polarization

of life-chances in the global city. Gentrifica-

tion has become a conscious policy strategy in

many cities seeking to reconfigure their urban

economies and landscapes in the wake of

massive deindustrialization. Regeneration

policies, from Amsterdam to Vancouver, fre-

quently seek a putative ‘social mix’ that

includes middle-class housing in former

working-class neighbourhoods. Not surpris-

ingly, gentrification has frequently become a

politicized and contested process of residential

transformation. dl

Suggested reading

Atkinson (2003); Atkinson and Bridge (2005).

geo-body The spatial expression of the

modernnation. It is the socially constructed

‘territorial definition which creates effects –

by classifying, communicating, and enforce-

ment – on people, things, and relationships’

(seeterritory). This definition is derived

from the work of cultural historian

Thongchai Winichakul, who coined the term

in his study of the cultural construction of the

Siamese/Thai nation, in which he argued that

the nation’s spatial extent is not unproblem-

atic but, rather, is a naturalized and mythic

construction, a component of the ‘life of the

nation’ that is at once ‘a source of pride, loy-

alty, love, passion, bias, hatred, reason, [and]

unreason’ (Winichakul, 1994, p. 17). It is im-

portant to distinguish between state mapping

and the construction of the ‘geo-body’.State

mapping, the cartography of the modern

state, entails detailed medium- and large-

scale topographical mapping which, along

with thematic–statistical mapping, allows the

state apparatusoversight over its territory

and population (seegovernmentality). The

cartographic imaginaryof the modern nation, by

contrast, entails the deployment of simple and

simplistic small-scale maps within emotional

and nationally emotive discourses, especially

those carried on through news media and pri-

mary school texts (cf.emotional geograph-

ies). It is this second cartographic practice that

finds resonance in subsequent studies of the

cartographic construction of nationaliden-

tity, whether post-colonial (e.g. Ramaswamy,

1999) or European (e.g. Herb, 1997). Indeed,

Winichakul’s workprompted Anderson (1991a

[1983]) to extend his crucial conception of nat-

ions as ‘imagined communities’ to encompass

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_G Final Proof page 274 2.4.2009 6:30pm

GEO-BODY