Christa Zurbrügg

The eternal cycle of investment and displacement, also called gentrification, has a significant impact on cities and its residents. In attempting to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG 11), we must pay more attention to this phenomenon. The most important part is to develop an understanding of timing in gentrification.

The SDG 11 in the context of gentrification

The SDG 11 aims to “make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” (‘Goal 11 | Department of Economic and Social Affairs’, 2022). If we look at the SDG 11 in the context of gentrification, the targets 11.1, 11.3 and 11.a are especially important (‘Goal 11 | Department of Economic and Social Affairs’, 2022). In his speech on the 16th of march, Hubert Klumpner stated that only if the social and cultural aspects in a place are really taken care of, can we achieve sustainability and resilience. This means that architecture and city planning must start at the social and cultural level and involve the communities in the planning and development processes. He also mentioned that fragmentation is a huge problem in today’s cities. A lot of different forms of urbanization are overlaid, resulting in a big variety of social structures and cultural forms. This is a grand challenge we face. And amid this challenging situation, another phenomenon is active: the so-called gentrification.

How gentrification impacts cities

Gentrification has different definitions depending on which paper you are reading. Some claim it to be a clearly defined stage model, others give a broader definition. It is not easy to put it in simple words but let me try.

According to Kate Shaw (2008), gentrification is a process starting in neighbourhoods that went through deindustrialisation and disinvestment. Most residents are people from the working-class renting a house, but we also find graduate students, artists etc. Since the neighbourhood lacks investment and renovation, a rent gap appears. That means, if the houses would have been kept in shape, the rent would be significantly higher than it currently is. This rent gap attracts so-called gentrifiers which are wealthier people than the current residents. They buy up the buildings in the neighbourhood, renovate and modernize them and then either live in the houses themselves or rent them to other people. Because of the investment, the rents rise. Some people may not be able to manage this, so they need to move out of the neighbourhood. This is called displacement. You probably see, what is going to happen next. The investment stops at some point and a rent gap appears again. The next wave of even wealthier people, the next wave of gentrifiers arrives in the neighbourhood (Shaw, 2008).

At the beginning, the change in residents and the displacement are not that big. But as time goes on and some waves of gentrification go over the neighbourhood, there are huge changes compared to the original place. The diversity of the former residents turned into a uniform type of resident; mostly white, super-wealthy people (Shaw, 2008). In general, there is a “transition from lower to higher socio-economic status residents and from rental to owner occupation” (Shaw, 2008, p. 1697) as well as a “social and cultural homogenisation” (Shaw, 2008, p. 1721). Because the first few waves of gentrification are not easily recognized, it is in most of the cases too late to stop the process when it is detected. Due to the change in the social structures, there are unavoidable changes in other aspects as well. There is a change in culture and therefore in the social life too. It is transferred from the streets to the homes, pubs and restaurants disappear. The once lively neighbourhood turns into a place where people go separate ways (Shaw, 2008). They lose the connection to each other since public spaces disappear. This environment is not inclusive anymore. According to Hubert Klumpner, we arrive now at a point where we are stuck in sustainable development.

Following the process of gentrification there is another phenomenon occurring: “[…] city-states are growing in power as nation-states increasingly devolve control to regional and local scales” (Shaw, 2008, p. 1722). In Switzerland, we are well organized in terms of power regulation. So, this phenomenon probably will not unfold its full-scale potential here. But still, we need to be attentive that the more urban cantons do not overpower the rather rural cantons. And we must watch out, how the international urbanization behaves. But as stated by Kate Shaw in the Geography Compass: “The factors that precipitate change in the international urban hierarchy are usually well beyond the influence of any single government, especially local government, but gentrification is affected by regional and local conditions and events. Local planning and policy initiatives can and do have an impact. They can encourage and exacerbate gentrification” (Shaw, 2008, p. 1722). Further she pointed out that: “In seeing gentrification as part of a coherent process of social and economic geographic change […] opportunities for prevention of displacement and the loss of social and cultural diversity open up. The critical element is the timing. The period prior to closure of any rent gap, while a degree of relative diversity exists, has the greatest policy potential both substantively and politically” (Shaw, 2008, p. 1723, marking added).

This graffiti written on a train bridge in Frankurt am Main is a silent but bold demand to create inclusive cities for everybody (Amann, 2016).

Gentrification in Zurich

When talking about gentrification, names of big cities like London, New York, San Francisco and so on are often mentioned since this process started off in those first order cities. But it does impact all places. For the sake of representing gentrification in Switzerland, I want to introduce some of the changes that happened in Zurich due to gentrification.

In Zurich, districts 3, 4 and 5 have radically changed through gentrification. Consequently, the land prices have almost doubled and problems such as criminality, dirty streets, drug dealing and consummation as well as prostitution were displaced instead of being remedied. The rents have risen and a change in the residents is observable: The share of people in their twenties and older people sunk whereas the share of people in their thirties increased. Apart from the structure of age, there was also a change in the structure of nationalities. On average, the share of foreigners increased in Zurich. Except for those neighbourhoods that have been through gentrification in recent times. Another aspect of how gentrification changed the composition of residents is the share of nationalities among the foreigners. Whereas before most of the foreigners were Italian or Balkan, the majority of the foreigners nowadays are German (Feller, 2018).

Conclusion

Reading several articles and thinking about how people talk about gentrification, I realized that most often only some aspects of gentrification are discussed but never the entire process and its impact on a place. I think, this is a significant problem since this behaviour leads to an incomplete image of gentrification and people might underestimate the force it can develop. With this statement I want to call out to the people in charge of city planning and city development and demand them to take a closer look at the full-scale problem. Only by observing the big picture are we able to identify the time scales and intervals of gentrification in a place. And this knowledge about the timing of gentrification gives us the power to counteract gentrification successfully.

References

 Amann, H. (2016). STADT FÜR ALLE ! Foto & Bild | streetart, graffiti & tags, kunstfotografie & kultur, dokumentation Bilder auf fotocommunity. Retrieved 9 April 2022, from https://www.fotocommunity.de/photo/stadt-fuer-alle-helmut-amann/40920910

Feller, A. (2018). Die Gentrifizierung Zürichs in Zahlen und Fakten – DeFacto. Retrieved 20 March 2022, from https://www.defacto.expert/2018/03/01/gentrifizierung-zuerich/

Goal 11 | Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2022). Retrieved 20 March 2022, from https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal11

Shaw, K. (2008). Gentrification: What it is, why it is, and what can be done about it. Geography Compass, 2(5), 1697–1728. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8198.2008.00156.x