Gentricity: Culture, Capital and Urban Change by Gentricity

Gentricity

Culture, Capital and Urban Change Photo-essays of Detroit, London and New York

Gentricity

Culture, Capital and Urban Change

Photo-essays of Detroit, London

and New York

Cities have become sites of massive redevelopment where the synergies of culture and capital play an important role. The continued deindustrialization of cities, the rise of the service sector, the changes in labour and economic processes, and the gentrification of large urban regions are now receiving attention in cities all over the world, particularly in relation to the roles of culture and of the “creative class” in the urban process in general. The influence of Richard Florida’s theory about the “creative class” and its importance for the economic development of cities is being used by urban planners throughout the world. As a result, cities are being transformed in a global “SoHo” sites of cultural production and consumption, luxurious residencies and tourist destinations. Are these strategies improving living conditions in the cities, or, on the contrary, do they increase existing social inequalities? What is the current state of the “creative city” and how does it relate to trends like gentrification? This project focuses on three cities that are paradigmatic of these changes: London, New York and Detroit.

In 2013, The Graduate Center of The City University of New York, presented a yearlong public programming series, “Cultural Capital: The Promise and Price of New York’s Creative Economy,” exploring the impact of the city’s creative and knowledge-based industries on urban change. One important strand of this exploration focused on the politics of the creative economy, questioning the linkage between the development of the city’s creative industries and gentrification. In particular, this programme addressed vital questions such as: “In this current age of gentrification is it possible to be a young artist in New York? Has the development of the city’s creative economies helped or exacerbated existing inequalities? What is the current state of the “creative city” and how does it relate to trends like gentrification?” (The Graduate Center, CUNY, 2014).

The programme brought together eminent theorists and contrasting views, from the Marxist-inspired analysis of Martha Rosler (Culture Class), Sharon Zukin (Loft Living and Naked Cities) or David Harvey (Rebel Cities), to the liberal analysis of Richard Florida (The Rise of The Creative Class) and Edward Glaeser (The Triumph of the City). Academic critiques of Richard Florida’s theories about the “creative class” centred around its influence in the development of a neoliberal type of urban planning, which uses creativity to transition from an industrial to a post-industrial economy. At the time of these debates, New York was a building site; the transformation of the High Line had turned a disused elevated industrial rail line into a real estate boom, attracting millions of tourists every year. The Whitney Museum was moving to the High Line, capitalising on the reputation of the area as the centre of a rapidly expanding global art world. After years of disinvestment in the industrial sector, a new wave of neoliberal urban development was colonising new territories through rezoning laws, capitalising on land by recapturing former industrial or vacant sites and transforming them into mixed-used neighbourhoods with luxurious condominiums targeting the upper class (Zukin, 2010). These trends in urban change could also be observed in London, particularly towards the East End; an area that traditionally had been very poor, that artists had colonised, in part due to the availability of cheap space where to live and work. Much of these areas have now largely been gentrified, and are viewed as desirable residential areas with close links to the City of London. The position of London and New York as global capitals make trends and politics in urban change important to examine, as they influence similar developments in other cities all over the world. Detroit poses a prominent example of these influences. In recent years, the city of Detroit has become the site of two conflicting narratives, one that describes the city’s precipitous decline, neglect and abandonment,

popularised in the media and the cultural world through the images of the city’s ruins, and another that praises its enormous possibilities as a model of post-industrial regeneration, summoning artists and entrepreneurs to move to Detroit. Nowadays, the links between culture and capital have become a formula in urban regeneration traceable in cities all over the world. The influence of Florida’s theory about the creative class - and its importance for the economic development of cities - is being used by urban planners throughout the world. As a result, cities are being transformed in a global ‘SoHo’ sites of cultural production and consumption, luxurious residencies and tourist destinations. “Gentricity” Culture, Capital and Urban Change is an ongoing project that started in 2016 to analyse the links between culture and capital in processes of urban change, through the visual analysis of distinctive sites in New York, London, and Detroit. By comparing case studies in different cities, the project aims to identify common trends in urban change that are exerting their influence in cities all over the world, including ‘sink estates’, faded seaside resorts, and industrial landscapes. The central question that this project asks is: Can photography help us to interpret the transformations shaping cities all over the world from a critical perspective? Questions that are subsequently asked are: What are the visual dimensions of the urban transformations studied here, and how do they relate to trends like gentrification? Can we evidence common patterns in the way space is produced, repurposed and marketed? Are these strategies improving living conditions in the cities, or, on the contrary, do they increase existing social inequalities? Can alternative visual and textual strategies provide a meaningful counter-narrative to the persuasive discourses on ‘urban revitalisation’? In recent years, the linkage between art and real estate has met with an enormous amount of criticism by commentators like Zukin 2010, Rosler 2013, Yúdice 2004 or Harvey 2013, as the growing evidences of gentrification, homogenization and the instrumentalization of the cultural sector in favour of more lucrative regeneration ventures don’t cease to appear. Culture has become a crucial factor in the commodification of space, in how cities are sold to residents, visitors and investors. As Martha Rosler explains: “The search for more and better revitalisation, and more and better magnets for high earners and tourists, eventually took a cultural turn, building on the success of artists’ districts in postindustrial economies.” (2013: 92).

The predominance of the rhetorics of culture and creativity in regeneration has the explicit purpose of instrumentalising the symbolic value of space to render an image of the city where history, diversity and creativity are acknowledged and protected. (Rosler, 2013, Zukin, 2010, Rothenberg and Lang, 2017). According to Imrie et al. (2010: 44): “Developers and urban policy-makers have discovered the benefits of transforming an industrial heritage into a post-industrial urban landscape, providing visual evidence of the city’s success in developing a residential, consumption and cultural infrastructure expected of a global city”. In this process, as Rothenberg and Lang (2017: 1) explain in their examination of the aesthetics of gentrification on New York’s High Line, “reclaimed industrial sites are recoded, made to produce new affects and social relations, invested with new meanings and often drained of old ones.” 4 The transformation of the industrial heritage into a post-industrial urban landscape is a crucial aspect of this project. “By the 1960s, deindustrialisation was on the horizon of many cities in the US and elsewhere as the flight of manufacturing capital to nonunion areas and overseas was gathering steam” (Rosler, 2013: 84). London, like New York and other major once-industrial cities across the world, was bleeding jobs and people. According to Buck et al. approximately three-quarters of a million people left London during the 1970s. (Quoted by Imrie et al. 2010). However, as Sassen explains, “whilst white working-class decline was a key factor, it was, in turn, part of a bigger picture of urban restructuring in which once working-class cities began to be transformed into the staging posts in a new global post-industrial finance-driven economy (Quoted by Imrie et al. 2010: 44). The decline of the manufacturing industry produced redundant sites that have subsequently become available for redevelopment, – docks, canals, railway yards, disused factories and gasworks. In New York, rezoning has become the government’s preferred tool of redevelopment. As Sharon Zukin points out, “this isn’t just a structural shift from an industrial to a postindustrial society or the result of a periodic boom in investment and construction. We are eyewitnesses to a paradigm shift from a city of production to a city of consumption.” (Zukin, 2010: 221). In this regard, Williamsburg has become a symbol of the rapid changes that have come to New York in the past few decades. In 2005 when the New York City Planning Commission rezoned 170 blocks in Williamsburg, as Zukin explains, “they explicitly aimed to upscale the waterfront ridding it of its remaining industrial uses and reclaiming the prime space for high-rise residential construction, symbolising the clash between Brooklyn’s industrial history with its new reality as a commodity.” (2010: 59). The rezoning has led to a real estate boom that drove out many longtime tenants and residents.

Examining the overall developments of London since the end of the Second World War, the decline of manufacturing industry and transport uses (notably Docklands, but also old canal basins, rail yards and riverside land), has been the crucial factor in driving urban change (Imrie et al. 2010: 40). According to Imrie et al., “Buck et al. (1986) show, there was a dramatic transformation of the London economy as jobs disappeared and the working class that remained in the inner city became concentrated in economic inactivity and social housing that itself became an increasingly marginalised form of housing tenure.” (2010: 45). Today, London is a site of massive redevelopment, disused industrial sites and infrastructures and neglected social housing estates are the primary focus of the current regeneration schemes in the capital. “Regeneration is being ‘put to work’ by politicians as part of a strategy to remove obstacles to economic growth and to create the social and physical infrastructure required to compete for inward investment.” (Imrie et al., 2010: 5). In the pursuit of this endeavour, the displacement of communities and the disruption of social activities are often sidelined. To a large extent, the London bid success was attributed to its focus on urban regeneration. “The games will transform one of the poorest and most deprived areas of London. They will create thousands of jobs and homes. They will offer new opportunities for business in the immediate area and throughout London...” (Quoted by Imrie et al. 2010: 141). Today, the areas surrounding Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park constitute London’s single most important regeneration project for the next twenty-five years. As stated in the Mayor’s Plan for London (2016) the project includes stretches of land in the boroughs of Newham, Hackney and Tower Hamlets and other significant areas of social deprivation and brownfield sites, that were once the scene of traditional manufacturing industries, docks and railroad yards. Detroit’s unique position as the birthplace of Fordism and the powerhouse of modernity has made it the quintessential image of urban abandonment and decay. As Rosler explains, “some of the renewed interest in Detroit stems from an analysis of the city as both the model failure of (urban) capitalism and a fertile ground for the seeds of the future” (Rosler, 2013: 159). Today, Detroit’s image of decline has nurtured another narrative, one that praises its future as a blank canvas where anything can be accomplished, summoning artists and entrepreneurs as the pioneers of Detroit’s regeneration. As Binelli writes, “The only serious competitors to urban farming as a saving-Detroit story was the arrival of the artists... they came to Detroit from Brooklyn, as Detroit was the new Brooklyn; they came to Detroit from Europe because Detroit was the next Berlin (Quoted by Oakley, 2015).

“Culture is the commodity that sells all others”. (Situationist slogan, Quoted in Rosler, 2013: 107). According to Harvey, “That culture has become a commodity of some sort is undeniable.” (2013). In Rosler’s words, “This strategy in which property developers rely on artists to render the empty less so, has today become formulaic and ubiquitous in the US and beyond, making the connection between art’s appearance on the scene and the revaluing of real estate, embarrassingly obvious” (2013: 153). In her book Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change, published in 1982, Zukin focuses on the transformation, beginning in the mid-1960s, of New York’s cast-iron district into an “artist district” that eventually became known as SoHo. As Rosler explains, “Zukin lays out a theory of urban change in which artists and the entire visual art sector – especially commercial galleries, artist-run spaces, and museums – are the main engine for the repurposing of the post-industrial city and the renegotiation of real estate for the benefit of elites.” (2013: 89). 6

As Zukin writes, “The new strategy of urban revitalisation aims for a less problematic sort of integration that cities have recently known. It aspires to a synthesis of art and industry, or culture and capital, in which diversity is acknowledged, controlled and even harnessed. [But] first, the apparent reconquest of the urban core for the middle class actually reconquers it for upper-class users. Second, the downtowns become simulacra, through gussied up preservation venues. [...] Third, the revitalisation projects that claim distinctiveness – because of specific historical or aesthetic traits –become a parody of the unique.” (Zukin, 1982: 190). Authors like Zukin and Rosler have described at length this process of place marketing in neighbourhoods like Brooklyn, SoHo and the East Village in New York, which have also become some of the most expensive areas to live in Manhattan. Zukin (2010) examines the revalorization of these areas in relation to a change in middle-class tastes whom she defines as ‘bourgeois bohemians’. Crucial to Zukin’s analysis is the eventual displacement of those artists and entrepreneurs who make the place attractive, “for a new ‘creative class’ which encompasses high earners in industries extending far beyond artists, the vast number of whom do not command big incomes” Rosler (2013: 113). In the last few decades, the widespread adoption of ‘creative city’ policies and the global discourse of the creative economy have become key drivers of urban change. In this climate, culture has become a crucial factor in the commodification of space, in how cities are sold to residents, visitors and investors. As Imrie et al. argue, “cultural production and the role of the cultural industries have become an increasingly important element of the London economy.” (2009: 54). Especially since the turn of the century, government policies have prolif-

erated to promote London’s Cultural Economy. ‘Creative London’ was a plan devised by former Mayor Ken Livingstone to attract new investment to the capital associated with its conditions as a place of culture and creativity. The essence of the plan consisted in identifying key areas or ‘cultural hubs’ where a creative environment had been formed through the activities of artists and entrepreneurs. These areas were in turn ‘developed’ to maximise the profits of these activities. Although the plan facilitated the access of artists and entrepreneurs to affordable studio spaces during a short period, it was indeed conceived as a campaign of place marketing that exploited the bohemian qualities of places like Shoreditch and Hackney, to increase property values. Detroit’s rebirth constitutes a powerful example of culturally-led regeneration. The creative industry advocacy organisation Culture Lab Detroit recently commended the flourishing of the city’s art scene where, “an architectural consortium can sprout up in a former auto body shop” or “an artist collective can take hold of an abandoned warehouse” (Culture Lab Detroit, 2014). Detroit, like many other “Rust Belt” cities, is betting on the cultural industries as a source of its future economic prosperity. Robert Elmes, founder and director of Galapagos Art Space, moved from Brooklyn to Detroit and became an important advocator of Detroit’s creative city rebranding: As Elmes writes, “We see an expanding market in the Detroit region. The presence or artists, and the cultural and artistic spaces that support their presence have time and again led to strong growth in real estate prices. Galapagos’ value proposition lies in its ability to partner with local stakeholders to help make Detroit a regional attraction once again, and to help attract the best and brightest young artists and thinkers to the Detroit metropolitan area.” (2016). The idea of cultural regeneration, as Oakley explains, combines an older narrative, that of the cultural life and influence of the city, with a more recent one which focuses on these elements as definable and exportable, industries and as such, as sources of employment and prosperity for the urban inhabitant (2015). This neoliberal idea ensures that cultural investments benefit vulnerable social groups through job creation and cultural democratisation. However, even Richard Florida has expressed concern about some of the consequences of this policy approach. He writes, “On close inspection, talent clustering provides little in the way of trickle-down benefits. Its benefits flow disproportionately to more highly-skilled knowledge, professional and creative workers whose higher wages and salaries are more than sufficient to cover more expensive housing in these locations. While less-skilled service and blue-collar workers also earn more money in knowledge-based metros, those gains disappear once their higher housing costs are taken into account (Quoted by Oakley, 2015).

In recent decades, academic critiques of culturally-led urban regeneration, by commentators like Zukin, 1982, Rosler 2013, Yúdice, 2004 or Harvey, 2013, have focused on the growing evidences of gentrification, rising property prices, over-development and myriad forms of social exclusion - all of which threaten the cultural vitality and conviviality of the city. According to Oakley, “what was sometimes presented as a benign narrative, has become a problematic one. Even those charged with promoting the role of culture within cities recognise this to some extent.” (2015)

Ruth Glass (1964) brought the word gentrification into the urban dictionary over forty years ago to describe a process of social change that was already well underway in central London. Zukin describes it as “a movement of rich, well-educated folks, the gentry, into lower-class neighbourhoods, and the higher property values that follow them, transforming a ‘declining’ district into an expensive neighbourhood with historical or hipster charm.” (2010: 8). Hackworth and Smith’s ‘waves of gentrification’ thesis (2001) remain one of the best accounts of the gentrification process since the 70s. According to their thesis, a ‘first wave’ of gentrification in the early 1970s was associated with the deindustrialisation of cities in the global north, and thus set the stage for the growth of a service and leisure-based economy, it was the second wave of the 1980s which saw the arts taking a leading role for the first time, especially in the case of New York. A ‘third-wave’ gentrification begins after the recession of the early 1990s, with entire neighbourhoods being made over by private developers, with the support of public policy. (Hackworth and Smith’s 2001). Gentrification usually affects areas marked by years of disinvestment, that have become attractive to property developers and new urban dwellers, which in London primarily include post-industrial areas in the East and South of the city. These places share common characteristics: an industrial past, vacant factories, warehouses and brownfields, often close to the waterfront. These are also places that had built their own social and spatial relationships over time. Zukin (1995) sees this phenomenon as a type of neo-colonialism, as the social and cultural tastes of the newcomers are imposed over the ones of the previous residents, which are in turn displaced or marginalised. To the use-values of longtime residents and the exchange-values of real estate developers, bohemians and gentrifiers add aesthetic values. (Zukin, 2010). Rothenberg and Lang show, in their examination of the aesthetics of gentrification in the High Line Park, that “new forms of urban development harness aesthetic experience in order to secure, legitimate and reproduce class inequality and social exclusion.

As Imrie et al. argue, “it is not too much of an exaggeration to claim that, with the exception of social housing estates, much of inner London has now largely been gentrified.... particularly towards the east. What were once working-class areas in the former East End are now seen as desirable residential areas with close links to the City of London.” (2009: 52). They add, “while in aggregate terms urban regeneration in London seems to be successful in facilitating economic and cultural regeneration, it is faring much less well in terms of social inclusion and social sustainability, and may well be implicated in contributing to the widening of social and economic inequalities” (Imrie et al, 2010: 4). Detroit – like Manhattan and north Brooklyn – is booming. In the rest of Detroit – like in the rest of New York – the chasm between rich and poor is growing.” the regeneration of Detroit is circumscribed to an area that represents less than 10% of the city. Beyond the hotbeds of regeneration lays a city that’s still facing the challenges the city has had for decades: poverty, decay, unemployment and racial segregation. Looking at the new spaces produced to accommodate the new image of the city, we are left with the questions of who would benefit from these changes? Will they improve the living conditions in the city, or on the contrary, will they increase existing social inequalities? What kinds of spaces could be produced without driving gentrification or turning the city into a spectacle? City’s growth in recent years has both created and depended on new consumption spaces that respond to changing lifestyles and make the city more desirable. In this regard, culture in urban development has been used as a strategy to raise the value of space through selling symbolic value. In this process, obsolete factories, brownfields, waterfronts, railroad tracks and other bi-products of the industrial city hence become conduits for symbolic and aesthetic experience (Rothenberg and Lang, 2017) or, as Zukin puts it, “destinations for cool cultural consumption that attract a commercial revival, a residential influx of people with money, and, finally, the building of new luxury apartments with extravagant rents”. (2010: 37). The photographs that follow, examine the visual dimensions of the urban transformations discussed, and expose how space is ‘produced’, amid the narratives of culturally-led regeneration. The images show an overall pattern of change that can be compared to other cities and circumstances and offer a visual vocabulary for understanding a complex social phenomenon.

Everywhere, we see former industrial sites and bohemian neighbourhoods subject to regeneration schemes like the ones described here. The dismantling of the industrial economy in favour of one based in the provision of services is driving cities into a growing competitiveness to attract investment, businesses and visitors. In this context, cities are becoming increasingly commodified, as their success depends on their ability to market their physical spaces and infrastructures, providing, at the same time, a unique urban experience.

What can photography do to contribute to the debates surrounding this context of intense neoliberal urban renewal? Can it help us to analyse the transformations shaping cities all over the world, from a critical perspective? The answer to this question depends, as John Tagg has argued, on the context of presentation, as “photographs operate as a ‘politically mobilised rhetoric of truth’: “they can represent any set of social circumstances and frame them in any number of ways. They are given meaning by the frameworks in which they are deployed.” (Quoted by Knowles and Sweetman, 2004). This work aims to explore the power of photography, in conjunction with sociological research, to construct an understanding of urban regeneration and its politics beyond the scope of the image or the text alone.

References: Aitken, John and Brake, Jane (2016) Picturing Gentrification: Representations of Urban Change, Pendleton Salford. In: From Contested Cities to Global Urban Justice, July 4th to 6th 2016, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Citylab.com,

[online].

Available

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https://www.citylab.com/solutions/2017/02/the-high-lines-next-balancing-act-fair-and-affordable-develop-

ment/515391/ [Accessed 04 Jan. 2018]. Clarke, G. (1997). The photograph. 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Conlin, J. 2015. Last Stop on the L Train: Detroit. The New York times, [online]. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/ feb/15/ruin-porn-detroit-photography-city-homes [Accessed 29 Nov. 2016]. Elmes, R. (2016) [online] Available at: https://www.galapagosdetroit.com. [Accessed 5 Jan. 2018]. Guzman, Z. 2016. Billionaire Dan Gilbert’s mission to rebuild Detroit as a hub of ‘muscles and brains’. [online] CNBC. Available at: http://www.cnbc. com/2016/10/17/billionaire-dan-gilberts-mission-to-rebuild-detroit-as-a-hub-of-muscles-and-brains.html [Accessed 14 Dec. 2016].

Hackworth, J. and Smith, N. 2001. The Changing State of Gentrification. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 92, pp 464-477 Imrie, R., Lees, L. and Raco, M. (2010). Regenerating London. 1st ed. London: Routledge. Knowles, C. and Sweetman, P. (2004). Picturing the social landscape. 1st ed. New York, NY: Routledge. Lang S., Rothenberg J. 2017. Repurposing the High Line: Aesthetic experience and contradiction in West Chelsea. City, Culture and Society, Vol: 9, Page: 1-12. Moss, J. (2018). [online] Available at: https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/d38k4j/tourism-is-eating-new-york-alive [Accessed 5 Jan. 2018]. Oakley, K. 2015. Creating Space: A re-evaluation of the role of culture in regeneration. White Rose Research [online]. Available at: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/88559/3/AHRC_Cultural_Value_KO%20Final.pdf. [Accessed 29 Nov. 2016]. Opportunitydetroit.com. 2016. Opportunity Detroit. [online] Available at: http://opportunitydetroit.com/ [Accessed 14 Dec. 2016]. Rosler, M. 2013. Culture Class. Berlin: Sternberg Press. The Graduate Center, CUNY. (2014). [online] Available at: https://www.gc.cuny.edu/All-GC-Events/GC-Presents Zukin, S. 1982. Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Zukin, S. (1995). The cultures of cities. 1st ed. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers. Zukin, S. (2010). Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Detroit

GENTRICITY

The site of the old Tiger Stadium in Corktown, demolished in 2009 is currently being transformed into a development of apartments, retail and condo units. Corktown is Detroitâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s oldest existing neighbourhood. Originally founded by Irish Migrants, it has become a hotbed of new restaurants, bars, boutiques, hotels and new developments.

Midtown Detroit is experiencing a tremendous amount of residential, institutional and commercial development, causing property prices to rise. The construction underway is the first wave to forecast a flood of construction for coming years. Trendy cafĂŠs and restaurants are emerging along Woodward, as other entrepreneurs are taking advantage of the still-cheap rental space, while billboards in development sites announce new retail spaces and luxury condos.

Brush Park, located within MidtownÂ Detroit, will become the site of a major redevelopment plan. Established in 1860, it was the most prosperous neighbourhoods in Detroit. As the city grew in the early twentieth century, many families left Brush Park and relocated to the suburbs. By 1960, Brush Park was abandoned entirely.Â

One of the many crumbling homes in Midtown, by Brush Park. Detroit runs the largest demolition program in the country, at a pace of 200 demolitions per week. In this way, the city government is expecting to increase property value. 20

Construction site of the M-1 Rail streetcar on Woodward Avenue.

Emerging from Woodward is the M-1 Rail or QLINE. The 3.3mile circulating streetcar is aimed at revitalising the downtown commercial area and attracting tourists to the city. The recent rebranding of the M-1 Rail as QLINE comes after a new investment by Detroit-born billionaire Dan Gilbert (owner of Quicken Loans). So far, Gilbert has invested an estimated two billion dollars in downtown Detroit and has commended himself the mission to rebuild Detroit as a hub of â&#x20AC;&#x153;muscles and brainsâ&#x20AC;?.

Luxury apartment developments hope to draw residents to the Riverfront. Meanwhile, local tour companies offer city walks telling the story of Detroit’s past – a journey from motoring powerhouse to bankruptcy – and its present and future regeneration. 26

The Grand River Creative Corridor, also known as “GRCC Detroit”, is an art corridor and neighbourhood revitalisation project concentrated on Grand River Avenue between Rosa Parks Boulevard and Warren Avenue in Detroit. 30

The project has transformed abandoned buildings and perilous streets into colourful works of art, drawing international acclaim and becoming a model for combatting blight. Traditionally seen as a form of political protest, these murals and other forms of public art are now used to make the city look safer, more vibrant and creative.

“The Imagination Station” was one of many community arts projects that originated in Detroit. Its original plan was to create an arts centre in two abandoned houses. Although the project successfully attracted attention, bringing the media and the art-world into the area, it was constantly under threat of vandalism. In 2012, one of the houses was destroyed by a fire. The remaining house (known as “Righty”) has recently been bought by a couple who plan to transform this iconic ruin into their new home.

London

GENTRICITY

The areas surrounding Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park constitute Londonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s single most important regeneration project for the next twenty-five years, and includes stretches of land in the boroughs of Newham, Hackney and Tower Hamlets, and significant areas of social deprivation and brownfield sites that were once the scene of traditional manufacturing industries, docks and railroad yards.

By 2030, the Olympic Park will be home to more than 10,000 new households. The London Plan (2016) and the London Legacy Development Corporation, insist on the sustainability of the project in social terms, but past precedents such as the displacement of communities in Stratford, following compulsory purchases of land, and the controversies surrounding the redevelopment of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;the Carpentersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, as well as the inequalities visible in the areas adjacent to the park, make this claim very hard to believe.

Many of the new homes projected surrounding the park are on the side of Hackney Wick, an area adjacent to the park which is changing dramatically. Hackney Wick was originally a site of Victorian homes for workers in industries on the canal, but it was destroyed during ‘the Blitz’ and turned into light industrial buildings for waste disposal and recycling. The proximity to the Olympic Park made Hackney Wick a focus of redevelopment which is starting to fully materialise now at an incredible speed. Last year, The Telegraph named the area ‘the new Shoreditch’. Waterfront residential developments are springing out along the Lea Navigation pathway, repurposing or replacing disused warehouses and abandoned buildings which had been used in the past as artists’ studios and venues.

The use of graffiti as a gentrification device in Hackney Wick is currently the focus of much discussion and media attention. Traditionally, in formerly industrial and derelict areas, graffiti had been used as a form of political protest and as a counter-cultural communication device. However, in recent years, graffiti has become increasingly associated with place branding, gentrification and tourism. From the nineties onwards, many of the vacant warehouses were rented or occupied by artists. The area known as ‘Fish Island’ had the highest density of artists’ studios in Europe.

Shoreditch has become a paradigm of the inner-city gentrification phenomenon to such a degree that we now use the term ‘Shoreditchification’ to describe the process by which an area evolves from an artistic and bohemian neighbourhood into a commercial ‘simulacra’. Most of the strategies for ‘creative development’ in London have their roots in processes that occurred in Shoreditch some decades before. As in other industrial areas, widespread deindustrialisation created a surplus of disused Victorian warehouses and other industrial spaces that attracted visual artists and other creative types. In the nineties, Shoreditch became the heart of The Young British Artists, or YBAs, with neighbours like Gary Hume, Sarah Lucas, Gilbert and George and Tracy Emin.

By the turn of the century, Shoreditch constituted an ideal ‘case study’ for urban planners and local authorities looking to regenerate similar areas of the city, avoiding social contestation by applying the formula of the ‘cultural or creative regeneration’. 56

Today, in a context of intense neoliberal urban redevelopment, Shoreditch is subject to a new wave of regeneration, looking to expand the borders of the City, capitalising on the bohemian qualities of its neighbour. In this environment, graffiti, music and fashion have become powerful gentrification devices that create a sense of an organic transformation, where different social and cultural practices coexist.

New York

GENTRICITY

When the Domino Sugar Refinery opened in 1882, it was the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest, now, more than a decade after it closed, the refinery and eleven surrounding acres are being transformed into offices, luxury apartments and a waterfront park, one of the latest mega-developments on the Williamsburg waterfront. 60

The Wythe Hotel opened in Spring 2012, a beneficiary of the nearly 200 blocks of rezoning the city pushed through in 2005 turning Williamsburg into a development free-for-all. The Wythe Hotel is housed in a converted 1901 factory building on the Williamsburg, Brooklyn waterfront. The design of the building has been widely praised for embracing the original building and surrounding areaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s industrial past. Through this process of heritagization, former industrial sites are invested with new meanings and often drained of old ones, they invoke a â&#x20AC;&#x153;return of the past without affect.â&#x20AC;?

Gowanus is an industrial neighbourhood changing into a gentrified area. Marked by years of disinvestment, Gowanus has become attractive to property developers capitalising on the areaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s industrial past, vacant factories, warehouses and brownfields in close proximity to the waterfront. During the years the area lay abandoned, a vibrant cultural scene flourished as a result of the activity of artists and entrepreneurs who moved to the warehouses along the canal.

365 Bond St., along the Gowanus Canal, a rental building is starting to reshape this industrial area. This building is the first of its kind along the Gowanus Canal, although the development team believes it’s time to start embracing the canal’s awkward beauty, from its esplanades to its vibrant cultural scene. “People have been talking about Gowanus for years saying Gowanus is going to be the next SoHo” a real estate broker told the Times, “But lately I’ve been starting to believe it.”

The High Line (a disused elevated industrial rail line) is one of the most popular tourist destinations in New York City, attracting five million visitors per year, and has become a model that cities all around the world aim to replicate. The popularity of the High Line has attracted property developers, businesses, and even major cultural institutions like the Whitney Museum, capitalising on the reputation of the area as the centre of a rapidly expanding global art world.

The High Line renders the city into an aesthetic experience, a city to look at and to consume. Through the High Line, pedestrians move in an organised fashion through a series of curated views of the river, architectural jewels and building sites populated with workers, bulldozers and cranes. 74

The High Line has been a catalyst for some of the most rapid gentrification in the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s history, and it serves as a paradigmatic instance of the degree to which culture and capital are intertwined in contemporary post-industrial cities like New York. In a world where the High Line has become a model that cities all around the world aim to replicate. What kinds of spaces could be produced without driving gentrification or turning the city into a spectacle?