The processes of gentrification and its relations to power control.

Capitalism and Gentrification

Gentrification is evidently beneficial for capitalists and neoliberal advances, making use of an area to extract as much profit as possible. To attract higher class residents, existing markets such as Broadway Market and Queen’s Crescent market initiated new stalls that provide more gourmet options which essentially drives up the value of the area (Dines, 2008). However, Newham in particular provided more obstacles for the elites to regenerate the region, in particular Queens Market. In 2004, Newham was qualified for gentrification with plans to demolish Queens Market and to transform it into a new shopping precinct, with the aim of attracting new investment and higher paying jobs to the location. Nonetheless, what makes Newham different from other parts of London is its ethnic diversity, “the London borough of Newham (LBN) has the highest non-white population of any local authority area in the United Kingdom. According to the 2001 census, 60.6 percent of its 237,900 residents were from Black and Minority Ethnic groups” (Ibid., 255). Demolishing the market posed an issue for the locals as it was not only a market with various international traders and shoppers but also a central multicultural social hub, it represented a “liberating ordinariness of race” (Paul Gilroy quoted by Dines, 2008: 265). The group ‘Friends of Queens Market’ (FoQM) had the objective of fighting against the gentrification scheme as they argued the demolition would eradicate the culturally cohesive space of important history and uniqueness. And equally important, with plans of introducing a large supermarket, this competition would threaten the financial livelihoods of the shopkeepers and traders. Ultimately, by establishing privately owned businesses, this supplies more capital gain for the big businesses as stall owners earn less, meaning less profit for the working class and increased financial surplus for the bourgeoisie.

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Class and Gentrification

Building on capitalist principles, Marx contended that the ruling class used their power to justify and legitimise their position in order to persuade the proletariat that they are not being exploited, creating a false class consciousness whereby their ideologies convince people that their processes are fair and just (Eyerman, 1981). We can see similarities to this when linking it to Queens Market. During the initial phases of the gentrification, the scheme promoters announced that the market had no aesthetic value and that there was no loss to be had, it could only be improved. In their eyes, replacing it would benefit everyone. After local resistance about the sense of community that had been ignored, the narrative had completely changed by its third project, adding more emphasis on “providing an opportunity for people of different cultures and backgrounds to meet and communicate” (St Modwen quoted by Dines, 2008: 268). As Marx highlighted, for capitalists to maintain hegemony, the locals must be convinced, and as seen above, St Modwen’s entire narrative changed despite the goal remaining the same. Fundamentally, although Queens Market wasn't considered visually pleasing or modern, it still remained very economically prosperous. Accordingly, the bourgeoisie saw an opportunity to make even more money by making it desirable to higher classes. This illustrates their desire to reach certain manipulative lengths to exploit the markets financial success.

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When discussing capitalist power relations, the financial aspect of displacement is much more obvious and direct, only now I will be focusing on the more disregarded component of gentrification, the class differences. In relation to the new art scene in New York during the 1980s, it had taken up 60 per cent of the East Village area’s property. Sharon Zukin argued the industrial lofts used for artistic purposes no longer left any spaces in the region to “be used as machine shops, printing plants, dress factories, or die-cutting operations’, paving the way for a ‘middle-class return to the city centre'” (quoted by Harris, 2012: 235). New York had established direct processes of displacement when regenerating, however in London, the class differences were more complex and indirect. Using the Hoxton area as an example, rather than taking over and displacing the already existing businesses in the area, Hoxton before the 1990’s was described as being ‘desperately derelict’ (Financial Times, 1986 quoted by Harris, 2012: 229). There were plenty of unused warehouses and workshops, all of which had very cheap rent attracting a significant number of artists into the area. Hoxton was then associated with a new art scene, focusing on pastoral concepts of rustic and simpler art with the intention of eliminating class differences and ostentatiousness. Ironically, this created the opposite effect, not only did this new scene attract abundant industrial growth, high end fashion designers, galleries, and media companies, which is undoubtedly very expensive to be a part of; but also, the creators themselves were hypocritical with what their art’s message portrayed. The pastoral depiction was, as Empson puts it, ‘about’ the people but ‘not ‘‘by’’ or ‘‘for’’‘them (quoted by Harris 2012: 235). Similarly, John Barrell noted how “the labouring, the vagrant, and the mendicant poor were portrayed so as to be an acceptable part of the decor of the drawing rooms of the polite, when in their own persons they would have been unlikely to gain admission even to the kitchens'' (quoted by Harris 2012: 227). The overall climate comes off as quite pretentious as the art seemingly explored modern social issues yet historically avoided problems associated with their own class and race. For example, the artist Sarah Lucas explored feminist matters but rarely related it to concerns of class. Although they hadn't directly driven out or displaced any communities from Hoxton, it had enforced a class division, north of Hoxton had still remained how it previously was, not entirely affected by the art scene and still largely occupied social housing. The art community has maintained distance from the north, ‘safely’ remaining within the southern part of the area, disconnected from any cultural diversity and class-based complexities. These London gentrifiers “despite long rhetorical flourishes in favour of multiculturalism and diversity, huddle together into essentially White settlements in the inner city” (Tim Butler quoted by Harris, 2012: 237). 

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Race and Gentrification

This leads onto my next point, racial power relations within the processes of gentrification. Following the Hoxton example, the preliminary drawing of the regeneration had included all white human figures (ibid.268), calling attention to how ‘improvement’ includes the addition of whiteness. This of course, is not limited to Hoxton, looking at London as a whole. Following riots during the 1980s, the conservative government began evicting locals from Brixton using free market methods, with the aim of advancing the process of gentrification in the area. This caused a racial division in Brixton, by creating what Anchor and Magnet called “parallel universities” in which the spaces were transformed to impose an “economic apartheid”. This meant that “the indoor market is predominantly white people and the outdoor market working-class whites and blacks” (quoted by Lees, 2014: 210).

 

But how is race affected by gentrification int he rest of the world? The process of gentrification has more hegemonic implications in the global south. Johannesburg in South Africa had undergone a form of neo-colonialism, where the regeneration of the city was controlled by white owned companies and investors. The goal was to attracting tourists and international investors while generally making the area more economically valuable. According to Lees, however, unlike the UK and US which displaced communities in exchange for middle and high-class areas, she argues “White spaces have been built alongside Pan-African spaces, they have not displaced them! Indeed, Johannesburg demonstrates both the embracing of the African city—its disorderliness, its riskiness, its low-income groups, etc., and the embracing of Western city ideas of development. They are intertwined but the whole is more than the sum of western and non-western, formal and informal” (Lees, 2014: 212). Upon reading this I found what she said highly problematic, although she states that Johannesburg positively embraced both aspects of culture. Why is the disorderliness associated with African culture and the ‘formal and sanitised’ associated with western civilisation? This simply reinforces the idea that western culture will always maintain the ‘better’ side while everyone else is substandard. This thought process hinders the process of decolonisation in future progressions of non-racialized understanding of development and modernity.  Rather than simply viewing formality and informality as their own entities, they are instead constantly related to racialised ideas.

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Conclusion

Upon analysing all the power relations discussed above, I believe that they all have one thing in common, colonialism. It seems to me that behind class, capitalism and race, deep rooted colonial ideologies are consistently embedded within their power relations. Ultimately, it seems that land is always controlled by the white colonial saviour, who sooner or later, is always in charge of any land or property. It continuously comes down to conquering territory to make it fit the white and modern narrative, anything other than that is reason for unwanted complication.  “Locke [...] argue(d) that unoccupied and unused land could be claimed as property by those able and willing to render it fruitful 157-158” (Wood, 1999: 157-158). The idea that an area cannot simply exist without the white elites in charge ‘invading’ the area by force in order to ‘improve’ it in ways only they see fit. Like the colonised countries there isn't much the ‘colonised’ can do to stop them from changing things, they must simply accept it. It seems that colonial ideologies are deeply profound and well established within the colonial process of socialisation affecting all parts of society even in modern times.

 

 

Bibliography 

- Dines, N., 2008. ‘The disputed place of ethnic diversity: An ethnography of the redevelopment of a street market in East London.’ In R. Imrie, L. Lees, & M. Raco, Regenerating London: Governance, Sustainability and Community in a Global City. Taylor & Francis.

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- Eyerman, R., 1981. False Consciousness and Ideology in Marxist Theory. Acta Sociologica, [online] 24(1-2), pp.43-56. Available at: <https://www.jstor.org/stable/4194332>  

 

- ​Harris, A., 2012. Art and gentrification: Pursuing the urban pastoral in Hoxton, London. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 37(2), 226–241.

 

- Lees, L., 2016. Gentrification, Race, and Ethnicity: Towards a Global Research Agenda? City & Community, 15(3), 208–214 

 

- ​Wood, E., 2002. The Origin of Capitalism: The Origin of Capitalist Imperialism. London: Verso, pp.147-165.