Nearly 30 years ago now, Holcomb and Beauregard were critical of the way that it was assumed that the benefits of gentrification would 'trickle down' to the lower classes in a manner similar to that hypothesised in the housing market. Nevertheless, despite fierce academic debate about whether or not gentrification leads to displacement, segregation and social polarisation, it is increasingly promoted in policy circles both in Europe and North America on the assumption that it will lead to less segregated and more sustainable communities. Yet there is a poor evidence base for this policy of 'positive gentrification'-for, as the gentrification literature tells us, despite the new middle classes' desire for diversity and difference they tend to self-segregate and, far from being tolerant, gentrification is part of an aggressive, revanchist ideology designed to retake the inner city for the middle classes. In light of this, it is argued that these new policies of social mixing require critical attention with regard to their ability to produce an inclusive urban renaissance and the potentially detrimental gentrifying effects they may inflict on the communities they intend to help.

In a recent conference paper Lambert and Boddy (2002) questioned whether new-build residential developments in UK city centres were examples of gentrification. They concluded that this stretched the term too far and coined ‘residentialisation’ as an alternative term. In contrast, we argue in this paper that new-build residential developments in city centres are examples of gentrification. We argue that new-build gentrification is part and parcel of the maturation and mutation of the gentrification process during the post-recession era. We outline the conceptual cases for and against new-build ‘gentrification‘, then, using the case of London's riverside renaissance, we find in favour of the case for.

This paper is an empirical examination of the process of 'super-gentrification' in the Brooklyn Heights neighbourhood of New York City. This intensified regentrification is happening in a few select areas of global cities like London and New York that have become the focus of intense investment and conspicuous consumption by a new generation of super-rich 'financifiers' fed by fortunes from the global finance and corporate service industries. This latest resurgence of gentrification can be distinguished from previous rounds of revitalisation and poses important questions about the historical continuity of current manifestations of gentrification with previous generations of neighbourhood change.

Displacement has become one of the most prominent themes in contemporary geographical debates, used to describe processes of dispossession and forced eviction at a diverse range of scales. Given its frequent deployment in studies describing the consequences of gentrification, this paper seeks to better define and conceptualise displacement as a process of un-homing, noting that while gentrification can prompt processes of eviction, expulsion and exclusion operating at different scales and speeds, it always ruptures the connection between people and place. On this basis – and recognising displacement as a form of violence – this paper concludes that the diverse scales and temporalities of displacement need to be better elucidated so that their negative emotional, psychosocial and material impacts can be more fully documented, and resisted.

This paper revisits the ‘geography of gentrification’ thinking through the literature on comparative urbanism. I argue that given the ‘mega-gentrification’ affecting many cities in the Global South gentrification researchers need to adopt a postcolonial approach taking on board critiques around developmentalism, categorization and universalism. In addition they need to draw on recent work on the mobilities and assemblages of urban policies/policy-making in order to explore if, and how, gentrification has travelled from the Global North to the Global South.