Everyday Life in the Gentrifying City: On Displacement, Ethnic Privileging and the Right to Stay Put

Summary

Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Oslo, Everyday Life in the Gentrifying City offers an examination of gentrification from below, exploring the effects of this process upon city neighbourhoods and those that inhabit them, whether residents, business owners and their customers, or local activists. Engaging with recent debates surrounding immigration and the inclusion of ethnic minorities in the city, the book takes up the question of ethnicity and gentrification. It argues for an urban policy that gives up the preoccupation with policies concerning the residential mix and place transformation in favour of empowering its citizens. A lively and engaging analysis, in which theoretical rigour is illuminated with rich interviews and empirical content in order to shed light on the relationship between gentrification, displacement, and integration, Everyday Life in the Gentrifying City will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, geography, anthropology and urban studies.

Author(s) Bio

Tone Huse is Research Fellow in the the Department of Sociology, Political Science and Community Planning at the University of Tromsø, Norway.

Reviews

’Tone Huse does something rarely accomplished in gentrification research: the inclusion of the voices of those for whom urban redevelopment spells severe disruption to treasured ways of life.This sensitive and insightful ethnographic study demonstrates that our research, and our cities, are better for remembering those who are too frequently ignored.’ Steve Herbert, University of Washington, USA ’Gentrification comes in many flavours, and Tone Huse’s sensitive and vivid biography of a street in eastern Oslo captures a broad range of current and recent processes of change in the urban landscape, from the impact of global neoliberalism to the new ethnic diversity. Written with verve and gusto, this book offers an unusual, attractive and compelling perspective on urban transformations in Western Europe.’ Thomas Hylland Eriksen, University of Oslo, Norway