In the US right now, many inner cities are seeing an influx of college-educated white residents, whereas in recent history most urban areas have been characterized by largely lower-class POC communities. This creates a lot of contentious situations where the whiter, wealthier transplants are often accused of displacing minorities, either through being able to rent the existing houses at higher rates or supporting the development of pricey, new units. Naturally, this situation is extremely racialized, and I would expect that to be unique to the American context.
What is the situation like in Europe? Is there also the same degree of young, former suburbanites moving into the cities, and if so, is there a similar degree of political backlash surrounding housing development? Are the more diverse European cities witnessing a similar racialized narrative of this situation as the US?
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There are two issues in Denmark, interrelated as one issue, of the sorts:
The first is the general lack of housing, the second is the tearing down of already existing public housing.
Denmark is in the middle of a wave of urbanisation, as those who are in their twenties now, are the first generation of Danes, where a considerable part of the population can enjoy the availability of education at universities. So we are seeing, and I am among those, that in these years, many working-class families are, for the first time, sending kids off to university, without it being anything special. All the major Danish universities are located in the big cities, so a lot of young Danes are moving to the cities, more than ever before.
However, young people moving into the cities, isn’t anything new in Denmark. It has been quite common for the last 100 or so years, that people would move into the cities, in pursuit of education or a job. So students and low wage workers would move into the cities, get their education or job, and when they had finished, or had saved up enough money, they would move out of the city, or at least to a more expensive part of town.
But in the 1990es, something started changing. The major cities, that had been relatively poor historically—Copenhagen and Aarhus ran on deficit every year, and had for decades—wanted to change this, and started programs to make it more attractive for people, and especially families, to stay in the cities. This however upset the system of exchange. Suddenly students and workers couldn’t move into the apartments they could before, because the earlier tenants hadn’t moved out. And not to mention, they raised the income in the areas, and simultaneously, the tenant-laws were changed, so that landlords more freely could raise the prices. An apartment in a historical worker’s neighbourhood here in Aarhus that cost ~3.500 DKK/m in the naughties, now costs around ~8.000 DKK/m! Meanwhile, in the background, many public housing options were sold off, making them subject to the same price-hikes.
Meanwhile, the suburbs, dominated by what is known online as “commie-blocks” most build in the 1960es and 1970es, to try and make room for all the workers in the booming economy, were starting to fill up, and there were no new plans for suburb construction, at least not public plans, that could help the strained housing market, so prices kept growing. The suburbs were thus full of workers, and, during the 1990es, increasingly many refugees and immigrants. Not to mention, many, but far from the majority, of the workers living there, had come from ex-Yugoslavia(mostly Bosnia), Turkey, Albania as guest-workers in the 1950es and 1960es, and literally constructed the modern welfare state, working as construction workers on housing projects, public schools, and so on.
So in the 1990es, we see a new movement across, predominantly Western, Europe: Right-wing national-conservative populism—something that wouldn’t become a major thing in the US until 30 years later—often quite open about how foreigners, and particularly Muslims, weren’t welcome. In Denmark, they got their first real power following the 2001 election, where the Danish People’s Party formed part of the parliamentary confidence for the liberal government of Anders Fogh Rasmussen. A government that would follow the US into the middle east.
Suddenly—and completely unrelated >!/s!<—middle eastern refugees showed up in Europe, who in Denmark became largely housed in the cheap apartments in the suburbs. Concerns about parallel societies started becoming a thing, and the so-called “Ghetto-lists” started featuring many neighbourhoods and suburbs with high amounts of foreigners living there, often being public housing. In the 2010s, it resulted in new plans being passed, that would start the demolition of public housing in the ghettos, and relocation of the inhabitants, something that particularly hit Gellerupparken, once a major symbol and pride of the Danish welfare state. And before anyone starts pointing fingers: These things were passed and supported by both social democratic _and_ liberal governments. It wasn’t a “red vs. blue” issue, it only further showed, that the social democrats, if this hadn’t become clear in the nineties, were no longer the friends of the working class.
Now, however, there is light ahead. New plans for public housing are being passed, also within the inner cities, and maybe, maybe, a regular, all-out housing crisis, can still be averted. No change on the issue of anti-muslim hysteria though, sadly.
[Kallio](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Kallio_from_air.jpg), a district close to central Helsinki is probably the most well-known example of gentrification in Finland. Once a working-class district, it’s now full of restaurants, bars and cafés and is a stereotypical neighbourhood for young and affluent hipsters to live in.
Yes, particularly in London. Traditionally poor areas of inner London attract hipsters and young professionals looking for affordable rent, then a whole load of cafes pop up, improve the reputation of the area and drive up the price of housing in the process. London is slowly transforming from a traditional British socio-economic model (rich centre, poor inner city, middle-class suburbs) to a more French model (rich centre, poor suburbs).
The Grenfell scandal was the epitome of this. The local council, wanting to attract richer people to the area, decided to put some cladding around some ugly tower blocks from the 70s to make them look nicer from the outside in order to improve the perceived reputation of the area. Of course, they made no meaningful improvements to the inside that would actually improve the lives of the residents (including basic fire safety measures), and to make matters worse they opted to use cladding that was cheaper but also highly flammable. You can guess what happened next.
Seems like when you run out of problems – you invent new ones to feel busy.
anyway, we sort of dont have races, so no question or problem is discussed in terms of races.
Urbanization is happening rapidly and generally viewed neither positively nor negatively, but something like a common sense of moving forward as a more advanced civilization.
It is not viewed as a political thing more like an economical thing where new houses are build cheaply – is critisized or when not enough amenities like schools are not build within 1-5min of walking distance – is critisized.
There is no backlash of destroying old shitty hrushevka’s blocks, but there is backlash when new houses are not pretty enough.
And yeah, housing are become more and more unavailable for poor people, so don’t be poor.
yes, but with few differences:
– there’s no racial background
– affects mainly biggest cities +their surroundings
Bigger problems are connected with lack of urban planning in new projects and price inflation due to funds & big income individuals buying off large amounts of flats
We’ve got two related issues in Scotland, neither are a racial thing though. One is your standard gentrification going on in a couple of inner cities, the other is second home buyers.
In parts of rural Scotland, particularly the Highlands and Islands, houses are going for tens of thousands over the asking price, often unseen, to people who either barely visit the places or want to put them on Air BnB. Wages in these area can’t compete with the wages in the places the second home buyers come from so people are priced out of their own communities so far too many young people are forced to move away. Visit a crofting township outwith tourist season and half the houses are in darkness.
> Is there also the same degree of young, former suburbanites moving into the cities
Well, you probably know but suburbs like you know in the US don’t really exist in Europe or don’t exist to the same extend. Cities in Europe are centuries or millennia old and are surrounded by villages that are also centuries years old.
The cities were, for the most part, richer than the villages surrounding them.
The outskirts of the big cities are where you find dense urban areas with more racially diverse people.
There are people that move from the villages, from outskirts and other towns to the cities that are becoming more expensive, but the main factor that is increasing of the cost of the big cities are the tourism and the expats, and this is making residents of the city move to the outskirts.
Yes in almost all big German cities it’s a widely discussed topic and obviously largely perceived as horrible.
It basically pushes all the ‘dirty poors’ out of the inner city and creates even more unregulated Ghettos than there were before. Communities that have been living in X area for decades are being pushed away.
And yes compared to other comments here, in Germany it’s definitely also a issue that mostly regards foreigners simply because those make up most of the lower class (racism and class division is still big in Germany sadly), creating even more division between natives and them.
Gentrification is definitely something that exists and is discussed in the context of Berlin. “Race” as a concept is very US specific and doesn’t really apply to societies outside of the US, so those parts of your description doesn’t really fit.
The people being “replaced” tend to be working class, often a bit older, either “original Berliners” or (descendants of) immigrants from Turkey or the Middle East. The people “replacing” them are often from outside of Berlin, which includes more affluent parts of Germany, but also other countries.
One aspect that may differ between Germany and the US is that students, even ones that have very little money themselves, are seen as drivers of gentrification. The reason is that they move more often, and landlords can adjust rents when tenants change. Tenant protections are strong here, so when you have an old and cheap contract, there’s not much that your landlord can do about it, though they are occasionally allowed to adjust rents a little *if* they are below average. When an apartment has new tenants every couple of years, that can drive the average up, which makes it easier for landlords to raise rents. Other tenants who aren’t students often stay for decades. Students are seen as “starting” gentrification. Having more students in an area leads to more “interesting” places like bars and cafés or little shops for clothes or art or things like that opening. Often also independent and often “non-commercial” at first. That leads to more young people and tourists and the like coming in, and the area being the place to be. Over time, more and more people with more and more money come in, and replace not only the prior residents, but also those non-commercial spaces.
Dublin is such an ugly city with few things to do. I welcome it, but it’s not really a discussed topic.
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I am not sure I can speak as a representative of my country on this. So I will only speak about myself and my neighborhood. So I live in the general area of the Acropolis. As in if you go on our apartment building roof you see the Acropolis two streets down.
For us gentrification is all about the tourists. Why bother with renters (i.e. families, students, pensioners etc) when you can rent through Airbnb and make a load of cash? Up until recently the greek governement wasn’t even aware that things like web platforms existed so there was no provision in the law for taxing income based on web related things (airbnb, etsy, remote work etc). So what happens is everyone who owns a hole in the wall will only accept short term leases like airbnb. This means no available flat for common people. Also this means that with covid and no tourism owners are looking for exorbitant rents. Imagine 500 euros per month for a 40 year old basement flat when the basic salary is 600 euros.
Back on point though. So then, since we only cater to tourists, we need shops for tourists. Those are bars, restaurants serving Americanized versions of greek food, souvlaki restaurants and ethnic gift shop (i.e. trash made in china that passes for traditional souvenirs). Even if there is a supermarket in the area it will sell things just for tourists and not stuff you’d cook in your home day to day.
So people get pushed away to make space for hipsters serving bad drinks to lobster red tourists looking for “authentic” greece. Just not too authentic. Maybe exactly like we saw in Mamma mia the musical?
Lastly any place where new metro stations are opened in Athens suddenly becomes hip, modern, trendy and so on. Why? Because you now can get there easily from the airport of city port. There’s a good example that older Athenians will know about the Keramikos station that used to be chock full of small maker sheds with tin roofs. Then the metro came there and lo and behold, all the shops were demolished and now hip bars and restaurants abound.
I am sure that I may be missing some points as I am not aware of the situation in other parts of greece. Feel free to correct me.
No, we’ve got a different problem. Developers want to build tall apartment blocks because that maximizes profit per square meter of land. Through well-executed ~~bribery~~ lobbying they end up handing over a district that has no public transportation and not enough schools to the municipality, a literal brownfield development where 35-storey blocks of flats are standing in a brown field that counts as parking.
Russians themselves want to live in single family homes, but since everything is oriented at huge real estate developers, getting a mortgage, buying house insurance, utility connections are all a pain.
Finally, college-educated Starbucks-sipping urban hipsters are all about European-style low-rise apartment blocks and bike lanes, but have neither institutional nor popular support. So they are stuck renting a flat on the 25th floor of the newest housing development.
The starting situation is different (I think that’s mostly true for most of Europe): We didn’t have that american post-wwII flight-from-the-city movement, downtown stayed the most expensive, highly regarded, place to live (if you weren’t particularly looking for lots of nature).
There are still some city-districts that are more pricy and well-regarded, and others that are cheaper – which naturally attracted the immigrants. But other then “gentrification” mixing that up, the city government has already for decades intentionally worked on mixing people. They for example built social-housing complexes in the “villa quaters” on the one hand, and upgreaded the cheap districts by putting public buildings – like the main library – into them.
Generally rising rent- and buy-prices are also a problem here, but laws like rent caps keeps it somewhat at bay.
It is problem of whole Prague. Living here is becoming more and more expensive, and working class can’t afford living here comfortably without inheriting property.
There are some neighborhoods where it was more visible than elsewhere. Karlin for example, it used to be terrible neighborhood, with old damaged apartment buildings, poverty etc… then 2002 floods damaged a lot of houses beyond repair. New buildings were build, a lot of offices, and it slowly turned into polished hipster heaven, with over priced lattes and avocado toasts.
The concern here is more just housing in general since it’s so damn expensive even for upper-middle class.
>whereas in recent history most urban areas have been characterized by largely lower-class POC communities.
I’ve always found this weird. Here wealthy people have always lived in the city centre, while the poor live in the suburbs.