Neighbourhood Restructuring And Residential Relocation
Introduction:
To this purpose we present a broad conceptual framework for Neighbourhood restructuring and relocation studies, based on these four themes. Subsequently, we review major issues in restructuring and gentrification discourses, and briefly reflect upon some of the factors underlying the negative loading of the term displacement. We also identify caveats in the evidence base of relocation studies, both in the United States and in Europe.
This introductory paper to this special issue of Housing Studies questions whether various characteristics of the debate and research on gentrification, displacement and Neighbourhood restructuring justify a largely negative perspective on the processes and outcomes of ‘forced’ residential relocation. We argue that a proper and fuller consideration of issues around policy, context, process, and outcomes enable researchers and commentators to avoid ready characterizations and self-fulfilling investigations of restructuring which serve to present it as a singular (and somewhat suspicious or conspiratorial) phenomenon.
Finally, we introduce the papers in this special issue. The overall aim of this issue is to offer a more open, balanced starting position for analysis of urban restructuring processes and relocation outcomes, particularly in relation to areas of social housing.
Displacement or Relocation for Residents?
Historically, displacement has been a central concept in the gentrification debate, and one which has migrated to substitute for the consideration of relocation within restructuring studies. During the 1970s, the term was coined as any situation in which “any household is forced to move from its residence by conditions which affect the dwelling or its immediate surroundings, and which:
(1) are beyond the household’s reasonable ability to control or prevent;
(2) occur despite the household’s having met all previously imposed conditions of occupancy,
(3) make continued occupancy by that household impossible, hazardous, or unaffordable”
Neighbourhood Restructuring:
There is also the potential displacement of people within places, as a result of the neighbourhood restructuring, with outcomes for in situ residents seemingly affected by the extent and speed of change around them, and the degree to which they feel involved and part of that change. In the case of gentrification, these kinds of place-based changes to the social and service environments have been termed ‘the hidden costs of gentrification’, ‘indirect displacement’, and the ‘class-based transformation of place’.
Freeman has maintained that in-movers rather than out-movers are the driving force behind neighbourhood change in gentrifying neighbourhoods restructuring, thus implying that displacement within places is a more significant phenomenon than physical displacement of residents out of gentrifying or restructuring areas.
Gentrification:
The extent to which a narrative of change as witnessed in gentrification, described as involving the ‘wiping away’ of a pre-existing working-class infrastructure and the ‘experience loss due to the projection of middle-class habitus’, can be applied to the restructuring of deprived neighbourhoods in many towns and cities is very dependent on urban/regional social and economic context and thus an open question. In the case of entirely social housing areas, particularly those which have been distressed for some time, this kind of ‘indirect displacement’ may be less likely than in more mixed tenure, inner city areas, both since the pre-existing social and service infrastructures are more likely to be weak.
Displacement And Neighbourhood Restructuring:
The common premise is that low-income groups suffer most from displacement, in terms of the quality of their dwelling, increased rents and fewer housing opportunities in general. Nevertheless, the tendency to frame forced relocation connected to state-led restructuring in a gentrification discourse tends to ignore or downplay fundamental differences between these phenomena, especially in terms of the institutional context. A foremost difference is that restructuring policies usually enact a range of legally established compensation mechanisms for residents facing a forced move.
Conclusion:
All in all, the papers in this special issue highlight different aspects of the relocation process and outcomes and the various ways in which these can be perceived by residents, policymakers and researchers. The special issue takes a critical position with regard to the predominantly negative displacement discourse in much of the literature. We hope that this introduction paper, and the special issue as a whole contribute to a more open and balanced perspective on these matters, raising as they do, issues of theory, epistemology and language, and research practice in the study of restructuring and Neighbourhood relocation.
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