In the gentrification literature, a common distinction refers to the supply and the demand side. Studies of the supply side focus on theories such as rent gap and value gap or describe actions of urban and national policy-makers, real estate agents and investors. On the demand side authors analyse the actors involved in the process: gentrifiers. This group, however, as our review of the literature reveals, is neither clearly defined nor sufficiently differentiated to adequately investigate the process of gentrification. In order to investigate the process of gentrification, we propose a differentiated classification of demand groups of pioneers, gentrifiers and others, and suggest operationalisations which are compatible both with typologies in the literature and stage models of gentrification. We apply this classification of social groups and test hypotheses derived from stage models. The data base is a large panel study (N = 1009) in two residential areas of Cologne, Germany, that are in different stages of gentrification. The results support our hypotheses and demonstrate the usefulness of the classification.
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