Commercial gentrification in Arnhem and Vienna

Abstract

Gentrification is produced and manifested in very diverse ways at different locations and scales. As argued earlier in CITY (Loftus, Alex. 2018. “Planetary Concerns.” CITY: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action 22 (1): 88–95), this ‘planetary’ aspect of gentrification should be seen as an abstract ‘point of arrival’, grounded in the analysis of real-concrete practices that highlight the production of differentiation. Our study aims to contribute to this debate by focusing on mechanisms and resistances behind the local enactment of ‘creative-city’ policies. Thus, our two-city study seeks to highlight local differences through the engagement with ideas, framing and practices associated with commercial gentrification. By deploying Callon’s concepts of ‘diagrams’, ‘framing’ and ‘overflowing’, we compare how ideas and practices of commercial revitalisation are enacted, stabilised and resisted in two Western European neighbourhoods—Klarendal in Arnhem, The Netherlands, and Reindorf in Vienna, Austria. The study traces how, through local policy and neighbourhood practices, the circulation and translation of global ‘creative entrepreneurship’ imaginaries result in different framings of the ‘creative entrepreneur’, with the capacity to somewhat abate the negative social implications of ‘creative city’ policies. Yet, while in Reindorf this mutation is based on a broader affinity with a social-market perspective, in Klarendal it merely comes from everyday resistance by entrepreneurs and neighbourhood actors. There is still considerable need, accordingly, for political change at municipal level.

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