On a trip to Mexico City, a bus tour whisks me through neighbourhoods teeming with cool cafes, elegant wine bars and stylish twentysomethings. Starbucks are surprisingly thick on the ground. When I ask my Spanish teacher about these areas, he rolls his eyes and rubs his thumb and fingers together: a universal sign for too expensive and full of unpleasant people.
You don’t need to be a gentrification researcher (although I am one) to read these signs and immediately understand what is happening here. Gentrification feels, sounds and looks familiar wherever you are: young hipsters transforming neighbourhoods according to a remarkably homogeneous global code of taste and style.
As accurate as that narrative might feel, the story we tell ourselves about the changing face of our inner-city neighbourhoods is far too basic. Vilifying the markers of gentrification alone fails to get to the root of the problem – and trust me, it’s not as simple as pour-over coffee – and lacks any useful ideas for countering the larger forces at play that have brought artisanal doughnuts to your community.
It’s true that we can identify gentrification through certain styles and sites of consumption. This has been the case since the slow creep of a neighbourhood “on the up” was first noticed and named in north London in the 1960s. Since then, the tastes of gentrifiers – from what they wear, to what they eat – has generated endless commentary. Their preferences have been viewed as the harbingers of doom for working-class, minority communities in cities around the world.
Sites that seem to embody these changes are easy targets. The now-closed Cereal Killer cafe in east London is one such example. Viewed as a sign of everything that had gone or could go wrong in this low-income, predominantly minority ethnic community, the purveyor of overpriced breakfast grains was targeted by protesters, vandals, and graffiti writers who warned of a gentrifier takeover. We love to hate these spaces and their seemingly oblivious owners. After all, they put a face to what seems like an insurmountable problem caused by distant forces.
But the question we should be asking is whether closing a coffee shop is going to prevent gentrification. The answer is no, even if we acknowledge that places such as this do play a role. Today, however, the cultural capital of the avocado toast class is worth little compared with the might of the billion-dollar, multi-national, real estate investment and development industries – and their government partners – who now control our cities and neighbourhoods, as well as their potential for social and economic transformation.
If we truly want to push back against gentrification, we are misplacing our energies by focusing primarily on superficial markers of taste. They are little more than symptoms of much more disruptive forms of urban change that are enriching the few at the expense of the many. The destruction or market-led “regeneration” of council housing is one such form; luxury high-rise development is another. Large-scale eviction processes, accelerated by the end of pandemic-era protections, are overtly enabling gentrification, especially in minority neighbourhoods. The rise of short-term letting through platforms such as Airbnb is helping to raise housing prices beyond the reach of even the middle classes.
These processes are driven by the search for new ways to generate capital and wealth from urban space. The developers, speculators and investment firms that push these changes are able to do so because of government policy that not only allows, but often actively encourages, such developments. Whether it is through tax incentives, rezoning, or government-led “revitalisation” schemes, the state facilitates gentrification on multiple levels.
When your corporate landlord is trying to evict you so that your building’s units can be renovated into luxury suites, a nearby coffee shop serving a £6 flat white certainly adds insult to injury. Don’t get me wrong, the cafe is part of the problem: it’s capitalising on and attracting the kind of changes that may be about to boot you from your community for good. However, the seeds that created the conditions for that cafe to take root were planted long before it even opened its doors, by actors with a tremendous amount of power. In other words, that expensive coffee is certainly not helping you but it’s not the entity “renovicting” you, either.
Feel free to protest about the cafe, but your energy might be better placed organising the tenants in your building to fight against unfair evictions. This lesson applies more widely to the battle against gentrification. For all of us worried about the changes in our communities that are displacing longtime residents, council housing tenants, senior people, people who are immigrants, young people and many others, we must be strategic and focused in our struggle. This means not letting governments and corporations get away with bulldozing (literally and figuratively) our cities, while we’re distracted by annoyingly high-priced breakfast foods.
Admittedly, redirecting our attention to Goliath – indeed, multiple Goliaths – is daunting. However, one of the reasons these groups succeed with their agenda to remake the city for profit, not people, is that we have come to accept the story that rampant capitalist interests cannot be defeated, or even slowed down. But resistance is possible. It can come through rent strikes, squatters’ movements and the growth of community-led models of development, such as community land trusts and cooperative housing. We can push governments to use the regulatory tools at their disposal: eviction bans, rent stabilisation, community benefit ordinances, zoning and taxation.
You don’t have to like the latest vegan bistro-pub in your neighbourhood, but let’s remember to focus on the nefarious agents at play behind the trendy frontages. These powerful forces are dismantling people’s ability to live and thrive in our cities today. A different kind of future is possible, but only if we demand it and demand it from the right people.
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Leslie Kern is a professor of geography and environment at Mount Allison University in Canada and the author of Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies
