Understanding Rent And Value Gap In Inner City London: An Essay.

1.The academic excellence of the review in addressing the six key elements listed above;
2.The quality of presentation, and appropriate use of the Harvard System of referencing throughout;
3.Personal organisation and time management - e.g. adhering to the word limit and keeping to the hand-in date.

Current Research Context Overview

Current Research Context Overview  

The gentrification has been lapping over the London for at least a generation. Beginning in the previous war years, Camden and Islington commenced to transform into leafy havens. Gentrification as currently known began to gather pace in the previous war years; the years when the United Kingdom transformed from the manufacturing-led economy to the service-led economy. The city, previously thick with smog of factories started to clear as the glass-fronted buildings pierced through fog as well as those very warehouses remained transformed into the edgy office spaces, all exposed piping and brick.

The gentrification of the inner city London can be understood on the basis of high-earners already flocking back to once-deprived boroughs from suburbs. More professional can now choose life in gritty city over leafy suburb while salubrious west as well as north London lose out to once-deprived east. The map indicates ‘upmarket’ regions in red as well as ‘downmarket’ in blue. This is anchored on the census data on people that lived where in 2001 relative to 2011.

London has already been turned inside out over the previous decades as a result of the highly-paid currently selecting gritty inner-city over once-affluent leafy suburbs.

The housing experts have compiled a map showcasing that 21^st century capital has undergone via ‘reverse gentrification’ at the dramatic speed. On the basis of the professionals as well as salaries of the people living in London, some places have gone upmarket while communities have gone downmarket right from 2001. The experts from the state agency Savills utilized socio-economic data from Office for National Statistics as well as compared people that lived where in 2001 and subsequently in 2011, the up-to-date data available.  It has revealed the end of the pattern where people who might not afford regions like Kensington, Islington, Chelsea and additional salubrious regions of the Central London headed to outer edges of city.

The top managers, business owners as well as high-end professionals that once settled in the west and north London suburbs including Ealing, Wood Green and Walthamstow are currently flocking to up-and-coming regions of east London, covering Stratford, the Isle of Hackney and Dogs. The regions once notorious for the slums as well as vast estates have turned richer as well as more fashionable, particularly around the Olympic Park. The communities of the northern suburbs have been declining.

More wealthy people have snapped the building of novel homes along the Thames alongside those on eastern fringes of the city. The young professionals would have headed further outward for their homes, however, they presently need urban living. Many people have been priced out of the central London by the affordability pressures of London housing market. With the increasing prices, additional people moved outwards while searching for more affordable accommodation.  

Research methodology/methods Reflection

Research methodology/methods Reflection

The methodology adopted for this study is the systematic review of the literature. The study selects ten scholarly articles already published on the topic. The count-reference will be undertaken using the list of references given at the bottom of each article.  

Current Gaps

The connection or correlation between value gap and rent gap explications of the gentrification have never been subjected to in-depth analysis, despite the two gaps being occasionally presented as incongruent (Kovács, Wiessner and Zischner 2013). There is a need to argue that for an integration of these two theories- that rent gaps and value gaps do not oppose or exclude one another but remain on the contrary best perceived within the common theoretical framework. The case of gentrification of inner city of London needs to be examined from this viewpoint. In London, the value gaps remain likely negligible prior to the year 1970s, however, they have already become a rising potent force for alteration since this time, mainly in the central location. This, nevertheless, precludes neither cases of rent gap- induced gentrification nor the increasingly general presence of rent gap as one of the single most significance force behind the built environment reinvestment.

Justification of a Future Research Project

Understanding the rent gap and value gap concepts and their influences on gentrification is a step in the right direction to design public policy interventions that will mitigate gentrification from pricing out the low-income deserving native families and individuals from a gentrifying neighbourhood (McCann 2017). This understanding will add literature in the urban studies in order that this field will be able to come up with new interventions and public policies that will help design a more structured policy options to provide help and empower the indigenous homeowners and renters in the inner city. In so doing, it will protect the vulnerable renters as well as homeowners who might be priced out of their respective homes in the gentrifying inner city as a result of the skyrocketing rents as well as escalating property taxes (McCann 2017).

Key Evidence, Concepts and Theories Analysis

In the previous many decades, researchers in the urban studies have defined as well as redefined the phrase gentrification. A holistic definition, as suggested by Davidson and Lees (2005) indicate, that it has to entail the four key elements to permit gentrification to remain applicable as well as relevant by varying context. Such elements include reinvestment of capital, landscape change, social upgrading of locale through the influx of high-income cohorts and direct/indirect displacement of the low-income cohorts.

Current Gaps

Gentrification is, therefore, a dynamic as well as multi-layered course whereby the roles of varying stakeholders as well as constituents continuously alter over time as well as space. The neighbourhoods facing gentrification could experience the process in varying ways depending on their corresponding social, geographic a well as political context. The policies designed for the mitigation of gentrification’s negative social aftermaths must, therefore, be context-driven.

Both historical and contemporary arguments surrounding gentrification must be understood. The threat of indirect or direct displacement in case of gentrification remains prominent, however, intentional preservation as well as residential integration strategies enjoy the potential of minimizing displacement’s impacts whereas accomplishing the goalmouth of improving as well as redeveloping neighbourhoods.    

For effective analysis of gentrification, it is essential to identify and analyse the theories of gentrification based on the understanding of gentrification historical trajectories. Since the ushering of the gentrification concept by Ruth Glass in the year 1964, the urban researchers have been attempting to establish the gentrification’s theoretical foothold. The debate between Neil Smith and David Ley in the late seventies and early eighties is an evidence to this. Such a debate revolved around obtaining the causal factors of the gentrification. It was theorized by Neil Smith in 1979 that production-side/supply-side arguments anchored on classical theory of economics might explicate the surfacing of gentrification (DeVerteuil 2015).

The ‘rent gap’ thesis in Smith’s view held that gentrification results from a mismatch hereby referred to as ‘rent-gap’ between the potential economic returns from the centrally situated building and that of the real economic gains from the current use of such a building (Lees 2016). The investment in the rehabilitation, reconstruction or novel construction occurs solely when it remains profitable or put in another way, where the gains which the building is able to generate from its future utilization surpass cost of investment in the building. During the 2000, Lees et al. (2010) made an argument that despite rent gap concept appearing logical, it remained a challenging task to measure empirically.

The measurement issue remained the key point of contention between David Ley and Neil Smith. As opposed to Smith, Ley (1994) argued that gentrification course began with altering societal needs as well as demands instead of structural alterations in housing market. Ley posited that post-industrial economic restructuring that shifted demand to white-collar workforce from the blue-collar workers remained the single most factors instigating an alteration in the inner cities (Cardullo 2014).

The novel white-collar staff in Ley’s view showcased higher purchasing power as well as varied consumption patterns from the traditional employees in manufacturing sector. Nevertheless, Hamnett (1991) was opposed to such discussion pointing out that they merely focused on either production- or consumption side arguments that ended up answering certain questions while failing to respond to other questions. A more integrated theory was thus called for by Hamnett that did not solely concentrate on cheap housing existence in prime location.   

Additional scholars have further investigated the correlation between gentrification and displacement of the low-income people. Gentrification-induced displacement has been said to result where economically well-off cohorts move into the neighbourhood hence escalating the rent as well as the cost of commodities that over time propel out the low-income native residents. Research has pointed out that displacement could be the single most challenging element to systematically analyse urban revitalization (Andersson and Turner 2014). The causal connection between processes of gentrification and displacement have remained unclear thereby making matters even worse as  a result of several, often times unobservable, intervening factors which trigger-low income people to be priced out of the neighbourhood.

Questions/Hypotheses

• What is the causal connection between processes of gentrification and displacement?
• What are the unobservable intervening factors that cause low-income native individuals and families to be price out of a neighbourhood?
• How can public policy interventions be designed to bridge the potential social gap between older and novel residents
• What is the effectiveness of rent control in gentrifying neighbourhood in assisting the low-income native renters to stay in the neighbourhoods?

References

Andersson, R. and Turner, L.M., 2014. Segregation, gentrification, and residualisation: from public housing to market-driven housing allocation in inner city Stockholm. International Journal of Housing Policy, 14(1), pp.3-29.

Cardullo, P., 2014. Sniffing the city: issues of sousveillance in inner city London. Visual Studies, 29(3), pp.285-293.

Kovács, Z., Wiessner, R. and Zischner, R., 2013. Urban renewal in the inner city of Budapest: Gentrification from a post-socialist perspective. Urban Studies, 50(1), pp.22-38.

McCann, E., 2017. Resilience in the post-welfare inner city: voluntary sector geographies in London, Los Angeles and Sydney by Geoffery DeVerteuil, Bristol, Policy Press, 2016, 300 pp., US $45.95 (paperback), ISBN 1447316649.

Lees, L., 2016. Gentrification, Race, and Ethnicity: Towards a Global Research Agenda?. City & Community, 15(3), pp.208-214.

DeVerteuil, G., 2015. Resilience in the post-welfare inner city: Voluntary sector geographies in London, Los Angeles and Sydney. Policy Press.

Davidson, M. and Lees, L., 2005. New-build ‘gentrification’and London's riverside renaissance. Environment and planning A, 37(7), pp.1165-1190.

Hamnett, C., 1991. A nation of inheritors? Housing inheritance, wealth and inequality in Britain. Journal of Social Policy, 20(4), pp.509-536.