Happy to see the final cover visual for the forthcoming new book of mine, co-authored with Loretta Lees (Leicester) and Ernesto López-Morales (University of Chile, Santiago). This book reflects on our collective project to rethink gentrification outside the usual Western suspects, and to locate gentrification in wider processes of urbanisation.

PlanetaryGentrification-CoverVisual

Book description:

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, proclamations rang out that gentrification had gone global. But what do we mean by ‘gentrification’ today? How can we compare ‘gentrification’ in New York and London with that in Shanghai, Johannesburg, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro? This book argues that gentrification is one of the most significant and socially unjust processes affecting cities worldwide today, and one that demands renewed critical assessment.

Drawing on the ‘new’ comparative urbanism and writings on planetary urbanization, the authors undertake a much-needed transurban analysis underpinned by a critical political economy approach. Looking beyond the usual gentrification suspects in Europe and North America to non-Western cases, from slum gentrification to mega-displacement, they show that gentrification has unfolded at a planetary scale, but it has not assumed a North to South or West to East trajectory the story is much more complex than that.

Rich with empirical detail, yet wide-ranging, Planetary Gentrification unhinges, unsettles and provincializes Western notions of urban development. It will be invaluable to students and scholars interested in the future of cities and the production of a truly global urban studies, and to all those committed to social justice in cities.

 

The book is now in press. For updates on its production status, please refer to the publisher’s web page here: http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745671642