Spoiled Mixture: Where Does State-led ‘Positive’ Gentrification End?

Over the past decade, policy-makers have introduced social mixing initiatives that have sought to address urban social problems by deconcentrating poor and workingclass communities through attracting the middle classes back to the city. Such a policy objective clearly ‘smells like gentrifi cation’. However, some commentators have warned against being critical of these policies, pointing out that the types of innercity redevelopment generated by them is different from classical gentrifi cation and that state-led gentrifi cation offers benefi ts for many working-class communities. This paper draws upon research conducted in London to demonstrate how, despite having many commendable aspects, these policy agendas carry with them signifi cant threats of displacement for lower-income communities. The paper also argues that, due to the mutating nature of gentrifi cation, these threats are increasingly context-bound. In conclusion, the paper argues that those state mechanisms which might manage the unjust aspects of gentrifi cation are inadequate. Whether gentrifi cation is urban, suburban, or rural, new-build or the renovation of existing stock, it refers, as its gentri-suffi xes attest, to nothing more or less than the class dimensions of neighbourhood change—in short, not simply changes in the housing stock, but changes in housing class (Slater et al., 2004, p. 1144).