Paper Abstracts

• TOM SLATER  Planetary Rent Gaps.

>In this paper I recapitulate the origins, structure, and purpose of Neil Smith’s rent gap theory, trace the key analytical and political shifts Smith effected, and posit some possible extensions of the theory vis-a-vis territorial stigmatization and displacement. In particular I consider rent gap theory in the context of the emerging body of work on ‘planetary urbanization’, and argue that the theory helps to expose and confront new geographies of structural violence, where the constitutive power of speculative landed developer interests in processes of capitalist urbanisation can be analysed and challenged. In the context of global financial systems and the deregulation of the entire global financial apparatus, we are seeing the creation of financial instruments designed to broaden the markets of who can bid and by how much, meaning that expectations of what can be extracted from legally-enforced rights to land have drastically increased. Rent gaps have thus become much wider, woven into causal linkages with processes at wider spatial scales. The challenge for scholarship and activism is to study planetary rent gaps in relation to how global financiers, developers, states, and local populations work together to produce the conditions for accumulation in a very uneven manner. Contrary to contemporary journalistic portraits of white ‘hipsters’ versus working class minorities, the class struggle in gentrification is between those at risk of displacement and the agents of capital who produce and exploit rent gaps. Housing is class struggle over the rights to social reproduction – the right to make a life. This is a class struggle playing out within the realm of the circulation of capital in urban land markets, between, on the one hand, those living in often desperate housing precarity, and on the other, finance capital and all its many tentacles.

• ANDREW HARRIS  Postcolonialising the Historical Comparativism of Gentrification

> The term ‘gentrification’ was first coined by the urban sociologist Ruth Glass in 1964 to describe the ‘invasion’ of working class quarters in inner London by middle-class groups. Glass deliberately drew allusions to the ‘gentry’ not only to highlight new upwardly-mobile fractions within traditional British social hierarchies but because many of the houses that had been taken over had first been occupied by the Victorian bourgeoisie before their widespread flight from the industrialised inner-city. As the term has travelled and mutated from its London origins, new historical referents have been adopted and adapted, including around frontier myths of the American West and colonial descriptors and metaphors. Many gentrification researchers, developing the class-based dynamics of Glass’s term, have drawn on particular historical movements and political conjectures, such as the ‘revanchism’ of nineteenth century France, ideas of ‘neo-Hausmannisation’ and notions of a ‘new urban colonialism’. Yet, despite these resonances and allusions, gentrification has rarely been explicitly considered through its inherent historical frames of reference, especially in investigating urban contexts beyond gentrification’s traditional Western ‘heartlands’. There has also been a widespread tendency to assume gentrification began with the origin of the term in 1964. This presentation will use examples from research on new and old urban colonialisms in Mumbai to argue that placing gentrification against similar historical processes can help illustrate some of the political dynamics, social relations and cultural formations of contemporary urban redevelopment. Not only might this help develop new perspectives on ways of resisting the ‘enclosure’ logics of Mumbai’s ‘colonial present’ but potentially offers ways of reframing understandings of earlier forms of urban colonialism.

• RYAN CENTNER  Spatial Capital and City Fractures: Urban Currencies of Righteousness

> While gentrification is often enmeshed with shifts in ownership and rent, this process of change also involves other transactions of space that mobilize other logics of distinction. This paper focuses on spatial capital – the power to take place – as a resource that emerges through conversions among other forms of capital. Of particular interest are currencies of righteousness; that is, assertions of legitimacy and appropriateness that exceed or diverge from economic power, yet facilitate claims on space. Although one might imagine righteousness as ideally boundless, I highlight how its spatialization is an active process that operates through – or creates new – fractures in cities as a way of delimiting territories of value, and who or what belongs there. These currencies are varied and do not necessarily exchange well across different domains, but they may be linked to money, or indeed to political affiliation, religious membership, or subcultural participation. While these currencies may or may not be related to an urban “gentry,” in all cases they are nonetheless wielded to the effect of urban exclusion. Studying the conditions under which such currencies of righteousness are converted, or indeed whether honoured at all, opens up new dimensions in understanding exclusionary transformations of space. Rather than running counter to rent-gap scenarios, this framework points to complementary and further analytic terrain, which I explore in brief examples from San Francisco, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, and Istanbul.

• EBRU SOYTEMEL  From Gentry to Geographies of Displacement: Conceptual Problems and Methodological Difficulties in Gentrification Research in Turkey

> This paper explores how gentrification theories travel from the global North to the global South, with a particular focus on gentrification research in Turkey. The search for the gentrifiers dominated the first decades of the gentrification research in Turkey. Due to ‘the lack of any gentry class’ in Turkey, following the etymological problems of translating ‘gentrification’ into the Turkish language, some scholars preferred to use terms such as ‘nezihlestirmek’, to describe neighbourhoods in the process of becoming cleaner and ‘decent’ (Keyder 1999). Others have tried, ‘kibarlaştırmak’, as neighbourhoods becoming ‘civilised’, with emphasis on the words ‘gentle’ or ‘refined’ (Eylem 2008). Likewise Uzun (2006) has tried ‘seçkinleştirmek’ (‘elitisation’) (Uzun 2006) and more critical ones used ‘soylulaştırmak’ (‘ennoblization’) (İslam 2006, Şen 2006). The search for this translation should not be taken as a pure linguistic issue, as it is neither simply a Turkish translation, nor a nationalist sensitivity to using a Turkish word for an English concept. These different translations were linked to the researchers’ conceptual and political approaches to the issues at hand. Sometimes two researchers conducted separate research in the same streets and observed different gentrifiers, or made crude periodisations in different neighbourhoods, regardless of whether the changes could be considered to be gentrification or not. Most research ignored the class-based nature of gentrification processes and apart from a few studies, everyday practices and interactions among different groups in gentrified neighbourhoods remains understudied. This paper takes its motivation from these observations and discontent, and it aims to discuss the relevance of established analytical and methodological frameworks in gentrification research for the global South cities such as Istanbul. In this paper I show how mainstream gentrification research maintains its influence on research designs of gentrification research and how this cause class-blindness and challenges to research displacement processes. The paper aims to discuss how to deal with these challenges in gentrification research so as to understand the processes of displacement and experiences of different groups, instead of studying only the experience of gentrifiers. The paper focuses on the following questions: What is the impact of mainstream gentrification research on gentrification studies in Turkey? What are the conceptual problems and methodological difficulties in gentrification research in Turkey, which leads to class-blindness? How can we deal with these difficulties and disclose experiences of different groups to develop more critical perspectives?

• HISHAM ASHKAR The Normative Dimension behind Fostering and Shaping Gentrification: The Case of Lebanon’s Law on Rent

> The prominent role of Public Authorities in initiating gentrification has been highlighted by a significant number of studies. It was even mentioned by Ruth Glass in her famous 1964 report, in which she coined the term gentrification. The intervention of Public Authorities can take various forms, from subsidies to piloting projects, but chief among them is the enactment -or the maintenance in place- of laws and regulations that can sustain and support gentrification. Moreover, these laws and regulations play a main role in shaping the development of gentrification, and thus they constitute a key element for understanding the different developments and natures of gentrification around the world. Within this context, my presentation will address gentrification in Beirut, through the angle of the joint effects of several laws, considered as the main normative mechanisms of the current urban renewal in the city. I will examine in brief some laws, such as the Law of Construction and the Law on Antiquities, however, the main focus will be on the Law on Rent. This Law, and since its latest promulgation in 1992, presents double standards and many inequalities. A situation that offered favorable conditions for the real-estate industry, in the process of space commodification, which in its turns led to gentrification. At the end, I will also discuss the latest amendment to the Law on the Rent, and I will try to assess its impacts on the dynamics of urban development in Beirut.

• MONA KHECHEN The Re-Making of Ras Beirut: Gentrification and the Politics of Mobility

> Initially a sparsely settled wilderness outside the city walls, Ras Beirut (Beirut’s headland) has long since become one of Beirut’s most prestigious addresses and socially diverse districts. The urbanization history of the area is tightly interwoven with the establishment and expansion of the American University of Beirut on one of its hilly waterfront sites. Like the rest of Beirut however, Ras Beirut’s urban growth has been intercepted by many wars and conflicts. Demographic shifts and successive periods of investment and disinvestment of capital in the built environment have shaped and reshaped it physical image and social and economic life. In recent years, global capital flows, coupled with new building regulations that promote higher built-up densities, have tremendously valorized its properties and turned it – as with some other parts of Beirut – into a massive destruction and reconstruction site. While much of Ras Beirut’s current processes of urban change can be associated with gentrification, I argue that a gentrification lens also obscures the complexity and plurality of area transformations and the existence of other – not urban renewal-induced – acts of property dispossession and population movements. I am particularly interested in understanding the area’s changing land ownership patterns and social milieu from the perspective of its “original” inhabitants. Primarily through focused interviews and a review of local histories and oral accounts, I interrogate the struggle of long-time residents and businesses against displacement and uprootedness. With reference to their stories, including the stories of some of those who left or about to leave the area, I illustrate the presence of intricate social and spatial mobilities that are not captured by western-centric gentrification paradigms. These mobilities, I contend, and their ensuing socio-spatial divisions and inequalities, largely stem from a country context fraught with social insecurities and highly susceptible to political manipulations and rivalries.

• MARIEKE KRIJNEN Capital, Culture and Conflict: Gentrification and Urban Change in Beirut

> My talk will sketch the processes driving gentrification in Beirut and illustrate these with two case studies. First, I will look at the immense urban change witnessed in the Mar Mikhael quarter, where existing shops and residents have been replaced rapidly with pubs, restaurants, art galleries, designer boutiques and wealthier individuals, and older buildings have started to give way to new real estate projects. Second, I will discuss the different kind of urban redevelopment seen in Zokak el-Blat, where new buildings are replacing older ones as well but where cultural and commercial changes have not materialized. Instead, a different existing demographic that enjoys some political protection leads to a slower gentrification process that is limited mostly to the quarter’s edges. These case studies point towards specific aspects of gentrification processes in Beirut, such as the lenient legal framework afforded to developers wishing to evict residents and demolish their buildings, the Lebanese diaspora that is an investor in and buyer of real estate, and a major rent gap caused by rent controls, high exploitation ratios and the role of conflict in processes of displacement and speculation. These specifically Lebanese aspects are not always covered by gentrification theory produced in the West. The case of Beirut also shows just how much gentrification processes can diverge within a single city, with different networks of capital formation and visions of the urban future reflecting Lebanon’s history of confessional conflict and the various ways in which neighborhoods and social groups are linked to regional and global circuits of capital. Notwithstanding Lebanese specificities, the case studies demonstrate that the driving forces and results of gentrification in Beirut are the same as elsewhere: the logic of the market is privileged in housing provision and lower- and middle-income groups are displaced and excluded from the city.

• BRUNO MAROT Governing Post-2000s Urban Restructuring in Beirut: When Class Interests Override Sectarian Divisions

> “Beirut in times of peace has been more disfigured and destroyed than in times of war”. This view, held by local activists protesting urban redevelopment outside the city center, shows the extent and the way the Lebanese capital has been reshaped over the past 20 years. Though this process has received less attention than the post-war megaproject of downtown reconstruction (Solidere), it has resulted in far-reaching spatial and socio-economic transformations in Greater Beirut. It also went along with the evolution of the power structure and practice governing the making of the city. In conflict contexts such as Lebanon, the urban development and housing provision literature as well as local city builders generally depict the state as ‘failed.’ Yet, this paper hopes to contribute to an emerging body of scholarship exploring how public authorities are actually a key player in constructing property supply and demand in post-1990s Beirut. In so doing, this research draws upon an analytical framework inspired by urban political economy and by Pierre Bourdieu’s seminal work on the social construction of the housing market to examine how entrepreneurial elites take over state prerogatives to organize and incentivize property-led (re)development. It specifically investigates the way in which a transectarian coalition of rent-seeking agents uses, alongside the action of the Central Bank, the control of the law-making process as a major resource to pursue a growth-oriented agenda, which relies on the intensification of land use and on the further commodification and financialization of city-making. Findings are based on two case studies —the 2014 Reform of Rent Control and the 2014 Bill on Green Buildings — and unravel the strategies through which private individuals and groups as well as public figures and institutions operate to advance their interests. From a more theoretical perspective, this research also questions the issue of urban power and highlights how class interests intersect with political-sectarian divisions in the politics of production at play. In so doing, it hopes to shed light on how urban change is governed in contested cities open to global competition and how the case of Beirut exemplifies the way structural and agential factors interact in such specific settings of urban production. This contribution is part of a larger doctoral research exploring the major mechanisms and agents of the “development regime” (Stone, 1993) behind the massive provision of upmarket residential units and the development of rent-to-own programs characterizing the evolution of the property market in post-1990s Beirut. Stone, C. (1993). Urban regimes and the Capacity to Govern: A Political Economy Approach. Journal of Urban Affairs, 15(1), 1-28.

• BAHAR SAKIZLIOGLU Residents’ Displacement Experiences in Istanbul

> Like in many other cities, public authorities in Istanbul engage in redevelopment or renewal of disadvantaged neighborhoods. While the aim is social, physical and economic upgrading of these neighborhoods, the result is often state-led gentrification and displacement of local residents. Despite the expanding geography of displacement and growing literature on state-led gentrification in Istanbul, we know little about how residents experience the process of displacement. This study investigates residents’ displacement experiences in Istanbul through the analytical lens of accumulation by dispossession. It has two main aims: 1) to explain how accumulation by dispossession works in the context of urban renewal in Istanbul; 2) to compare displacement experiences of different groups of residents (based on ethnicity, class, tenure, gender) on the basis of evidence from its case study of displacement process in Tarlabaşı, Istanbul. The data is collected using a combination of three qualitative methods: in-depth interviews, participant observation and document analysis. The findings of the study show that a spiral of neighborhood decline, uncertainty, anxious waiting, pressures of authorities and landlords signified the long process of living under the threat of displacement in Tarlabaşı. Lower-class, mostly Kurdish, residents are severely dispossessed as the result of the displacement, which is characterized as direct and discretionary. Residents, however, developed a number of strategies -both at household and collective levels- to cope with the negative effects of this process.

• ÖZLEM ÜNSAL “No Liberty on Your Own”: Grassroots Movements and Urban Politics in Istanbul

> For the past decade –throughout which a series of new policies enabled the complete restructuration of housing markets, planning schemes and infrastructural operations- critical circles in Turkey have been relentlessly discussing and campaigning against the various destructive aspects of state-led urban transformation. Thousands have been displaced and dispossessed due to demolish and rebuild oriented renewal projects; vast patches of public land have been made available for the entrepreneurial projects of private capital; natural resources have fallen victim to infrastructural operations of immense scale, and heritage sites have been ruined either by the initiation of regeneration schemes within conservation zones, or the erection of high-rise towers in the skylines of historic city centres. Perhaps one positive consequence of these disparaging forces, however, has been the heightened mobilization of citizens around their rights to urban, natural and public resources. In parallel with and triggered by the developments mentioned above, we have been witnessing the emergence of countless civil initiatives and neighbourhood associations fighting against diverse issues that range from environmental threats to incidents of displacement and dispossession. Istanbul sets the main stage for these elements in play for it has long been the most dynamic urban centre of Turkey in social, cultural and economic terms. The aim of this talk is to shed light on the expanding and flourishing scene of civil mobilization against the forces of state-led urban transformation in Istanbul and argue that it is exactly these emergent constellations that have contributed to the political climax of 2013 that have come to be known as Gezi protests.

• MOHAMED ELSHAHED The “Right to Housing” in Cairo: Resisting Gentrification and the “Neglectful State”

> In the context of central Cairo there are accumulated factors that beg for a reconsideration of how gentrification as a process may take different trajectories in the global south: high levels of vacancy, deteriorated public amenities and services, dynamic entrepreneurship of small and medium business that benefits from archaic laws such as old rent while maneuvering around the corrupt municipal system, the emergence of artists as a form of resistance to the state’s hegemonic grip on art and culture and the injection of international (Gulf) capital investment aiming to transform districts as an alternative to the state’s neglectful urban management. There are multiple processes of urban transformation taking place in Cairo concurrently within different geographies and different economic spheres; some of these transformations carry some of the hallmarks of gentrification. However, these processes also depart in some ways from conventional gentrification as understood based on European and American experiences. In order to unpack what gentrification means in Cairo this presentation will highlight three particular urban sites in central Cairo where the potential for gentrification has been resisted by residents and activists: Ramlet Bulaq, Maspero Triangle, and downtown. In all three cases, the discourses of the “right to the city” and the “right to housing” have been deployed by activists as a strategy of resisting gentrification, on the one hand, and the state, on the other. In addition to identifying these sites of urban struggle and the actors involved, I will evaluate the effectiveness of the “right to the city” discourse as a form of resistance to gentrification in the Egyptian political context where basic rights have been systematically violated by the state.

• MONA SERAGELDIN The Dynamics of Neighborhood Transformation Long Term Trends and Immediate Responses to Turmoil and Civil Unrest

> Gentrification conjures images of the forced displacement, exclusion and marginalization of poorer segments of society. However it is important to distinguish between spatial segregation and social exclusion and between diversity and social mixity. This presentation focuses on Mashreq countries that share a similar historical, cultural and urban legacy, including ethnic and religious diversity and that are today affected by violence, turmoil and civil unrest. In labor sending countries, remittance-driven urbanization, formal and informal doubled land values every three years making access to land unaffordable to a growing segment among the middle classes. It accelerated the proliferation and subsequent densification of informal segments and sharpened class differentiation within them. Except in cases of clearance and redevelopment, changes in urban areas, entail longer-term processes that start slowly, accelerate and reach a tipping point. Upgrading services creates opportunities for gentrification depending on site location. Government projects attempted to simultaneously prevent displacement and generate land based financing. Dealing with unprecedented numbers of internally displaced people (IDPs) and refugees is a major challenge. To the 1.5 million Palestinians displaced in successive conflicts with Israel, and the wars in Iraq and Syria have added over six million IDPs and two million refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. IDPs have settled on the periphery of cities or found accommodations in neighborhoods housing people of similar ethnic n and religious background. In all countries civil unrest brought security to the forefront of priority concerns. High end suburban subdivisions fragmented into clusters of gated communities. A resurgence of semi private spaces where admission is controlled by fees or rules increased social exclusion. With security as a priority criterion conditioning locational choice, the fragmentation of cities into ethnic and religious enclaves and socially homogenous neighborhoods sharing few connections other than transportation links will present a major challenge in post conflict reconstruction.

• ERNESTO LÓPEZ-MORALES The Several ‘Gentrifications’ in Latin America

> Even the most critical narratives of gentrification exported from the Global North often reduce its causes as motivated by the gentrifiers’ ideal of low-rise blocks, mixed-uses, local character, gourmet cuisine, sympathy for the revitalization of derelict buildings (but not their occupants), etc.; in sum, a highly popularized agency-led sovereignty to transform the neighborhoods according to their economic power and tastes. Although authors tend to similarly see gentrification in Latin America as a class-motivated, everyday construction of segregation, they also see it differently, more decisively aimed by the state and the dominant real estate corporate powers in search for landed profit and space for middle-class reproduction. Drawing on several study cases and recent literature, I argue there are not one, but several Latin American ‘gentrifications’, namely complex interplays between state-provided ‘spatial capital’ (i.e. new/increased access to transportation from thousands of urban hectares hitherto left unattended by the state and the market, now accessible) and class-monopoly extraction of ground rent from low-income environments, a rent that soon is ‘switched’ into global circuits of financial capital. Latin American gentrifications are also decisively triggered by urban-entrepreneurial up-zoning and ‘pacification’ laws, controlled by municipal authorities; and this is generating particular forms of social stratification, not just in traditionally lower-income/informal neighborhoods, but in the whole metropolitan spaces, vis-à-vis the conflictive appropriation of symbolic and material spaces by the incoming users. And as Loretta Lees (2012) rightly notices, strategies to counterweight gentrification seem both more radical and politically effective in Latin America. In this talk I show how scale, finance, and role of state are powerful structural forces in Latin American gentrifications, and discuss how the ‘generic nature’ of gentrification (Clark, 2015) is part of a neoliberal repertoire of social polarization and profit-seeking radical transformation of the cities.

• TOLGA ISLAM Gentrification and Changing Public Policy in Istanbul

> Until recently, gentrification had mostly been taking place in Istanbul in its classical sense, as a housing rehabilitation or restoration process in the historic lower income neighborhoods, undertaken by the incoming groups, namely the cultural middle classes, that have a higher status than the original residents. Since the early 2000s, this picture started to change, gentrification has been triggered and shaped more and more by top-down policies. After giving a brief review of changing phase of gentrification in Istanbul in the course of more than thirty years and evaluating the applicability of gentrification theories developed in the global North to the context of Istanbul, this presentation will focus on the recent (post-2005) state-sponsored gentrification wave in the city. It will discuss the role of state in triggering gentrification together with anti-gentrification resistance movements that had emerged as a response to the implementation processes of these policies.

• YAHIA SHAWKAT Insecure Tenure and Policies of Land Commodification: The Targeting of Vulnerable Communities in Egypt

> In the ambiguous legislative climate synonymous with authoritarianism, the Mubarak regime pushed the commodification of public land earmarked for urban development, driving up the prices in some places 16 fold over the last decade alone. While the dubious allocation of vacant desert plots to local and foreign investor-speculators has been well in the spot light, the exploitation of this boom by a plethora of government and quasi-government agencies that own or administer occupied public land has received little attention. Cash hungry ministries, public sector companies and local governments have been allowed by law and encouraged by international financial institutions to “maximise” their assets; namely commodifying the so-called private state land under their jurisdiction. While a portion of this land is vacant or occupied by non-residential uses that are shut down or relocated to less prime locations, the other portion is home to thousands of families with varying degrees of legitimate tenure. For the latter, compulsory purchase orders, sequestration decrees and even the falsifying of contracts have been used to evict the residents and use the land for investment purposes. This presentation argues that the one-sided writing of land policy meant the effective targeting of these vulnerable communities, forcefully evicting them in the shadow of seemingly social motives like “upgrading unsafe areas”, the blatant term of “urban beautification”, or simply labeling the residents as “usurpers” and “squatters”, allowing government agencies to capitalise on the market value of the land, which ironically was the only affordable haven for these communities.

• KHALDUN BSHARA Shifting Trends: The Impossibility of Gentrification in the Palestine Cities’ Context

> Cities in Palestine pose serious dilemma to the gentrification as we understand the term in social and spatial studies. In this contribution, I argue that inherent to Palestinian spatial and political conditions a fluid spatial imaginary that hinders the possibility of gentrification. In addition, I argue that gentrification in Palestine cities is turning towards groupings, activities, and events in certain loci, rather than certain neighborhoods or streets. These (new) groupings and activities are the new gentrification of Palestine, and express a multitude of differentiations and divisions that take place among the Palestinian community including: class, gender, political parties, sport alliance. Instead of having space at the very core of gentrification, space has become the recipient of gentrified bodies, a trend that echoes the transfer of power from territorial entities to the human subjects in neo-liberal Palestine. Since the loci of power is mobile and cannot be territorialized as hegemonic structures (including the national and the colonial) would seek, gentrification becomes fluid and de-territorialized and therefore can be understood as a mode of expression whence space does not allow for such expression. For example, al Massioun neighborhood in Ramallah relies on the users, albeit from different class, to sustain and speculate about the value of the neighborhood as space. This relation is not sustainable and conditioned by the macro-socio-economic-political factors.

• AZIZA CHAOUNI A River Runs through It: The Transformations and Tribulations of the Fez River and its Rehabilitation Project

> When faced with the uniquely preserved urban fabric of the medina of Fez and its continuously bustling life, one is easily lured by its timelessness and tends to overlook one of the major characteristics of this walled medieval city: its continuous mutability. This characteristic is even harder to perceive due to the fact that it is challenged by two dominant discourses. On one hand, government and preservation agencies’ inflated narratives represent the medina of Fez as the cradle of Morocco’s civilization; on the other the tourist industry promotes an orientalist nostalgia that depicts the medina as a fossilized urban artifact, unchanged since times immemorial. Such framing of the Medina of Fez is problematic, as it voids the unique resilience of its urban form, which was able to accommodate drastic changes while retaining its structuring DNA. Today, this resilience is challenged by the gentrification of several urban typologies of the medina of Fez including public spaces, mainly caused by the demands of tourism and political agendas subsequent to the Arab Spring. Through the case study of the Fez River Rehabilitation project that uncovered parts of a polluted river, this lecture will analyze the relationship between resilience and gentrification in a North African medieval city in mutation.

• AHMED HELMI Gentrification is in the Eye of the Beholder

> Is gentrification good or bad? Is it a zero sum game where one segment of society wins and another loses? Downtown Cairo has seen the first wave of gentrification after the monarchy was toppled in 1952. This was the beginning of change (reverse gentrification). Names of streets were changed (Ismaelia square, Soliman Pasha square, etc.). With nationalization, the affluent foreign community abandoned its dwellings, to be substituted by insurance companies, banks and officers. Yet, for a decade, the momentum kept downtown cinemas, opera, restaurants and department stores vibrant and alive. The second wave of “reverse gentrification” took place in the 1970’s when local affluent classes started to reside in the new suburbs of Mohandeseen and Nasr City, leaving behind marvelous buildings to decay by Nasser’s rent control laws. With 1-5 USD per month for a 150-sqm apartment, the landlords could not afford, and had no interest, in maintaining their properties. Starting from the 1990’s ripples of a third wave started surfacing. The Supreme Council of Antiquities began listing, managing and restoring heritage properties; the new rent laws floated the relationship between the landlord and the tenant, allowing the market forces to determine rental rates. Yet, the old rent control laws were not terminated. It allowed residential tenants of such contracts to reside for one more generation (an additional 3 decades of property decay). The government commenced some cosmetic initiatives to restore properties and some momentarily shined again! In parallel a new crowd of artists started appearing in downtown! The Townhouse pioneered, EL Rawabit followed then came the Nitaq street festival and the Contemporary Image Collective (CIC). It was interesting how such an alternative crowd conflicted then co-existed with the colloquial car mechanics of the area! In the midst of this era Ismaelia for Real Estate Investments was born to join the scene. A company owned by prominent businessmen, investment funds and managed by private equity! Then 2011 unfolded to bring a tidal wave to downtown. Thousands of Egyptians from all walks of life became regulars! Coffee shops and bars’ walls listened to hot political debates; the streets witnessed tear gas, bullets and sirens; and the alleys and passages embraced the fleeing revolutionists and graffiti artists! What are Ismaelia’s plans after seven years in downtown! Are we aiming to create yet another wave by bringing in Prada, Gucci and Music Hall? Well, the answer is yes and no!

• XAVIER CASANOVAS Barcelona, from Successful Urban Design to Gentrification

> After the Spanish Civil War, Barcelona experienced a strong industrial development, absorbed a large migration wave from all Spanish regions, but was marginalized in terms of urban development. Once the democracy was established, Barcelona began its urban renewal by taking advantage of the momentum which allowed the organization of the 1992 Olympic Games. Then both the historic centre and the suburbs become the attractive modern city of today. Such a careful and sensitive transformation entailed sacrifices and resignation of the citizens. Gentrification was not a critical issue at the beginning, with a good balance between heritage preservation, new construction and respect for the local inhabitants. Unfortunately, the gentrification gradually gained strength with the tourism pressure to the point that a popular revolt happened last summer in Barcelona (a fishermen neighbourhood), in order to protest against the incompatibility between tourism activities and the inhabitants’ life. As a result, the Municipality is currently rethinking the city’s tourism policy with the cooperation of private developers.

• ERIC HUYBRECHTS Gentrification Mitigations and Gentrification Driven by the Poor

> Several experiences are applied in many cities to deal with the gentrification effects as a way to make cities more attractive or as a negative trend for solidarity and social mix. Except in neoliberal contexts were gentrification could be a priority to increase land prices, large urban development projects in rich countries are frequently using a range of tools to ensure social mix that is considered as a sustainable goal. In developing and transition countries, with less financial capacities, several ways are used to mitigate gentrification effects. Tools are diverse and related to specific stakes of each city: slums rehabilitation projects in pericentral areas; land sharing on slums in city core of large cities; rehabilitation of decayed historical precincts; on-site relocation in the city centers, etc. This presentation will address key points based on several examples taken in Paris, Greater Mumbai, Tripoli-Libya, Phnom Penh, Istanbul and Addis Ababa, to present different ways of gentrification mitigation through urban projects and land use regulation in context of quick urban changes after wars or economic crisis. The relation between urban project and gentrification will be discussed. Their relation is linked with the specificity of the political economy of each city and country, the existing laws, institutions, governance and participatory process that are keys to understand the conditions for gentrification mitigation and regulation.

• SERGE YAZIGI Strategies to Respond to Gentrification. Case Studies: Mar Mikhael and Zokak el Blat, Beirut

> Due to their history and geographical location, the neighbourhoods of Mar Mikael and Zokak el Blat, are currently facing important challenges regarding the preservations of their built and social fabrics. In order to address the issue of gentrification in such neighbourhoods, one needs to reflect on several measures, inspired by actions in other cities facing similar phenomena. The first step to consider is conducting an assessment, as such a mapping provides a baseline of information that can be monitored and analysed, in order to envisage solutions adapted to local context. In parallel to this, four major categories of actions can help to stabilize a gentrifying process. Put together, they form the basis for an anti-displacement strategy. The first two “containment measures” measures: stabilise existing tenants and preserve the built fabric. They aim at preserving the social and built fabric and decelerate the destructive pace of gentrification. The two following measures consist of enhancing the quality of life in the neighbourhood and structuring the mobilisation of the society. A more “pro-active approach”, they could be considered as accompanying measures to the previous ones. The presentation will also develop the extent to which this “wish-list” could be effectively implemented within the socio-political context of such neighbourhoods. A special focus will be given to already existing mechanisms (should they be planned measures or prevailing dynamics) that are currently contributing to resisting to gentrification processes. Eventually, there is a need for “creative measures” that do not necessarily depends on substantial alterations of existing legal and administrative frameworks, but rather on initiatives that could be in synergy with existing dynamics, including those of the private sector.