Abstract
Whereas the literature largely assumes that original residents are displaced from their communities following the implementation of market-oriented housing regeneration, this study indicates that such housing regeneration can also enable lower-middle class homeowners to turn their homes into an economic springboard. First, we argue that the social effects of the day after regeneration are the result of a process of social and spatial rupture that occurs during the extended pre-regeneration period. Therefore, understanding the social implications of urban regeneration requires us to view the act of regeneration in the broad historical context of the long-standing deterioration of the social fabric and the built environment. Second, we hold that these conditions lay the basis for an individualization of advancing personal profit through which homeowners advance the regeneration of the residences in their building while internalizing a discourse of “real-estatization” toward “self-gentrification.“ The article examines this dynamic by focusing on homeowners in a disadvantaged environment located at the heart of real-estate interest in Israel.
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Daphna Levine is grateful to the Azrieli Foundation for awarding her an Azrieli Fellowship.
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Levine, D., Aharon-Gutman, M. There’s no place like real estate: the “Self-gentrification” of homeowners in disadvantaged neighborhoods facing urban regeneration. J Hous and the Built Environ 38, 775–794 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-022-09970-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-022-09970-0