The New Urban Frontier Gentrification and the Revanchist City

Why have so many central and inner cities in Europe, North America and Australia been so radically revamped in the last three decades, converting urban decay into new chic? What does this mean for the people who live there? Can they do anything about it? This book challenges conventional wisdom - which holds gentrification to be the simple outcome of the new middle class tastes and a demand for urban living - to reveal gentrification as part of a much larger shift in the political economy and culture of the late-20th century. Documenting in gritty detail the conflicts that gentrification brings to the new urban frontiers, the book explores the interconnections of urban policy, eviction and homelessness. The failure of liberal urban policy and the end of the 1980s financial boom have made the end-of-the-century city a darker and more dangerous place. Public policy and the private market are conspiring against minorities, working people, the poor and the homeless. In the emerging revanchist city, gentrification is a policy of revenge.