Time-Space Trajectories in Provincial Gentrification

Abstract

Drawing on qualitative interviews in an inner Bristol (UK) neighbourhood, this paper offers some preliminary observations on the housing trajectories and strategies of a group of onward-moving gentrifiers. This indicates the potentially restricted nature of gentrification activity in the life-course and in the housing trajectories of these gentrifiers. The evidence points, on the one hand, to the diffuseness of gentrification, with a range of 'marginal', 'community' and 'corporate' gentrifiers all moving within the gentrified neighbourhood. On the other hand, those leaving the neighbourhood for contrasting locations and housing aesthetics experience a constrained form of gentrification: an inability to keep all social fields in play at the same time. They trade off current aesthetic display for longer-term investment in schooling and class reproduction. The structural and spatial arrangements of housing and education fields in different cities are thus critical in understanding how gentrification is expressed in terms of cultural capital, pointing to a provincial form of gentrification.