Affective atmospheres of gentrification: Wellbeing amid neighbourhood change

Abstract

The article aims to contribute to the gentrification debate by proposing a conceptual apparatus attuned to the study of how the everyday lived experience of neighbourhood change can have consequences for wellbeing. Accordingly, the concept of affective atmosphere, grounded within the non-representational theory, is proposed to capture nuances’ affective impact within shifting socio-material assemblages of local environments. A literature review was conducted to examine the ways in which the concept of affective atmosphere enhances the understanding of how changes in the socio-material configurations of space affect the wellbeing of local communities. The proposed framework captures the affective strain of gentrification as emerging within the specificities of socio-material constellations of local environments. Moreover, the advantage of the proposed framework was identified in its capacity to link particular manifestations of gentrification-related violence to overarching regularities of affective capitalism. The article urges for increased sensitivity to nuances of neighbourhood change, posing a potential threat to wellbeing even at the early stages of gentrification. Due to the decision to prioritise thoroughness of analysis over scale, the limitation of this article is its restrictive scope of research.