Gentrifier

This is a very interesting piece of work that is likely to draw some attention and may even create some controversy in the gentrification studies circle. -- Aysegul Can * Urban Studies Journal Vol 55:09:2018 * 'Highly Recommended.' -- D. Fasenfest * Choice Magazine vol 55:04:2017 * 'This book provides a welcome corrective to the slap-dash way 'gentrification' is used as an explanatory force in popular narratives ... It would be a valuable addition to reading lists on urban studies, urban geography and urban planning.' -- Peter Matthews * London School of Economics Review of Books blog August 2017 * The co-authors of Gentrifier take a daring tack: Professors all, they break the third wall of social science to admit that their interest is not purely academic. Gentrifiers themselves, Schlichtman, Patch and Hill believe that by sharing their experiences, they can help make sociological sense of this fraught topic. -- Daniel Brook * The New York Times, Sunday, July 9, 2017 * [Gentrifier] is a powerful reminder of the need for a new framework for urban development that re-imagines and re-situates the position of a variety of actors in the urban/suburban landscape. -- Sheila Foster * The Nature of Cities (online) * The authors are well-aware that they risk being self-serving, defensive, or even 'whiny' as they attempt to stake a position in this complex terrain, as both academics and gentrifiers. But by making themselves and their choices part of the analysis, they have produced a unique and important contribution to the progressive literature on gentrification, one that truly does work in the much-sought middle ground between supply and demand side explanations of this form of urban change. -- Amy Starechesk * Antipode, Radical Journal of Geography (online) * In their book Gentrifier, instead of trying to solve the gentrification Rubik's cube, they decide to pull it apart, block-by-block, naming each part and its role in neighborhood change. The book provides not only a glossary of terms, but also tools and rules of engagement for deploying this thing that-if we can all agree on nothing else-has now become a fully loaded and weaponized word. The function of this breakdown is that by using a more scrupulous lexicon for describing the changes happening to one's neighborhood or environment, legislators and regulators can be more responsive and accurate in their policy proposals. -- Brentin Mock * City Lab, Books that influenced us in 2017 (online) * Drawing together an accessible synthesis of the relevant scholarly literature with extracts from personal journals, field-notes and the systematic recall of past events, the book offers an interesting addition to the field that usefully and constructively engages some difficult issues that gentrification researchers have long been happy to overlook, presenting a series of informed, personalized, micro-level insights into how academics and activists who are ostensibly critical of gentrification can themselves become gentrifiers. -- Lee Crooked, University of Sheffield * Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, vol 34 *