Loretta Lees
Biographic Data
| ID | 139786 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Loretta Lees |
| GIVEN NAMES | Loretta |
| FAMILY NAME | Lees |
| SIGNATURE | LEES L |
| AFFILIATIONS | King's College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5834-8155 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 90 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2635 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 86 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 25 |
Toward ‘multiplied displacement’
In this article, we analyze and then conceptually combine separately developed frameworks of displacement in urban and migration research. We consider internationally displaced migrants’ continued and multiplied experiences of displacement in cities and urban areas as an entry point through which to explore the intersections between international and urban displacement. In doing so, we move beyond disciplinary divides and take some preliminary co…
A gentrification stage‐model for London? Through the ‘looking Glass ’ of Kensington
Despite the term ‘gentrification’ being coined in London by the British sociologist Ruth Glass, there has not been an attempt to develop a stage model of gentrification for London, nor any up‐to‐date discussion of the different waves of gentrification there in one academic paper or book. Research on urban gentrification tends to see gentrification as an evolving wave, or set of waves, that change in relation to context and the dynamics of urban c…
Des Fitzgerald, The City of Today is a Dying Thing
This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0
A ‘gentrification regime’ change
This article introduces the notion of the ‘gentrification regime’, which we believe is better able to capture the diversity of gentrification trajectories than the more macro-level notions of gentrification ‘waves’ or ‘stages’. We define a ‘gentrification regime’ as a specific set of relations between producers and consumers of housing made possible by a particular policy and financial context. Empirically, this article tracks the shift from a ge…
Should We Evict Critical Perspectives on the State-Led Gentrification of Council Estates in London? The Case of Woodberry Down
Research on council estate regeneration in London has revealed predominantly negative outcomes, including direct and indirect displacements, the loss of homes and communities, and the slow-violence enacted on residents by lengthy programs. Drawing on recent EU-funded research on Woodberry Down (Hackney), we highlight similar negative effects, alongside some positive, ambiguous, and novel outcomes. We discuss these mixed findings within two emergi…
What Constitutes Engaged Dialogue in Urban Research? Thoughts From a Long Time “Outside-Insider”
In this plenary for the new journal Dialogues in Urban Research, I discuss what constitutes (and should constitute going forward) engaged dialogue in urban research. Engaged dialogue is the process of working collaboratively with groups of people, whoever they are, in relation to particular issues that affect them, to understand those issues better. So what does engaged dialogue in urban research look like? Who is engaging with who, where, why, a…
The urgency of properly engaged dialogue in urban research in the context of the new landscape of ‘shitification’
In my plenary for Dialogues in Urban Research I called for properly engaged dialogue in urban research and discussed my own attempts throughout my career (located as an outside-insider) to do just this. I am excited that those urban scholars invited to respond to my paper are on board – here I reply to the thoughtful and generous points made by Myfanwy Taylor; Steve Millington, Chloe Steadmann and Nikos Ntouris; Norma Rantisi; Jennifer Foster; Jo…
Single Mothers Association of Kenya (SMAK) and the Fight to Stay Put on the Ziwani Estate in Nairobi
This Reflection discusses the fight to stay put on the Ziwani Estate in Nairobi, in the face of the redevelopment (gentrification) of one of the first East African public housing projects developed in Kenya under colonial rule. The Single Mothers Association of Kenya (SMAK), a community-based organization founded on the Ziwani Estate, is leading the fight for/with Ziwani residents. SMAK is focused on land and housing rights, capacity building for…
The Promises and Potential Pitfalls of Highway Reclamation for Population Health
Planetary Gentrification and Urban Authoritarianism
In gentrification studies to date, authoritarianism has mainly served as a contextual backdrop to discussions of state-led gentrification. In this concluding essay I reflect on the explorations of 'ordinary' geographical cases of 'everyday authoritarianism' presented in this intervention on planetary gentrification and urban authoritarianism. The cases of Istanbul, Casablanca and Lijiang show how the complex merging of authoritarian and neolibera…
Quantifying state-led gentrification in London
Over the past 20 years, increasing land values, a rising population and inward investment from overseas have combined to encourage the demolition and redevelopment of many large council-owned estates across London. While it is now widely speculated that this is causing gentrification and displacement, the extent to which it has forced low-income households to move away from their local community remains to a large degree conjectural and specific …
The everyday lived experiences of Airbnbification in London
This paper examines the impact of Airbnb on the everyday lived experiences of residents in London. We focus on three spatial scales – the city, neighbourhood, and an individual building. Short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb have transformed socio-cultural urban landscapes by turning homes into informal hotels. We argue that many of the consequences of Airbnb echo and support those of gentrification; this includes indirect displacement, buy-…
Defensible Space on the Move
Gentrification, urban policy and urban geography
Despite recognition that gentrification around the world is state-led – and that gentrification is in of itself de facto an urban policy – few scholars writing about gentrification, including urban geographers, have engaged purposively with urban policy, urban policy makers and other institutional actors. Building on my particular commitment to putting mitigations and solutions to gentrification on the policy table, I once again call for scholars…
Revisiting urban public space through the lens of the 2020 global lockdown
The new decade’s tumultuous nature triggered renewed reflection on urban public space. As Covid-19 lockdowns and social distancing measures were implemented in cities around the globe, and protests on city streets from Black Lives Matter and their global supporters erupted, the world’s attention was refocused on urban public spaces. These were spaces to which access was now curtailed: we were newly and differently fearful in them, anger boiled ov…
Osmosis across defensible space
The idea of “defensible space” was/is to give residents control of public spaces they feel they have no control over. If they gained control, they would defend these spaces, care for them, and protect them (and their property) from crime. The pandemic required a rapidly retrofitted public space – emergency cycle lanes, widened pavements, or play streets. The practices of negotiating public space to take permitted exercise or queue for essential g…
Responsibility and commitment in urban scholar-activism
In this piece Michael Herzfeld and Loretta Lees reflect upon their roles as urban studies scholars based in the academy, and what their positionality means regarding the communities that they have engaged with
Alpha City
When my fellow British urbanist Rowland Atkinson wrote Alpha City before the COVID-19 pandemic there was a sense, even with Brexit looming, that London’s super-rich trajectory would continue. I exp
So, Don’t You Want Us Here No More?” Slow Violence, Frustrated Hope, and Racialized Struggle on London’s Council Estates
Since 1997, over 50,000 homes have been demolished to allow for the “renewal” of council estates in London. This has involved the “decanting” of short and long-term tenants, as well as those leaseholders who bought their homes under “right to buy” legislation. Often described as “social cleansing”, the racialized dimensions of these displacements remain under-explored despite asizable literature documenting the connections between race, place and…
Beverley’s Story
This article considers the different dimensions of an individual’s attempt to survive gentrification. The focus is on Beverley Robinson, a displacee from the Aylesbury Estate in London, who has experienced the slow violence of gentrification and displacement over an extended period of time. We argue that her ‘survivability’ has been, and indeed continues to be, key in her resistance to gentrification. Few academic studies of gentrification have f…
Estate Watch London, and Beyond
In this update we outline a collaboration between the London Tenants Federation, Just Space and the urban geographer Loretta Lees that resulted in a new website Estate Watch London (https://estatewatch.london/). This is a community resource designed to provide information on, and to monitor, those council and housing association estates across London under threat of demolition. As well as showcasing our own research undertaken with, not on, local…
The social cleansing of London council estates
London’s council estates and their residents are under threat like never before. Council tenants are being forced out of their homes due to estate renewal, welfare reforms, poverty, and the precarity of low-income work. Social cleansing can be understood as a geographical project made up of processes, practices, and policies designed to remove council estate residents from space and place, what we call a ‘new accumulative form of (state-led) gent…
Measuring and mapping displacement
Debates concerning residential population displacement in the context of gentrification remain vociferous, but are hampered by a lack of empirical evidence of the extent of the displacement occurring. The lack of quantitative evidence on gentrification-induced displacement and the difficulties in collecting it has long hampered the fight against it. Based on a systematic review of quantitative studies of the displacement associated with gentrific…
Housing Vancouver, 1972–2017
The forum includes a research paper, preceded by a brief introduction and followed by five short responses from Pablo Mendez, Loretta Lees, Margaret Walton‐Roberts, Ilse Helbrecht, and Alison Mountz. Mountz's introduction sets the context for the paper and makes some framing remarks on David Ley's career. The main paper examines the housing question in Vancouver, in the period from 1972 to 2017. Re‐examining a number of Ley's research projects ov…
Sold out? The right-to-buy, gentrification and working-class displacements in London
Since the 1990s, the renewal of council housing estates in London has involved widespread 'decanting' of resident populations to allow for demolition and redevelopment, primarily by private developers who sell the majority of new housing at market rate. This process of decanting has displaced long-term council tenants and shorter-term 'temporary' tenants, with many not able to return to the estate. In contrast, those leaseholders who bought under…
Super-gentrification
This paper is an empirical examination of the process of 'super-gentrification' in the Brooklyn Heights neighbourhood of New York City. This intensified regentrification is happening in a few select areas of global cities like London and New York that have become the focus of intense investment and conspicuous consumption by a new generation of super-rich 'financifiers' fed by fortunes from the global finance and corporate service industries. Thi…
A reappraisal of gentrification
The gentrification literature since the mid-1990s is reappraised in light of the emergence of processes of post-recession gentrification and in the face of recent British and American urban policy statements that tout gentrification as the cure-all for inner-city ills. Some tentative suggestions are offered on how we might re-energize the gentrification debate. Although real analytical progress has been made there are still ‘wrinkles’ which resea…
Gentrification and Social Mixing
Nearly 30 years ago now, Holcomb and Beauregard were critical of the way that it was assumed that the benefits of gentrification would 'trickle down' to the lower classes in a manner similar to that hypothesised in the housing market. Nevertheless, despite fierce academic debate about whether or not gentrification leads to displacement, segregation and social polarisation, it is increasingly promoted in policy circles both in Europe and North Ame…
The geography of gentrification
This paper revisits the 'geography of gentrification' thinking through the literature on comparative urbanism. I argue that given the 'mega-gentrification' affecting many cities in the Global South gentrification researchers need to adopt a postcolonial approach taking on board critiques around developmentalism, categorization and universalism. In addition they need to draw on recent work on the mobilities and assemblages of urban policies/policy…
Moving beyond Marcuse
Displacement has become one of the most prominent themes in contemporary geographical debates, used to describe processes of dispossession and forced eviction at a diverse range of scales. Given its frequent deployment in studies describing the consequences of gentrification, this paper seeks to better define and conceptualise displacement as a process of un-homing, noting that while gentrification can prompt processes of eviction, expulsion and …
New-Build 'Gentrification' and London's Riverside Renaissance
In a recent conference paper Lambert and Boddy (2002) questioned whether new-build residential developments in UK city centres were examples of gentrification. They concluded that this stretched the term too far and coined 'residentialisation' as an alternative term. In contrast, we argue in this paper that new-build residential developments in city centres are examples of gentrification. We argue that new-build gentrification is part and parcel …
Super‐gentrification in Barnsbury, London
In this paper we argue that a process of super‐gentrification, similar to that first identified by Lees (2003 Urban Studies 40 2487–509) in Brooklyn Heights, New York City, is occurring in the already gentrified, inner London neighbourhood of Barnsbury. A new group of super wealthy professionals working in the City of London is slowly imposing its mark on this inner London housing market in a way that differentiates it and them both from traditio…
New‐build gentrification
New‐build gentrification has been the subject of renewed attention of late. The impetus was Lambert and Boddy, who asserted that inner‐city new‐build developments in British city centres should not be viewed as a form of gentrification. While the term has long been generally accepted, Lambert and Boddy, and, more recently, Boddy, argue that the demographic transformations stimulated by city centre new‐build developments are relatively innocuous. …
The Urban Injustices of New Labour's “New Urban Renewal”
This paper discusses the urban injustices of New Labour's “new urban renewal”, that is the state‐led gentrification of British council estates, undertaken through the guise of mixed communities policy, on the Aylesbury estate in Southwark, London, one of the largest council estates in Europe. In this particular case of post‐political planning I show how the tenant support for the regeneration programme was manipulated and misrepresented and how c…
Urban geography
Guest Editorial
Resisting Planetary Gentrification
In-depth studies of and attempts to theorize or conceptualize resistance to gentrification have been somewhat sidelined by attention to the causes and effects of gentrification in the now rather extensive gentrification studies literature. Yet resistance to gentrification is growing internationally and remains a (if not the) key struggle with respect to social justice in cities worldwide. In this article, we address this gap head on by (re)assert…
Introduction to Special Issue on Gentrification and Public Policy
Spatial capital, gentrification and mobility
In this paper we are critical of the fact that the gentrification literature has moved away from discussions about the reclaiming of locational advantage as a marker of gentrifiers’ social distinction within the middle classes. We begin the process of re/theorising locational advantage as ‘spatial capital’ focusing on the mobility practices of new‐build gentrifiers in Swiss core cities. Gentrification is a relatively new process in Swiss cities a…
Rematerializing geography
In the face of several recent proposals for rematerializing social and cultural geography this paper argues that we should look to the ‘new ’ urban geography for inspiration. Because of its subdisciplinary history – its relatively greater attachment to quantitative and applied work, the strong influence of political economy, and the long tradition of
Rethinking gentrification
Measuring and mapping displacement
Debates concerning residential population displacement in the context of gentrification remain vociferous, but are hampered by a lack of empirical evidence of the extent of the displacement occurring. The lack of quantitative evidence on gentrification-induced displacement and the difficulties in collecting it has long hampered the fight against it. Based on a systematic review of quantitative studies of the displacement associated with gentrific…
A 'building event' of fear
This paper examines an incidence of fear that a resident experienced in a council tower block in inner London. Thinking through this 'building event', the paper returns to earlier work that called for a move towards 'a critical geography of architecture' and draws on the work in so-called new geographies of architecture over the past decade. A series of arguments related to the human experience of buildings is made. Latourian actor network theory…
Resisting gentrification on its final frontiers
Gentrification, Race, and Ethnicity
“And it's not just Fort Greene, it's not just Harlem. When I was growing up, D.C. used to be called Chocolate City. Now it's Vanilla Swirl! I used to go to London, hang out in Brixton. No more black people in Brixton. So gentrification, this thing is not just this borough, this city, this country, it's happening all over the world.” (Lee 2014, http://flavorwire.com/newswire/spike-lee-we-predicted-gentrification )
Gentrification in New York, London and Paris
Introduction
This special issue, a collection of papers presented and debated at an Urban Studies Foundation-funded workshop on Global Gentrification in London in 2012, attempts to problematise contemporary understandings of gentrification, which is all too often confined to the experiences of the so-called Global North, and sometimes too narrowly understood as classic gentrification. Instead of simply confirming the rise of gentrification in places outside o…
Ageographia, Heterotopia, and Vancouver's New Public Library
Different critical positions have emerged around the restructuring of space in postmodernity. I consider two sets of literature: the sceptical thesis (theses) of the 'ageographia' in Sorkin's edited collection Variations on a Theme Park and Foucault's affirmative thesis (theses) of the 'heterotopia'. These authors' works relate to a number of themes relevant to this paper: democratic public space, public space (comparing Canada and the USA) and i…
The ambivalence of diversity and the politics of urban renaissance
In this article the ambivalence of public policy responses to diversity on the street are documented empirically through a detailed case study of the marginalization of youth from the downtown public spaces of Portland, Maine, USA. Urban planners, architects and property developers have become increasingly concerned with improving the quality of urban life and the public spaces on which it depends. They argue that urban revitalization initiatives…
The right to community
The file associated with this record is under embargo until 18 months after publication, in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. The full text may be available through the publisher links provided above
Rethinking gentrification
Gentrification in London and New York
This paper is concerned with differences and similarities between gentrification in England and the United States. The central argument is that processes of gentrification are context specific. Three aspects of local contexts that are crucial to gentrification are explored: (1) the institutionalisation of property transfer; (2) the capitalisation of property, and (3) urban conservation practices. These are illustrated with reference to two exampl…
Feminist Geography in Aotearoa/New Zealand
This is a report on a workshop on feminist geography organised by the Department of Geography, University of Waikato, Te Whare Waananga o Waikato, held at Pirongia Forest Park Lodge, 29-31 July 1994
De-Gentrification and Economic Recession
A new debate has emerged in the literature on gentrification concerning the effects of the current economic recession. We criticize the terms of this debate for underplaying both the complexities and local specificities of gentrification. Exploring the course of gentrification in two localities in New York since the early 1970s, we show how the same city-wide processes can produce quite different effects in different places
Ponga, Glass and Concrete
In accepting that Aotearoa is no‐longer a rural nation there are exciting possibilities for the study of urban socio‐cultural geography ‐ the effects of urbanisation on the lives ofNewZealanders. Contemporary social geographical theories have combined with postmodernism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism and feminism toproducea ‘new cultural geography’. We argue that this new cultural geography couldprovide important theoretical avenues for the …
Gentrification in New York, London and Paris
In the Pursuit of Difference
Since the earliest texts on gentrification appeared, the process has been represented in terms of binary oppositions, for example, inner city-suburb. I question these representations, which have been constructed as sites of difference. Some of these have become particularly prevalent if not dominant in the literature, some have become stereotypes. I illustrate these assertions through the analysis of four gentrification texts: academic, journalis…
Ageographia, Heterotopia, and Vancouver's New Public Library
Different critical positions have emerged around the restructuring of space in postmodernity. I consider two sets of literature: the sceptical thesis (theses) of the 'ageographia' in Sorkin's edited collection Variations on a Theme Park and Foucault's affirmative thesis (theses) of the 'heterotopia'. These authors' works relate to a number of themes relevant to this paper: democratic public space, public space (comparing Canada and the USA) and i…
Envisioning the Livable City
This paper describes the close relationship in urban planning practice between the “Sin City” motif of urban decay and the “Sim City” discourse on the livable and sustainable city. Stock images of urban dysfunction advance and legitimate urban reform and revitalization of the type imagined by Sim City discourse, but these alternative representations of the city are not simply contrasting; they are mutually constitutive, and in Canada their meanin…
Vancouver
(1998). VANCOUVER: A PORTFOLIO. Urban Geography: Vol. 19, Vancouver: A Portfolio, pp. 283-286
Warping the cloth that academics weave
Warping the Cloth That Academics Weave
Critical geography and the opening up of the academy
Two ‘real’ attempts that have been made to engage geography with everyday struggles are considered in the light of the critical geography movement. First, my experiences of an anti‐gentrification workshop at the Inaugural International Conference on Critical Geography in Vancouver, Canada. Second, my experiences in speaking about a research project ‘outside’ the academy, through the media. These attempts illustrate that geographers may be overest…
The Weaving of Gentrification Discourse and the Boundaries of the Gentrification Community Synopsis
A reappraisal of gentrification
The gentrification literature since the mid-1990s is reappraised in light of the emergence of processes of post-recession gentrification and in the face of recent British and American urban policy statements that tout gentrification as the cure-all for inner-city ills. Some tentative suggestions are offered on how we might re-energize the gentrification debate. Although real analytical progress has been made there are still ‘wrinkles’ which resea…
Towards a critical geography of architecture
Rematerializing geography
In the face of several recent proposals for rematerializing social and cultural geography this paper argues that we should look to the ‘new ’ urban geography for inspiration. Because of its subdisciplinary history – its relatively greater attachment to quantitative and applied work, the strong influence of political economy, and the long tradition of
Urban geography
Super-gentrification
This paper is an empirical examination of the process of 'super-gentrification' in the Brooklyn Heights neighbourhood of New York City. This intensified regentrification is happening in a few select areas of global cities like London and New York that have become the focus of intense investment and conspicuous consumption by a new generation of super-rich 'financifiers' fed by fortunes from the global finance and corporate service industries. Thi…
The ambivalence of diversity and the politics of urban renaissance
In this article the ambivalence of public policy responses to diversity on the street are documented empirically through a detailed case study of the marginalization of youth from the downtown public spaces of Portland, Maine, USA. Urban planners, architects and property developers have become increasingly concerned with improving the quality of urban life and the public spaces on which it depends. They argue that urban revitalization initiatives…
Policy (Re)Turns
‘The Emancipatory City’
Urban geography
Guest Editorial
Research relevance, ‘knowledge transfer’ and the geographies of Case studentship collaboration
The Co‐operative Awards in Science and Engineering (CASE) studentship programme of the UK Research Councils provide one example of wider efforts internationally to encourage so‐called ‘knowledge transfer’ and thereby harness publicly supported university research more closely to the goals of national competitiveness, regional economic development and local regeneration. In this paper we describe the implications of how the various UK research cou…
Sociology (67 works) · Urban Planning and Governance (60 works) · Geography (51 works) · Political science (51 works) · Economics (50 works) · Gentrification (49 works) · Economic growth (48 works) · Economic geography (39 works) · Law (32 works) · Urbanization and City Planning (26 works)