(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #246 - Urban Folder:
Gentrification how resist? (fr, it, pt) [machine translation]
The relegation movement of the working classes to the outskirts of big cities seems
sometimes be an inexorable movement. However, it is possible to slow it down. ----
Gentrification - the gentrified - ment of neighborhoods through the transformation of
housing and urban - is a local process that results reconfigurations of the capitalist
system at different levels: social transformation of jobs in the big cities, in connection
with the new international division of labor, operation of the real estate market as a
growing challenge to absorb surplus capital but also neoliberal economic policies,
deregulation of the[housing market 1], and especially local political beautification of
urban areas at the expense of Popular uses of the city.
If all these factors are present and powerful in a city or neighborhood, it is not easy to
resist this process, especially in the context of disintegration of the class
consciousness of the dominated-es. However, one can consider a few tracks, on two levels.
In the short term, within the existing political and economic system, actions can be taken
to stop the gentrification. Examples include the struggles against evictions against the
property development projects that raise prices, but also the occupation of vacant housing.
These struggles have every incentive to coordinate at the level of agglomeration or even
across the country or internationally. In the United States and the coalition is Right to
the city , which requires control of rents, the requisition of empty housing and the
creation of social housing.
Solidarity and politicization
Always at the local level, it is possible to address the planning policies that promote
social diversity, the beautification of the city or the creation of new cultural
facilities, as their real goal is gentrification. Even when they emphasize the creation of
social housing, you have to fight to prevent their creation in the strict benefit the
middle class (PLS) and have real social housing (PLUS and PLAI) quantity.
These policies go beyond the simple question of housing and involve a struggle to keep the
popular appropriation of neighborhoods they cover. In this regard, squats offering
activities that promote solidarity and politicization, as CREA in Toulouse on Dilengo to
Ivrysur- Seine or once the Cantine Pyrenees in Paris 20th, expelled last summer[2], are
decisive support for the continuation of this popular ownership of the premises.
However, struggles centered on housing are at the heart of resistance to gentrification,
but they are not enough to maintain this popular ownership and develop solidarity
practices, these struggles must be accompanied by a work of politicization and development
class consciousness. This also implies for Activists to question their social position in
these areas (both in terms of class and 'race' as such) not to reproduce, in the struggle,
domination is already involved in gentrification.
Politicization is both a means and an end of the struggle against gentrification in
everyday life. For framing rents and fight against urban projects to erase the popular
town will not be enough, and Activists are sometimes despite themselves vanguards of the
gentrification of neighborhoods.
The long-term fight against gentrification should be an opportunity to challenge
capitalism and the state, making the link with the struggles for emancipation: it is to
bring wider political principles such as socialization and self-management of housing, or
collective self-management of the city (or "right to the city") to him from the logic of
capital accumulation.
Anne Clerval (geographer)
[1] Despite a recent attempt, insufficient and challenged in France for the re-regulation
with Alur law, known Duflot law
[2] Read "The Canteen is not dead," in Alternative Libertarian September 2014
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?La-gentrification-comment-y
