Urban revival: good for the neighbours or the neighbourhood? A comparison of the moving propensities in reviving and non-reviving neighbourhoods in Ghent, Belgium

Due to the disproportionate attention for middle class preferences for urban revival, many scientists and grassroots organizations start from the implicit assumption that lower SES inhabitants of reviving neighbourhoods are opposed to the changes their neighbourhood undergoes. However, the scarce research investigating this assumption finds opposing results. In order to test this assumption further, the association between living in reviving neighbourhoods and wanting to move is investigated. Urban revival brings new inhabitants and (often) new amities to the neighbourhood. These changes are assumed to be associated with moving propensities through their association with residential satisfaction and stress, i.e. the fulfilment of residential aspirations and needs. Logistic multilevel analyses are performed on data coming from the Liveability Monitor conducted by the city council of Ghent, a middle sized city in Belgium. The results indicate that lower SES respondents living in reviving neighbourhoods express lower moving propensities than their socio-economic peers living in other deprived neighbourhoods. Middle class inhabitants, at the contrary, express higher moving intentions in reviving than in deprived neighbourhoods. Both findings oppose the implicit assumption many scholars have and indicate that the responses to urban revival are much more complex than often accounted for in other research