Gentrifiering, socialgeografisk polarisering och bostadspolitiskt skifte

Ever since the term ‘gentrification’ was coined by Ruth Glass in 1964 this specific form of socio-economic change has attracted much attention within the social sciences, not least from geographers and sociologists. This has generated a rich discussion on the mechanisms behind the process and, to a lesser extent, a debate on positive and negative outcomes of gentrification. Critical voices have depicted gentrification as a global urban strategy within a neoliberal policy agenda. This thesis aims to enhance our knowledge of gentrification processes in Swedish metropolitan areas. It does so by an extensive mapping of gentrification processes in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö during 1986-2001. It also contains a smaller study of island gentrification in the southern parts of the Gothenburg archipelago. The time period is divided into three five-year periods roughly corresponding to the periodicity of waves of gentrification identified in the international research literature. The results provide telling insights into gentrification as a generic process affecting not just low income areas (classical gentrification) and high income areas (super-gentrification), but also a wide-ranging spectrum of medium-income areas (ordinary gentrification). Furthermore, mapping of gentrification and opposite processes of filtering are analyzed in relation to increasing social polarization in Sweden and neoliberal political reforms. Since the beginning of the 1990s Swedish housing policies have been radically transformed. Promotion of owner-occupancy and abandonment of the long-standing policy of tenure neutrality are aspects of the new policy discourse, with far-reaching effects on gentrification