2008/10/13 by David Ley, Cory Gregory Dobson · 3 citations
Social Sciences · #Urban Planning and Governance #Urban Transport and Accessibility #Urbanization and City Planning
paper · doi:10.1177/0042098008097103
openalex publication_date 2008/10/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
This paper examines conditions that impede inner-city gentrification. Several factors emerge from review of a scattered literature, including the role of public policy, neighbourhood political mobilisation and various combinations of population and land use characteristics that are normally unattractive to gentrifiers. In a first phase of analysis, some of these expectations are tested with census tract attributes against the map of gentrification in the City of Vancouver from 1971 to 2001. More detailed qualitative field work in the Downtown Eastside and Grandview-Woodland, two inner-city neighbourhoods with unexpectedly low indicators of gentrification, provides a fuller interpretation and reveals the intersection of local poverty cultures, industrial land use, neighbourhood political mobilisation and public policy, especially the policy of social housing provision, in blocking or stalling gentrification.