Category: Gentrification
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The Bear: Gentrification & its discontents
The opening shot of the highly acclaimed TV show ‘The Bear’ sees the main character Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto staring down a caged brown bear in the heart of Chicago’s downtown. The motif, evidently a dream, nightmare or general vision rather than actual events, serves a telling mark not only of…
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Exploring Blackness of the Inner City: A Review of Netflix’s “The Kitchen”
As an urban geography professor, there are some films that are so on the nose with regard the themes that pervade my teaching and research encounters that they demand a closer inspection: and Netflix’s The Kitchen by Kibwe Tavares and Daniel Kaluuya is one such film. Set in a near…
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A line of flight? A Psychogeographic venture on Newcastle’s Skywalks
Newcastle was once touted as the ‘Brasilia of the North‘ by an ambitious town planner, T. Dan Smith. That was back in the 1960s when cities were seen as plastic crucibles to mould into concrete utopias, but half a century (and a corruption conviction again the Labour City Councillor that…
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Using Google Street View Archive as Gentrification Research
You may or may not be aware at the archival potential of Google Street view, but ever since the search engine behemoth has been photographing and spying on as much of our cities as it can, it has created a rather useful, freely accessible public archive of outdoor space. Archival…
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Planetary Safe Mode? Turning Lockdowns into a tool to fight Climate Change
The pandemic that currently grips our world has been many countries go into unprecedented lockdowns multiple times. Characterised by stay at home instructions, education going online, the closure of non-essential businesses; they have caused misery for millions. However, in some parts of the world they have had unintended benefits such…
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Walking Roosevelt: An autoethnographic exploration
What does it mean to do autoethnography? What even is it? To the critics, autoethnography is rather disparagingly labelled ‘mesearch‘ and a form of personal story-telling that is far too narcissistic to be considered proper research. However, such a view tends to resolutely align traditional scientific objectivity with truth, and so…
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Glass War: The New Materials of Gentrification
Stand on London Bridge on a sunny day and look East, you’ll see the towers of Canary Wharf glistening in the distance, the Shard looming to your right slicing into the sky, and the bloated curves of the Walkie Talkie shimmering like a newly blown glass vase. Walk further west along…
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The loss of an icon? The Crescent Pub in Salford
On Sunday after a weekend visiting the old haunts in Manchester for the weekend (and spending a day watching Jimmy Anderson skittle out South Africa’s batting line up), I took a slow drive along Chapel Street as I made my way back to the motorway. I wanted to see my…
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Scrolling Beat ’em ups, urban blight and the neoliberal city
The first computer game I can recall playing was Target Renegade on the Amstrad. Essentially, you would scroll through various urban landscapes, kicking and punching other men (and some women) along the way. You had to walk through car parks, urban streets and snooker clubs(?!) using nothing but your fists and feet…
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The Spectacle Strikes Back: Using protests for commercial gain
A morning ritual which I can’t seem to break out of is looking at the BBC’s ‘newspaper front page’ section (you know, just to make sure I start the day with a bit of outrage). Perusing the website this morning, I scrolled down to see the front page of the…