![]() ![]() Cities where highly educated and increasingly affluent people have come to dominate public, cultural and social life and the urban landscape. In their new book ‘ Making the Middle-class City’ Boterman and Van Gent present a new model for analyzing socio-spatial urban change and reveal the mechanisms behind the transformations of working-class cities into cities of which its economic base now rests on financial, business and consumption services. But how could a city like Amsterdam, that has been ruled by social democratic parties for over a century, and that is internationally famed for its social policies, become a place dominated by middle-class interests and where gentrification sets the tone? This pride in developing ‘luxurious living’ symbolically marks the transformation of cities in the global North, argue Boterman and Van Gent. From being proud on social rent projects in the 1980s to being proud on prestigious upper middle-class residential complexes 40 years later, like those in the docklands of East-London or Pontsteiger in Amsterdam.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |