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This paper examines the much-hyped 2012 Olympic Games ‘legacy’ in relation to the displacement experiences of lower-income East Londoners. The paper begins by outlining the overall context of housing-related regeneration including the reduced role for social housing, especially council (public) housing in London. It then sets out a framework for understanding how regeneration, state-led gentrification and displacement are intertwined, as well as how such processes have been contested. The paper examines these issues in greater depth with reference to case studies of the inhabitants of two working-class spaces in the London Borough of Newham, an Olympics host borough. The first study is based on the Carpenters Estate, a council housing estate in Stratford that is facing potential demolition, and the second focuses on young people living in a temporary supported housing unit. These studies illustrate how the 2012 Olympics, alongside other regeneration schemes, is changing the nature of space and place from the perspective of existing East London residents and how gentrification is implicated in such transformations. Neither the Carpenters Estate residents nor the young people think that the Olympics and other regeneration schemes in Newham are primarily occurring, if at all, for their benefit—indeed, displacement processes may well mean that they are no longer able to live in their current neighbourhood. The Olympics legacy is for others, not for them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is a response to Davidson and Wyly. While we agree with them that class and class conflict is an important element of cities, we disagree with many of their claims and assertions regarding our work. In particular, we argue that the growth of the middle class does not mean that we consider the working class unimportant or to have largely disappeared as they suggest. This is to muddle empirical findings and political agendas. The working class is still clearly present, even though it has shrunk. Nor does the growth of the middle class imply that inequality has become unimportant. On the contrary, we argue that the growth of the middle class is one of the key reasons why London has become more unequal. We take issue with their claim that the middle class does not exist, and we argue that their analysis of 2001 census data, while interesting, does not look at the changes which have taken place over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I argue that gentrification, despite the many arguments over its continuing validity as a concept, retains its key importance in understanding processes of class change. For some it is a process of colonising the city, for others a manifestation of belonging; for some the concept can be used as a radical critique of neoliberalism whilst for others this very critique is an exemplar of the hegemonising tendencies amongst (often radical) North American urban scholars. I argue that the concept has grown somewhat middle-aged and overendowed with its own history. I suggest that it needs to retain a focus on the implications of macro social change for individuals and social groups. In particular, gentrification needs to decouple itself from its original association with the deindustrialisation of metropolitan centres such as London and from its associations with working-class displacement. Recently, gentrification has occurred across the spatial scale—in second-order cities and in hitherto suburban locations as well as in the countryside. Processes such as 'greentrification', 'gated communities', and 'studentification' often coexist in quite close proximity to each other; the influence London exerts over the southern half of England is a good example of this. I argue that the concept of gentrification functions as an important way of understanding the mediations between global processes and flows, on the one hand, and the construction of identities in particular localities, on the other. With the decline of social class as providing an overall explanation of cultural, social, and spatial behaviour, this notion of gentrification as a form of 'elective belonging' has considerable potential for uniting geographical and sociological approaches to agency and structure. I illustrate this by drawing on three recent studies on the relationship between people and places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]