rent gap

The New Tourist: Waking Up to the Power and Perils of Travel

by Paige McClanahan  · 17 Jun 2024  · 206pp  · 78,882 words

73, no. 3 (2021): 553–66. 17 Alberto Amore, Cecilia de Bernardi, and Pavlos Arvanitis, “The Impacts of Airbnb in Athens, Lisbon and Milan: A Rent Gap Theory Perspective,” Current Issues in Tourism 25, no. 4 (April 2020): 3329–42. 18 Dustin Robertson, Christopher Oliver, and Eric Nost, “Short-Term Rentals as

Big Capital: Who Is London For?

by Anna Minton  · 31 May 2017  · 169pp  · 52,744 words

as dystopian as possible. While most people watching wouldn’t know the images of decay are from the Aylesbury, the local community certainly does. THE ‘RENT GAP’: FROM SOCIAL HOUSING TO SUPER PRIME I’ve put the bulldozing of sink estates at the heart of turnaround Britain. David Cameron, Sunday Times, 10

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will completely alter the social make-up of London. This policy – of redeveloping estates – is driven by American academic Neil Smith’s concept of the ‘rent gap’, which he developed as a different way of looking at gentrification. The model favoured since the 1970s maintained that the middle classes moved back to

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the potential to make large profits.25 Academics have claimed that the failure to maintain estates, which keeps prices low, contributes to a ‘state-induced rent gap’.26 When he talks of local authorities adapting to the ‘potential’ for market-priced development, Adonis himself is clear that the

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‘rent gap’ offered by potentially very high land values is driving estate regeneration. He argues that at a time of acute housing crisis, redevelopment is the only

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of a model village layout designed with great imagination and care to provide attractive community living’.29 It is also a great example of the rent gap, sitting as it does on very high land values, with apartments on Brockwell Gate, the neighbouring newly built gated development, selling for £650,000 at

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. Allen, Kate and Pickard, Jim, ‘London councils urged to demolish and redevelop council estates’, Financial Times, 22 March 2015 25. Smith, Neil, ‘Gentrification and the rent gap’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 77 (3), pp. 462–5, 1987 26. Watt, Paul, ‘ “It’s not for us”: regeneration, the 2012

After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back

by Juliet Schor, William Attwood-Charles and Mehmet Cansoy  · 15 Mar 2020  · 296pp  · 83,254 words

are contained in his PhD dissertation, “ ‘Sharing’ in Unequal Spaces” (Cansoy 2018), and various papers, such as “Gentrification and Short-Term Rentals: Re-assessing the Rent Gap in Urban Centers” (Cansoy 2019a); “The Fault in the Stars: Public Reputation and the Reproduction of Racial Inequality on Airbnb” (Cansoy 2019b); and “Who Gets

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’ in Unequal Spaces: Short-Term Rentals and the Reproduction of Urban Inequalities.” PhD diss., Boston College. ———. 2019a. “Gentrification and Short-Term Rentals: Re-assessing the Rent Gap in Urban Centers.” Unpublished paper. Boston College. ———. 2019b. “The Fault in the Stars: Public Reputation and the Reproduction of Racial Inequality on Airbnb.” Unpublished paper

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University. www.sharebetter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Impact-of-New-STR-Regs-2019.pdf. Wachsmuth, David, and Alexander Weisler. 2018. “Airbnb and the Rent Gap: Gentrification through the Sharing Economy.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 50 (6): 1147–70. Walker, Edward T. 2016. “Between Grassroots and ‘Astroturf’: Understanding

Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?

by Brett Christophers  · 17 Nov 2020  · 614pp  · 168,545 words

’ without coverage), the subscriber rents potentially available from service provision simply do not justify the necessary infrastructure investment. Think of it as another type of ‘rent gap’. Like financial rentiers, infrastructure rentiers are exclusionary. To paraphrase Joan Robinson, from a consumer’s perspective the only thing worse than paying rent to a

How to Kill a City: The Real Story of Gentrification

by Peter Moskowitz  · 7 Mar 2017  · 288pp  · 83,690 words

to white flight and deindustrialization. In 1979, geographer Neil Smith came up with what has become possibly the most influential academic theory on gentrification: the rent gap. Smith posited that the more disinvested a space becomes, the more profitable it is to gentrify. The idea behind his theory is a basic tenet

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bought cheap) and were close to other gentrified areas (so it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for gentrifiers to move in). The rent gap was the disparity between how much a property was worth in its current state and how much it would be worth gentrified. The larger the

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out, developers had to search for new ways to revitalize their profit rate, and both gentrification and exurbanization were part of this search. Using the rent gap theory, Smith was able to accurately predict the gentrification of many New York neighborhoods, including the Lower East Side, Harlem, and Park Slope. He looked

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or at least more mixed, more upscale, and therefore more profitable. With real estate prices low and the potential for remaking the city high, the rent gap was bigger than ever, and so it made economic sense to gentrify New Orleans. Private profit only partially explains gentrification, though. Gentrification may not happen

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doing this that and the other, but I was comfortable down there,” Robinson continued. “I wanted to stay there. And they kicked me out.” The rent-gap theory—that capital flows to the rate of highest return, and return is highest after a city has been economically drained and primed for gentrification

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the economic rationale behind the new Detroit. Detroit has been in decline for decades, but its bankruptcy in 2013 put it in position for a rent-gap rebound: not only was the city broke, but it was now run by an emergency manager named Kevyn Orr, who was intent on slashing city

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of Chicago Booth School of Business found that poorer neighborhoods near already gentrified areas gentrified much faster than adjacent middle-class areas. As Smith’s rent gap theory suggests, this makes economic sense: gentrification is more profitable if the area being gentrified is initially cheaper. So the question is, how did those

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exchange values, then we can expect this process of displacement via heightened exchange value to continue ceaselessly. Capital will constantly find places with large enough rent gaps (where land is cheap and can be made more expensive) to gentrify, and the people who were able to live on that cheap land will

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near future American cities will become gilded jewel boxes, and the exodus of the poor to the suburbs will continue unchecked—that is, until the rent gaps in cities become too small to make gentrification profitable, and a new form of spatial filtering begins. 9 The New Geography of Inequality The suburbs

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, 94, 96, 118 racial segregation in housing, 95, 101, 107–110, 115 redevelopment of downtown areas, 7, 72–76, 78, 81, 93–94, 97, 118 rent gap theory and, 77–78 shrinking of municipal boundaries, 83 subprime mortgage crisis in, 99–102 tax revenue and, 41, 92–93, 100–102 Detroit Creative

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private subsidies and, 95, 178 protests against, 175, 207–208 public transportation and, 23, 86–88, 140, 143–144 real estate development and, 37–39 rent gap theory and, 37–40, 106 rezoning and, 179, 199–200 in San Francisco, 8, 40, 68, 131, 137 self-image of gentrifiers, 59, 61–62

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in San Francisco, 133 suburbs and, 147, 157 Regional Plan Association (RPA), 188–190, 197 Reiss, James, 25–26 rent control, 130, 184, 205, 212 rent gap, 37–40, 77, 106, 144, 145 rezoning. See zoning laws Rhodes-Pitts, Sharifa, 67 Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council (RBSCC), 183–184, 186–187 Right

Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing

by Andrew Ross  · 25 Oct 2021  · 301pp  · 90,276 words

Although it is national in scope, the US housing crisis looks quite different from place to place. Housing markets are intensely local, so pricing and rent gaps can vary greatly even within a single metro area, and even more so between them: consider the great disparity in housing affordability between, say, Boston

There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

by Brian Goldstone  · 25 Mar 2025  · 512pp  · 153,059 words

orchestrated process, driven by the intertwined interests of real estate capital and urban policy. Why does a specific neighborhood gentrify? Because investors have identified a “rent gap,” as geographer Neil Smith terms it. This gap represents the difference between the current value of land and the higher returns it could yield through

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some intervention, such as renovating a property, demolishing and constructing new buildings, or evicting old tenants and attracting different ones. The wider the rent gap, the stronger the incentive for investment. Factors such as proximity to green space, transportation, and other amenities may contribute to its emergence, but the primary

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drivers of the rent gap are shifts in urban policy and market demand. Urban planners—increasingly concerned with growth, and so beholden to the priorities of developers and investors—play

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a critical role not only in creating rent gaps where none previously existed but in helping landlords and property owners exploit them. In this way, gentrification becomes a political process as much as a

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abatements, infrastructure upgrades and public-private partnerships. In Atlanta, no single project has more profoundly reshaped the urban landscape than the BeltLine—arguably the greatest rent-gap generator in the city’s history, and a prime example of planned gentrification. This transformative endeavor, winding through forty-five neighborhoods and redefining Atlanta’s

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and urban policy: Samuel Stein, Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State (London: Verso, 2019). GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT The wider the rent gap: Neil Smith, “Gentrification and the Rent Gap,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 77, no. 3 (September 1987): 462–65; see also Tom Slater, “Planetary

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Rent Gaps,” Antipode 49, no. 1 (September 22, 2015): 114–37. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Urban planners—increasingly concerned with growth: Nikil Saval, “The Plight

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–41 redlining, 25–26, 204 Red’s Beer Garden, 267, 336 Reed, Kasim, 11 Regina, 32, 167–68, 196, 319–21 rent control, 362–63 “rent gap,” 117 rent-to-own stores, 339 Republican Revolution, 26 Research Action Cooperative, 182–83 Residence Inn by Marriott, 184–85, 191–92, 209, 212, 227

Born in Flames

by Bench Ansfield  · 15 Aug 2025  · 366pp  · 138,787 words

Arson Calls for Insurance Reform,” New York Times, September 11, 1977. 24I am borrowing here from Neil Smith’s rent gap theory of gentrification. In a paradigm-shifting 1979 essay, Smith defined the rent gap as “the disparity between the potential ground rent level and the actual ground rent capitalized under present land use

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” (545). “Once the rent gap is wide enough,” he argued, “gentrification may be initiated.” Neil Smith, “Toward a Theory of Gentrification: A Back to the City Movement by Capital, Not

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, 229 Reno, Nevada, 7 renovations, 27, 28, 55, 229, 230, 232, 233, 234, 239, 246 rent control, 9, 50, 63–64, 84, 128, 208, 231 rent gap, 298 rent strikes, 183, 218, 231 renter’s insurance, 28, 287 replacement cost, 298 Report from Engine Co. 82 (Smith), 125 residual market, 26–27

Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World

by Brett Chistophers  · 25 Apr 2023  · 404pp  · 106,233 words

H. Vogell, ‘When Private Equity Becomes Your Landlord’, 7 February 2022 – at propublica.org. 54 GK1. 55 GK2, pp. 35–7; B. Christophers, ‘Mind the Rent Gap: Blackstone, Housing Investment and the Reordering of Urban Rent Surfaces’, Urban Studies 59 (2022), pp. 698–716. 56 See, for example, M. Janoschka, G. Alexandri

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. 35 A. Carroll, ‘A New Balance for Real Estate’, PERE, 14 April 2022 – at perenews.com. 36 Ibid. 37 Cited in B. Christophers, ‘Mind the Rent Gap: Blackstone, Housing Investment and the Reordering of Urban Rent Surfaces’, Urban Studies 59 (2022), p. 709. 38 The US case is interesting. It is true