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Bild - Anders Lund Hansen

Anders Lund Hansen

Senior lecturer

Bild - Anders Lund Hansen

Gentrification—Gentle or Traumatic? Urban Renewal Policies and Socioeconomic Transformations in Copenhagen

Author

  • Henrik Gutzon Larsen
  • Anders Lund Hansen

Summary, in English

This article contrasts the intentions and outcomes of the publicly instigated and supported urban renewal of Copenhagen’s Inner Vesterbro district. Apart from physically upgrading the decaying buildings, the municipality’s aim was to include the inhabitants in the urban renewal process and, seemingly, to prevent the dislocation of people from the neighbourhood. However, due to ambiguous policies, the workings of the property market and the lack of suffi cient defl ecting mechanisms, middle-class inhabitants are now replacing the high concentration of socioeconomically vulnerable people that characterised Vesterbro before the urban renewal. This process may appear ‘gentle’, but it is nonetheless an example of how state and market interact to produce gentrifi cation with ‘traumatic’ consequences for individuals and the city as a socially just space.

Department/s

  • Department of Human Geography

Publishing year

2008

Language

English

Pages

2429-2448

Publication/Series

Urban Studies

Volume

45

Issue

12

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Topic

  • Human Geography

Keywords

  • State-led Gentrification
  • Urban Renewal
  • Revanschism
  • Gentrification

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0042-0980