Gentrification. Aufstieg eines Deutungsmusters in Großbritannien, den USA und Westdeutschland, 1964-1990

Abstract

The article examines the emergence and the spread of the term “gentrification” and the pattern of interpretation of social, economic and cultural changes of neighborhoods it implies between the 1960s and the 1980s in Great Britain, the United States and West Germany. Coined in 1964 by the British sociologist Ruth Glass, it was not until the mid 1970s that it became popular in Anglo-American urban research and mainstream media. At the same time, urban activists used the term with its critical undertone to denounce the displacement of poorer inhabitants of inner-city neighborhoods. In the mid 1980s, also urban sociologists from West Germany picked up the scholarly debate on gentrification and began to conduct first research projects guided by the idea that the process was happening in Germany, but in a slower way.