Cities concentrate both wealth and inequality. The same forces that make cities economically dynamic — agglomeration of talent, investment, and opportunity — also intensify competition for space and drive up costs for those with least power. Gentrification is the most visible symptom: capital flows into working-class neighbourhoods, property values rise, rents follow, and long-term residents — lacking the financial resources to compete — are displaced. The language of urban regeneration often obscures this dynamic, presenting displacement as an acceptable or invisible side effect of improvement. Henri Lefebvre's concept of the 'right to the city' challenges this: the question of who benefits from urban transformation is a political question, not an economic inevitability. Who gets to stay in the city, and on what terms, is a question about power.

💡 Did you know? Amsterdam has maintained relatively low levels of gentrification compared to London and Paris, largely because 40% of its housing is social housing. The proportion of social housing in a city is one of the strongest predictors of how much displacement gentrification causes.