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Gentrification on numerous occasions had been attempted to be explained through Neil Smith’s production and consumption side theories. Smith is a Scottish geographer and activist intellectual “whose prolific, passionate and politically engaged writings played a significant role in shaping the present day landscape of urban studies, human geography, and indeed the entire spectrum of the social sciences”. Smith is most well-known for his contributions to the study of cities and the process of gentrification; because of Smith’s critical and detailed engagement with Marxist and socialist thought, he had a clear commitment to the undertaking of social justice. This is seen through his various involvements with social movements and most notably housing issues that were of relevance in New York City
Smith began work at Rutgers University in 1986 and in 2000 was appointed Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. It was there that “he founded and led the Centre for Place, Culture and Politics which remains a hotbed of radical intellectual thought and critical dialogue with activists from far and wide”.
Smith first came up with the production side theory which explains gentrification through the relationship between money and production. Smith stated that areas that had low rent in suburban areas following World War II influenced the movement of municipality in the neighborhood’s. However, the government and city council that was in power often abused it and neglected its citizens which lead to urban sectors being deserted and farmland worth that the citizens obtained diminished as opposed to farmland price escalating. Following this new theory that Smith created, he came up with his rent-gap theory in order to reveal the development of gentrification. His rent-gap theory can be explained through the notion that as “disinvestment in a particular district intensifies, it creates lucrative profit opportunities for developers, investors, homebuys and local government”.
Smith believes that because there is capital depreciation in the inner city it means that it is very likely that there will progressively there will be a major difference “between capitalized ground rent (the actual quantity of ground rent that is appropriated by the landowner, given the present land use) and potential ground rent (the maximum that could be appropriated under the land’s ‘highest and best use’, as economists often put it). Smith states, the gentrification has pushed out residents “via all manners of tactics and legal instruments such as landlord harassment, massive rent increases, redlining, arson, the withdrawal of public services, and eminent domain”.
By using Smith’s theory, one is able to see the devastating effects that gentrification can have on a community like Hackney. The post-gentrification ramifications that the residents of Hackney have had to endure encapsulate the struggle that areas such as Hackney face when being gentrified. Smith also believes that capital investment is always animated by geographical tensions such as the urgency to balance environments and attempt to explore markets in new places. Further, “Smith argued that gentrification was the leading edge of a state strategy of revenge – an attempt to retake the city from the working class”.
Throughout Smith’s career he made major contributions to urban studies. His writings on gentrification embodied the theoretical and empirical discourse of debates on gentrification and urban displacement. However, his writings on gentrification generated a sequence of enthralling empirical evaluations and his “rent gap theory led to some heated exchanges between urban scholars who saw gentrification as the product of the postindustrial expansion of middle-class professionals with a preference for central city living”.
Many people in the following years challenged his theory, most notably Hamnett and Ley in 1986 and 1991 along with various scholars who believed that Smith’s theory in certain situations neglected human organizations and the concepts of gentrification. Moreover, Smith’s theory is based centrally on certain societal groups struggles and “about the structural violence”, that certain classed were challenged by. His theory in various aspects can be applied when addressing the issue of gentrification in numerous areas in London, especially Hackney. The theory provides a potential explanation to the common struggles that citizens in Hackney are faced with.
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