THE BROADENING CONCEPTION OF GENTRIFICATION: RECENT DEVELOPMENTS AND AVENUES FOR FUTURE INQUIRY IN THE SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF URBAN CHANGE

A widespread pattern of growing economic affluence has been documented by sociologists, geographers, and other urban scholars in cities nationwide, yet mainstream American urban sociologists have often been hesitant to identify these changes as evidence of "gentrification," in part because 50 years after its origination, the term remains ambiguous, contentious, and politically loaded. In this article, I argue that many of the debates that continue to divide gentrification research can be attributed to disagreements about the scope and breadth of the process in contemporary cities. I identify five dimensions along which urban sociologists have stretched the conception of gentrification in recent empirical research, and I argue that these extensions should more thoroughly be incorporated into broader theoretical conceptions of gentrification and its ramifications for cities and their inhabitants. In order to develop a fuller and more thoroughly critical understanding of gentrification, urban scholars should more explicitly acknowledge the broad geographic, demographic, and political scope of the process.