The process of gentrification is a process by which people, communities, workers get pushed to the margins of the city. The extents of these margins too undergoes changes through infrastructure, where areas once considered affordable through combination of policy and infrastructure become accessible for global speculation of land, thereby compelling displaced citizens to once again move to newer margins.
This process of displacement is not only restricted to people but also landuses. Past 4 decades of liberalisation, has made the urban land increasingly expensive, making provision of open space, social infrastructure, markets, university campuses, student housing etc extremely challenging. Encouraging a concerted effort towards moving these landuses to new peripheries under the rational of math needs to add up, decongesting the city centre, creating new opportunities elsewhere...a series of arguments that present the act of relinquishing the right to exist in the city centre as a combination of market driven inevitability and ofcourse prospects of future opportunities when these margins will become new accessible centres.
Billingsgate Market and its move within a span of 40 years sits within this context.
No comments:
Post a Comment