Abstract
In many cities, public authorities engage in redevelopment or renewal of disadvantaged neighborhoods. While the aim is social, physical and economic upgrading of these neighborhoods, the result is often displacement of local residents. Despite the growing literature on displacement, we know little about how residents experience the process of displacement.
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This research studies residents’ displacement experiences through the analytical lens of accumulation by dispossession. It has three main aims: 1) to explain the macro dynamics of displacement; 2) to explain and compare how accumulation by dispossession works in different contexts of urban renewal; 3) to add a comparative dimension to the study of displacement through an intra- and inter-city comparison of residents’ displacement experiences on the basis of evidence from the two radically different cases of Amsterdam and Istanbul. The data is collected using qualitative methods: in-depth interviews, participant observation and document analysis. This study finds that the rationale of urban renewal is similar in Amsterdam and Istanbul: to re-differentiate the housing stock and reallocate urban space in such a way that gentrification is promoted. While the re-differentiation works through the privatization of social housing and the promotion of homeownership in Amsterdam, in Istanbul it works through the formalization of informal housing arrangements and expropriation of private property. The ways displacement is realized in these cities differs in important ways. Displacement in Amsterdam can be characterized as routinized exclusionary displacement, whereas displacement in Istanbul is direct and discretionary. Residents’ displacement experiences are compared based on three dimensions: 1) experiences of the policy and living under the threat of displacement; 2) impacts of the displacement; 3) collective and household strategies. As for the conclusions regarding these dimensions, firstly, the ways residents lived under the threat of displacement were quite similar in both cities: a spiral of decline, uncertainty, anxious waiting, pressures of authorities and landlords signified the processes. While regular renters in Amsterdam were mostly satisfied with compensations, guidance they received, the property owners and renters in Istanbul were largely dissatisfied about these issues. Experiences of participation differed drastically. While in Amsterdam, the residents were invited to participate in the process, residents in Tarlabasi contested the authorities to participate in the decision making. Secondly, the impacts of displacement are, in general, lighter in Dutch context due to the well established rights of residents with regular social housing rent contracts. In contrast to this, lower-class residents in Istanbul had to bear high economic and social costs (e.g. higher rents, rupture in social networks). In both cities, existing social boundaries were redefined during the displacement processes based on ethnicity, tenure and class property ownership. Thirdly, the most precarious resident groups, namely the temporary renters in Amsterdam and renters and squatters in Istanbul, used strategies at the household level to cope with displacement. While in Amsterdam residents didn’t use any collective strategy, property owners initiated the resistance in Tarlabasi, which could not prevent displacement yet could get some compensation for some.
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