The “nationalised production of space” from the perspective of displaced people in an urban district undergoing gentrification

Abstract

The paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of social relations, primarily the relationship between the state and those exposed to displacement, through the study of socio-spatial displacement caused by current urban rehabilitation/gentrification in Hungary. To this end, it interprets gentrification and displacement as the production of space in accordance with Lefebvre’s theory (1991). It considers these processes as an integral part of the global reproduction of capital and global urbanism and examines them through a case study on Győr. According to the perspective applied, the space transformed by gentrification (urban rehabilitation) means more than just neighbourhoods being gentrified. It also includes the lived (concrete) spaces of the displaced. In order to understand this production of space, a two-pronged approach is essential: An investigation of recent gentrification, taking stock of past developments, which are best described as socialist disinvestment, must be complemented by a comparison of the lived spaces of the former and present inhabitants with the conceived space of local government. After a brief theoretical overview of Lefebvre's theory of space to better understand the issues outlined in the study, the results of an empirical study on gentrification in Győr-Újváros are presented by means of documents and interviews with experts and the population. In essence, it is argued that in a new economic and state administrative context, which also influences Győr, production of space in Hungary has been "nationalised" from the perspective of the relationship between those displaced by urban rehabilitation/gentrification and the state. The marginalised social groups experience "double control" in this type of production of space. Their dependence on the local government also means dependence on the central state. Local governments and the central state - the latter partly indirectly through the former and partly directly - reproduce social conditions in the course of urban rehabilitation that keep those exposed to displacement in the zone of welfare recipients, as Castel (1993) suggested in his concept describing “the zones of social cohesion”.