Evictions
An eviction is the legal removal of a person from the home they occupy, for unpaid rent or mortgage or at the end of a lease. At the urban scale, the sum of evictions is the concrete mechanism by which displacement —the one gentrification talks about— happens house by house.
Matthew Desmond documented in the United States that eviction is not only a consequence of poverty but a cause: those who go through it lose jobs, schools and networks. In Spain the 2008 crisis turned mortgage evictions into a public issue and the housing movement was born there.
Videos on this term (15)
- Urban economy
AbdouMaliq Simone: People as the Infrastructure of the City
AbdouMaliq Simone shows that informal networks sustain urban life in the Global South: people as infrastructure,…
AbdouMaliq Simone 3 min read - Housing
Why People Buy Buildings to Leave Them Empty and Who Is to Blame
Emptying a tenanted block converts a wholesale valuation into retail profit: Savills figures, the Fidere, Patrizia…
4 min read - Urban geopolitics
The City Written by Speculative Funds: Why Planning Lost the Pen
How investment funds, not planners, order the city: Madrid's price surge, public housing sold to funds and Harvey's…
3 min read - Public space
Nicholas Blomley: Property, Space and Spatial Justice in the City
Nicholas Blomley shows that property is a spatial practice deciding who may be where. Unsettling the City, Rights…
Nicholas Blomley 3 min read - Housing
Tom Slater: The Critique of Gentrification and Displacement
Tom Slater argues that gentrification is a policy, not a natural process, and that its real cost is displacement.
Tom Slater 2 min read - Housing
The Right to Housing According to Raquel Rolnik
The right to housing is in treaties and constitutions, but policies hollow it out. What Raquel Rolnik defended as…
Raquel Rolnik 3 min read - Urban geopolitics
African Cities by Garth Myers: Reassessing African Cities
African Cities (2011) by Garth Myers proposes reading African cities on their own terms: postcolonial, informal,…
Garth Myers 2 min read - Urban history
Chris Ealham and Barcelona's Class Struggle (1898-1937)
Chris Ealham reconstructs how industrial Barcelona produced anarcho-syndicalism and how strikes, riots and planning…
Chris Ealham 3 min read - Urban geopolitics
Forced Displacement in the Global South: A Growing Urban Crisis
Forced displacement in Global South cities grows through development, violence and climate. What Mike Davis and…
3 min read - Housing
Housing Challenges in Cities: Rolnik, Marcuse and Madden
Why housing is ever less accessible in contemporary cities: financialisation according to Rolnik, Marcuse's just…
3 min read - Housing
Urban Warfare by Raquel Rolnik: Housing Under Financial Capital
Urban Warfare by Raquel Rolnik explains how housing went from a right to a financial asset and produced evictions…
Raquel Rolnik 2 min read - Housing
Gentrification and Displacement: Smith, Lees and Slater
Gentrification raises neighbourhood values and displacement pushes residents out. What Neil Smith, Loretta Lees and…
3 min read - Public space
The Right to the City: Lefebvre, Harvey and Marcuse Explained
The right to the city, formulated by Henri Lefebvre in 1968, is the right to decide how the city is produced.
3 min read - Housing
Affordable Housing: Policies That Work According to Marcuse and Rolnik
Affordable housing depends on public decisions, not the market. What Peter Marcuse and Raquel Rolnik propose and…
3 min read - Housing
Raquel Rolnik: The Right to Housing Against Financialization
Raquel Rolnik, UN Rapporteur on housing from 2008 to 2014, explains in Urban Warfare how housing went from a right…
Raquel Rolnik 3 min read
