Tom Slater
1974
British geographer who disputes the vocabulary of urbanism: he argues that many accepted concepts hide who loses out.
Slater works at dismantling terms that sound technical and are political. «Regeneration», «social mix» or «neighbourhood effects» sound like neutral diagnoses and in practice justify demolitions and rehousing, shifting the blame for poverty from structures onto poor neighbourhoods themselves.
He also showed that gentrification research studied those arriving in great detail and those leaving hardly at all, because displaced people are hard to trace. The result is a literature that measures arrival well and barely records expulsion.
On Tom Slater in this archive
- Housing
Tom Slater: Gentrification and Its Social Consequences
Tom Slater examines gentrification's impact on vulnerable communities, highlighting its role in social exclusion…
Tom Slater 3 min read - Housing
Gentrification or Displacement? The Debate on Urban Inequality
Gentrification is an urban process that has generated intense debate among urbanists, sociologists
Loretta Lees 2 min read
