Moving beyond gentrification studies?

Though the literature on commercial gentrification has grown considerably since the 2000s, it has several blind spots. Indeed, research has primarily focused on neighborhoods located in central areas, examining the retail landscape as well as consumer practices and identities.
In this article, Antoine Fleury, Full-Time Researcher in urban studies at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) / Géographie-cités & Natacha Rollinde, Ph.D. Graduate (Géographie-cités) and discuss this literature and put it in dialogue with the literature on retailers and, more broadly, on independent professions. On this basis, they propose an analytical framework for studying commercial change from the shopkeepers’ perspective. The discussion is conducted in light of the concrete transformations of a commercial street located in a formerly working-class suburb of Paris: Rue de l’Église in Montreuil. This case study illustrates, according to the authors “the relevance of our approach, showing that even in an archetypal gentrified street, the profiles and paths of shopkeepers are varied, as is their relation to urban change“.

Brahim’s greengrocer shop (in the background) and La Petite Épicerie (in the foreground).

Rue de l’Eglise in Montreuil (Greater Paris). Source : Natacha Rollinde, 2017

Antoine Fleury, Natacha Rollinde, « Shopkeepers and urban change: moving beyond gentrification studies? », Belgeo [En ligne], 3 | 2024, mis en ligne le 19 octobre 2024,  http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/72477 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/12jbb