"Gentrification" made headlines last week when hundreds of protesters targeted a cafe in east London, claiming its high prices excluded local residents and represented a form of social cleansing.

The protesters fired paintballs and scribbled graffiti on the windows of the Cereal Killer Cafe — an expensive, boutique breakfast venue in a now-gentrified, traditionally working class neighbourhood.

The cafe sells a small bowl of children's cereal for 3 British pounds ($7). By comparison, a whole box of cereal can be bought for less than 2 pounds at the supermarket.

Although gentrification protests have been occurring in London for a few years, the social divide between the parties involved in the 'cereal protest' has fuelled the gentrification debate on the internet and the streets of London.

While one side generally argues that gentrification is a trendy word to refer to normal processes of urban development, the other brands it as an active and careless process of socio-economic exploitation.

Kate Shaw, an urban geography and planning researcher at the University of Melbourne, explained that it is both.

"The word gentrification is really an expression of social inequality that attempts to describe the relationship between profit and exploitation with regards to urban land," she said.

"Land is a limited resource, so if somebody is profiting, somebody else is being exploited ... so gentrification describes that experience in its different shapes and forms."

"Adieu St Kilda" graffiti in the rapidly gentrifying St Kilda. ( Supplied: Kate Shaw/Gentrification: What it is, Why it is, and What can be Done About it. )

'Gentrification' first coined in 1964

The word gentrification was first recorded in 1964 by sociologist Ruth Glass in her book London: Aspects of Change.

"One by one, many of the working class quarters have been invaded by the middle class, upper and lower," she wrote.

"Once this process of gentrification starts in a district it goes on rapidly until all or most of the working class occupiers are displaced and the whole social character of the district is changed."

For a sociological idea introduced over 50 years ago, why is it only recently that it has entered the cultural lexicon leading to anti-gentrification protests? Has anything really changed since 1964?

Heidi Seetzen, a sociology lecturer at Kingston University London, said that the recent prominence of the expression boils down to a loose and evolving definition which "attempts to describe a multitude of specific urban planning and economic processes in a sociological way".

It also points to the fact that many of those processes have drastically sped up over the last 50 years.

"When people talk about gentrification, they are often talking about a variety of urban processes and using it as an umbrella term," she said.

Changes in living habits since the 1970s favouring urban areas over the suburbs, the de-industrialisation of cities and the decline of the working class, and wealthy foreign developers investing in urban property are a few of the major factors falling under the definition of the word.

But Dr Seetzen said that when it came to protests and outcry surrounding gentrification, the underlying root of the problem goes back to basic structural inequality.

"[The difference now is] the speed at which the processes play out has accelerated, so that now you can actually see the mechanisms of structural inequality play out in the urban environment," she said.

The Cereal Killer Cafe on Brick Road in East London was the target of gentrification protests. ( Supplied: Paul Mattsson )

Gentrification: a three-step process

For many urban planners, the word gentrification is disliked due to the fact that it described so many processes, which they said made it counterproductive when trying to address the specific processes involved.

Dr Shaw believes that it is useful because unlike other urban planning terminology "it has currency — everyone knows what you mean when you talk about it and can relate their own experience to it".

"Urban development decisions are made all the time, every day, and these decisions have complicated consequences that the word gentrification makes it simpler to call attention to," she said.

To meet the formal definition of the word gentrification, Dr Shaw said three processes essentially have to take place.

Firstly, urban property must become undervalued as a result of disinvested land.

Secondly, the former occupiers of the neighbourhood must be displaced.

And thirdly, a class transition must occur to more affluent inhabitants.

Therefore lower-middle class neighbourhoods are gentrified by the upper-middle classes, who are in return gentrified by the upper classes. Or foreign investors who might not even live in the city but are looking to return a profit spark a process which is referred to as "super-gentrification".

Loading

This continual process of urban development, where even the middle-class gets gentrified, are what many of the protesters in London say has led to a breaking point.

"The entire city of London is becoming one giant upper-middle class neighbourhood, there's almost nowhere else to go," said one 55-year-old East London resident who was born and raised in the city, and took part in the cereal protest.

"I've moved houses so many times now over the last 20 years, [further and further out each time, and] ... any further out I may as well leave London. Why? It's my city too."

While many have been quick to condemn the protests against the Cereal Killer Cafe as attacking the symptom, not the disease — suggesting that they should have targeted politicians or real estate developers — others praised it as the first time any serious attention had been brought to the issue.

Nobody cares about real estate protests: researcher

Lisa McKenzie, a sociology researcher at the London School of Economics who was part of the protests, said "we've been protesting outside real estate developers for years now, no one hears about it".

But even with the attention afforded by the cereal protest, Ms McKenzie said the response was symbolic of the social inequality problem.

"What's the response? We hear nothing from the council kids who were there, nothing from the local residents," Dr McKenzie said.

"What we get is interviews with the cafe owners, and tweets from politicians, who are all seen as the victims and the authority on the matter. Why? That is the problem."

A poster declaring redevelopment plans on Gertrude street in Melbourne's Fitzroy. ( Supplied: Rodger Cummins/Whose Urban Renaissance? by Porter, L and Shaw, K (2009) )

Dr McKenzie said the protesters recognised that the cafe was not the root of the matter, "but that's not how anger works."

"For young urban poor, the cereal cafe stands for all things frivolous, a life that's expensive and wasteful and out of their reach, and it sits in the middle of their decaying community. They chose it because it hurts them and they find it insulting."

But with so many factors playing into it from politics — to wealth distribution, to culture, to history — is gentrification and its consequences just a harsh reality of modern urban life?

"No," Dr McKenzie said, "Rent control, attention to affordable housing, protection of local businesses that can serve local communities like dispensaries or breakfast places that serve eggs and coffee [for the price of a small bowl of cereal at the cafe] are all things that can keep neighbourhoods open so that everyone from different classes can take part."

She added that more protests were already planned throughout London "until people's voices are heard".

Melbourne-based urban expert Kate Shaw also said that while it was important not to demonise the middle classes or "gentrifiers", in places where people's livelihood were at stake attention needed to be brought to striking a balance between profit and exploitation.

"There are degrees which you can choose to gentrify a neighbourhood," she said. "All developments are the result of choices that stem from what we choose to prioritise in our cities," she said.

"Leaving community centres intact, or certain cultural institutions, or regulating investment, can all help to maintain the social diversity that is important in any dynamic city, and makes it unique.

"It requires a certain level of social awareness from those doing the gentrifying and a realignment of urban development priorities, which is what protests should be trying to achieve."

