I was priced out of London – am I doing the same to Margate? In the latest installment of his Doing up the Dream renovation diary, Ben Alden-Falconer wonders about the positives and negatives […]

In the latest installment of his Doing up the Dream renovation diary, Ben Alden-Falconer wonders about the positives and negatives of gentrification

Gentrification is a loaded word. A word intrinsically tied to spiralling rents, yuppies, hipsters, chain shops, the displacement and exclusion of residents of lower income levels and the subsequent loss of a place’s identity.

It is a word only used positively by property developers but even they worry that the transformation of deprived areas might go too far: improved public spaces, schools and safety could ultimately result in “blandification”.

I’m a gentrifier and someone who has been gentrified out

I am in the odd position of being both a gentrifier and someone who has been gentrified out. Priced out of my childhood London borough, but now contributing to changing a deprived seaside town.

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Am I perpetuating a cycle that I detest by moving out of Hackney and into Margate? Karen Chapple, a professor of city and regional planning at the University of California (Berkeley), recently gave a BBC lecture asking “Am I a gentrifier?”, reflecting on her own attempts not to displace and undermine the social mix of the areas she moves into.

She ultimately concludes, despite her best attempts, that she might have contributed to the process.

The term “gentrification” was coined in the 1960s, by the sociologist Ruth Glass, focusing quite specifically on the “invasion” of inner London working-class districts by the middle classes to the detriment of the existing inhabitants. The word is no longer confined to the academic sphere, and is used more broadly.

A decline in renting and the arrival of wealthy homeowners

In the 1960s, studies on gentrification associated it with a decline in private renting and the arrival of wealthy homeowners, a trend that continued until 2001. The transformation of parts of Britain, particularly the South East, over the past decade – also termed gentrification – has instead increased the number of private renters again. The newcomers are more empowered in many ways, but they’re not necessarily homeowners.

Renting vs home ownership Between 1918 and 1991 the percentage of UK households privately renting dropped from 76 per cent to just 9 per cent. This change was fuelled by an increase in those in social housing, peaking at 31 per cent of households in 1981, and by homeownership rates which peaked at 69 per cent in 2001. For the academic-minded, Antoine Paccoud has made an interesting study of the recent gentrification process in London and how the gentrification shouldn’t necessarily be associated with home ownership.

On one level Margate seems to follow the typical pattern. First come the artists, the writers, then those with money follow. That’s an easy narrative, and it’s true there are some parallels – the newly painted grey facades are easy to spot, the artists’ galleries and studios are now plentiful. But to the observant it isn’t simply a repeat process, it is an evolution or perhaps something fundamentally different: largely those moving in are leaving the large urban areas to come to a relatively small seaside town; the inverse to the usual.

Multi-ethnic communities are often some of the worst affected by gentrification, not well represented in policy-making spheres or in government, they face the full brunt of capitalist forces. For some, therefore, gentrification is simply a code word for ethnic displacement. In this sense, too, the changes in Margate so far don’t conform to type, the newcomers are socially and economically mobile but of a range of ethnicities.

A ripple or a flood?

Perhaps what I am seeing is better described as the ripple effect of gentrification, rather than gentrification itself.

While research and commentary focuses on changes in inner London, it’s rare to hear how those that are leaving go on to transform the places they move to in their turn. Perhaps it was always like this.

Margate has had such a steep hill to climb in recent years that the changes so far haven’t meant displacement but renewal. It isn’t the case that a popular local market or shop is closing to make way for a new, more expensive one to cater for new, more affluent residents. Instead, it’s closed shops reopening for the first time in decades. Not well-heeled newcomers moving out poor occupants but derelict or near-derelict homes brought back to life.

Positive change for some

In Lovely’s, the Margate art shop that opened in 1891, Caroline, the fourth generation of the same family to run it, talks positively about the changes. The newcomers have “brought the town back to life”, she says.

While the centre of the Old Town now has plenty of chic shops, the grand facades of nearby Cliftonville have yet to experience the same licks of paint. In the days when the Impressionist Walter Sickert lived nearby and failed to pay his paint bills (inviting Caroline’s grandad over to tea to apologise) Northdown Road had been the smart part of town.

It may well be grand again – the beautiful buildings were certainly built to impress.

The day may well come when there is an outcry over the town’s gentrification, but as fast as change is happening in Margate, that day still feels like it is some way off.

Follow Ben’s renovation progress on Instagram @Margate_renovation_ipaper