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Padding the Bunker: Strategies of Middle-class Disaffiliation and Colonisation in the City

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  • Rowland Atkinson

    (Housing and Community Research Unit, School of Sociology and Social Work, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 17, Hobart, Tas 7001, Australia, Rowland.Atkinson@utas.edu.au)

Abstract

Residential segregation has often been seen as a significant and intractable urban problem. Empirical analyses have focused on the clustering and social impacts of concentrated deprivation and ethnicity, while explanations of segregation have generally looked at the role of income, housing markets, and wider social and institutional discrimination. This paper attempts to build on such preoccupations by considering current urban transformations to theorise the recent middle-class colonisation of cities in the UK. Segregation is seen here not just as the concentration of an urban poor or particular ethnic groups, but also as representing an extended spatial bifurcation between the choices of the affluent to withdraw into increasingly insulated enclaves, while places of poverty contain populations away from this increasingly fearful, yet tendentiously urbanising, middle class. Using a series of case studies, a typology is developed of increasing disaffiliation as a prelude to a further debate on the feasibility of encouraging social diversity in the city.

Suggested Citation

  • Rowland Atkinson, 2006. "Padding the Bunker: Strategies of Middle-class Disaffiliation and Colonisation in the City," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 43(4), pages 819-832, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:43:y:2006:i:4:p:819-832
    DOI: 10.1080/00420980600597806
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Douglas Massey, 1996. "The age of extremes: Concentrated affluence and poverty in the twenty-first century," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 33(4), pages 395-412, November.
    2. Chris Hamnett, 2003. "Gentrification and the Middle-class Remaking of Inner London, 1961-2001," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 40(12), pages 2401-2426, November.
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    Cited by:

    1. Marco van der Land, 2012. "Two Critical Notes on the Meaning of the New Middle Class for Creative Knowledge City Policies," Chapters, in: Marina van Geenhuizen & Peter Nijkamp (ed.), Creative Knowledge Cities, chapter 4, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Emma Jackson & Michaela Benson, 2014. "Neither ‘Deepest, Darkest Peckham’ nor ‘Run-of-the-Mill’ East Dulwich: The Middle Classes and their ‘Others’ in an Inner-London Neighbourhood," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(4), pages 1195-1210, July.
    3. Tim Butler, 2007. "Re‐urbanizing London Docklands: Gentrification, Suburbanization or New Urbanism?," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(4), pages 759-781, December.
    4. Gerald Mollenhorst, 2015. "Neighbour Relations in the Netherlands: New Developments," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 106(1), pages 110-119, February.
    5. Megan Nethercote, 2017. "When Social Infrastructure Deficits Create Displacement Pressures: Inner City Schools and the Suburbanization of Families in Melbourne," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(3), pages 443-463, May.

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