麻豆社

What do we learn when a city鈥檚 future is defined not by rapid change, but by who leaves and who stays? Laurie Taylor looks at two neighbourhoods in different countries, during different periods in history and explores the human cost of gentrification - and what happens when the project fails.

Sharon Cornelissen (sociologist and Director of Housing at the Consumer Federation of America) discusses her latest book, "The Last House on the Block - Black Homeowners, White Homesteaders, and Failed Gentrification in Detroit', her study of Detroit鈥檚 Brightmoor neighbourhood. After living as a homeowner in Brightmoor for several years, Cornelissen argues that American cities should look more closely at depopulation and disinvestment because she experienced firsthand what it is like to live somewhere with a very small population and a distinct lack of both public and private investment.

In his new book, "Songs of Seven Dials - an Intimate History of 1920s and 1930s London", Matt Houlbrook (Professor of Cultural History at the University of Birmingham) writes about the history of the central London district in the interwar years through the story of a 1927 libel trial involving a Sierra Leonean caf茅 owner and a nationalist newspaper. Through this personal story, he reveals the tensions around race, class and 鈥渋mprovement鈥� that shaped the area鈥檚 future. Seven Dials near Covent Garden emerges as a place where business interests collide with local residents and where money and influence win out over the rights of individuals 鈥� early examples of the pressures now associated with gentrification a century later.

Producer: Natalia Fernandez