Other geographies of gentrification

This paper considers recent pleas for a ‘geography of gentrification’, arguing that they have been very urban in focus and often enact what, following Soja (1996), might be described as ‘firstspace epistemology’. The paper identifies traces of other, secondspace and thirdspace geographies of gentrification. It is argued that these geographies may not be fully commensurable with each other but that they each may have some commensurability with rural as well as the urban spatialities. The paper goes on to explore these arguments in relation to studies of gentrification of the British countryside, focusing particularly on gentrification in rural Norfolk.