Development and Urbanization
Roundtable
Remco Vermeulen
Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, Netherlands
Remco Vermeulen
Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, Netherlands
Diana Krabbendam
The Beach, Netherlands
Rita Padawangi
Singapore University of Social Sciences, Singapore
Adrian Perkasa
Universitas Airlangga, Indonesia
Paul Rabé
International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), Netherlands
Gentrification is wide-spread in many cities around the world, threatening liveability, diversity, and equality. As a phenomenon in urban development, it has been researched widely and extensively, traditionally from an Anglo-American perspective. Recently, the gentrification debate is shifting from the Global North to the Global South. This brings valuable new insights and understanding of different contexts and causes of gentrification.
At the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, Urban Heritage Strategies expert Remco Vermeulen has been developing a practice-oriented learning method for working professionals to make them acquainted with gentrification through a city’s urban heritage. Heritage is, by definition, about people, and cities are melting pots where different people with different heritage live and work together. The method helps them to recognize the conditions of gentrification in their own cities through observing their cities’ history, characteristics, and challenges. It also enables us to analyse different forms of gentrification in very different contexts. This method has been applied in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Yogyakarta. It is a practical step in understanding different forms of gentrification as well as defining strategies of responding to gentrification in diverse contexts.
This session is a panel discussion in which the relationship between gentrification and heritage is discussed, considering the contexts of cities in the Netherlands and Indonesia, and several methods of community empowerment are analysed.