A 2-step Housing Imagination exercise to review a newspaper article

A 2-step Housing Imagination (HI) exercise to review a newspaper article: a proposal

Joseph Kim-keung Ho

Independent Trainer

Hong Kong, China

Abstract: The subject of Housing Imagination (HI) is interested in studying artifacts such as newspaper articles to examine housing imaginations. This paper proposes a two-step evaluation exercise to study newspaper articles for this HI purpose. The evaluation exercise makes use of (i) findings produced via the mind mapping-based literature review (MMBLR) approach and (ii) idea scope coverage review of the article chosen for review. An example with an article on gentrification in Hong Kong is provided to illustrate this two-step evaluation exercise. This article offers academic and practical values to those who are interested in learning Housing Imaginations.

Key words: Gentrification, housing Imaginations (HI), mind mapping-based literature review (MMBLR) approach, newspaper article, scope of idea coverage analysis, thematic analysis

Introduction

The subject of Housing Imagination (HI) is interested in learning housing imaginations via study of artifacts, such as newspaper articles, photographs and songs (re: Hosing Imagination Facebook page). As a new subject, it is valuable to develop approaches and techniques to inform artifact study on HI. In this paper, the writer proposes a two-step exercise on scope of idea coverage analysis to examine newspaper articles. The two-step exercise makes use of the mind mapping-based literature review (MMBLR) approach put forward by the writer in 2016 (Ho, 2016). Another technique of the exercise is a kind of idea scope boundary review.  This two-step exercise is explained in the next section. After that, it is applied to review a newspaper article on gentrification in Hong Kong for illustrating its employment.

Steps involved in an article evaluation as informed by the thematic analysis of the academic literature on a chosen topic

There are two steps in the proposed exercise on an article evaluation based on the thematic analysis on the academic literature on a chosen topic. Step 1 is the thematic analysis of the mind mapping-based literature review (MMBLR) approach (Ho, 2016). Briefly, Step 1 gathered some ideas from the academic literature of a topic under examination that are typically associated with the following four themes: (i) Descriptions of basic ideas and information, (ii) Major underlying theories and thinking, (iii) Main research topics and issues, and (iv) Major trends and issues related to practices. Subsequently, the key words utilized by the ideas (in quotation form) are bolded. The output is a list of quotations with referencing and numbering, grouped into the four themes. To facilitate the analysis, a table that assembles the quotation numbers in four themes is constructed. Step 2 takes stock of the ideas gathered via the thematic analysis of a topic under review.  It reveals the scope of ideas coverage of an article by drawing two idea scope boundaries of the article being studied, namely boundary on “explicit application zone” and boundary on “concepts awareness zone”. In diagrammatic form, Step 2 is depicted in Figure 1.

Referring to Figure 1, the article’s concept scope is delineated by two boundaries. The inner one (i.e., the pink boundary), called the boundary on “explicit application zone”, covers all explicit ideas applied in the article under review. The outer one (i.e., the yellow boundary), named as the boundary on “concepts awareness zone”, covers ideas that the article is mildly aware of. In a typical thematic analysis, instead of using A1. A2, A3, etc., to label the quotations, the writer employs point 1.1, point 1.2, point 2.1, point 2.2, etc. for the labeling practice. With the exposure of an article’s two ideas scope zones, one could perform two types of evaluation of an article:

Type 1 evaluation: evaluate the quality of reasoning and skill involved in utilizing the ideas as identified from the thematic analysis of the academic literature on the topic being studied;

Type 2 evaluation: evaluate the legitimacy and restrictiveness of the article’s viewpoints and quality of reasoning arising from its ideas scope boundary decision.

Having explained the 2 steps of an article evaluation, the writer demonstrates how it is done on the topic of gentrification, in the next section.

An article evaluation on the topic of gentrification

Step 1 of the article evaluation exercise on the gentrification topic is a thematic analysis in the mind mapping-based literature review (MMBLR) approach.  The writer refers to his MMBLR work on gentrification (Ho, 2017) and provides the findings on thematic analysis as follows (Re: Table 1):

Table 1: Thematic analysis findings on gentrification

Theme 1: Descriptions of basic concepts and information

Point 1.1.              “…in the early 21st century, gentrification has come to be understood as …..: a generalised middle-class restructuring of place, encompassing the entire transformation from low-status neighbourhoods to upper-middle-class playgrounds. Gentrifiers’ residences are no longer just renovated houses but newly built townhouses and high-rise apartments. Their workplaces are as likely to be new downtown or docklands office developments as warehouse studios. Gentrification extends to retail and commercial precincts, and can be seen in rural and coastal townships as well as cities. Its defining feature is conspicuous cultural consumption” (Shaw, 2008);

Point 1.2.              “Gentrification encompasses the two distinct processes of upper-income resettlement and housing renovation, which are usually modeled separately as independent phenomena” (Helms, 2003);

Point 1.3.              “Gentrification refers to the transition of property markets from relatively low value platforms to higher value platforms under the influence of redevelopment and influx of higher-income residents, often with spatial displacement of original residents and an associated shift in the demographic, social, and cultural fabric of neighborhoods under its influence” (Torrens and Nara, 2007);

Point 1.4.              “In Toronto and Vancouver, gentrification has been considered by some analysts to result from a ‘critical social movement’ that in order to escape the hegemony of the suburban lifestyle and all its trappings of ‘possessive individualism’, chose to move to the inner city in search of demographic diversity and an alternative life of ‘radical intellectual subculture’..” (Shaw, 2008);

Point 1.5.              “The word [gentrification] was made up by British sociologist Ruth Glass in the 1960s, when she observed an influx of ‘gentry’ – people more affluent and educated than their working-class neighbours and whom she presumed to be the offspring of the landed gentry – buying and renovating old mews and cottages in certain neighbourhoods in inner London” (Shaw, 2008);

Theme 2: Major underlying theories and thinking

Point 2.1.              “Two mainstream ideas predominate in the geographical literature: humanistic and Marxist approaches. Hamnett … summarizes the distinction between the two in terms of the difference between ‘‘the liberal humanists who stress the key role of choice, culture, consumption and consumer demand, and the structural Marxists who stress the role of capital, class, production and supply.”…” (Torrens and Nara, 2007);

Point 2.2.              “…it has been argued that gentrification has seen an extreme bifurcation of wealth and poverty and a dramatic realignment of class relations” (Pennay, Manton and Savic, 2014);

Point 2.3.               “Even though the city often loses the younger cohort of (re)settlers to the suburbs after they start families, it retains the physical improvements that they made to their residences, and also benefits from the upgrading investments of the returning empty-nesters. Housing rehabilitation, which is certainly the most visible evidence of gentrification, improves the city’s physical health by forestalling further decay of the housing stock and improves its fiscal health by boosting the property tax base” (Helms, 2003);

Point 2.4.               “… ‘rural gentrification’, a term which is widely understood to refer to processes whereby middle or service class households are moving into villages and displacing local, working class groups, and often in the process also refurbishing, extending and converting properties” (Phillips et al.. 2008);

Point 2.5.              “…[rural] gentrification may obliterate natural spaces and habitats, as developers and others look to create new-build developments on green spaces within or adjacent to rural settlements. Such activities may themselves be robustly resisted by existing rural gentrifiers who view these developments as actively destroying the very features that attracted them to the residential location in the first place” (Phillips et al.. 2008);

Point 2.6.               “In the context of rural gentrification, whilst this might popularly be conceived, and is widely represented in the media, as involving wealthy householders deciding that they want to move from the city into the countryside and refurbish an old property themselves, studies of rural gentrification have identified gentrification as occurring through a variety of forms” (Phillips et al.. 2008);

Point 2.7.               “In studies of gentrification, authors distinguish between different actors: some of them driving the process, for example, ‘pioneers’ and gentrifiers, and others described as victims, such as displaced households …. As case studies indicate …., different social groups and corporate actors such as real estate agents …., investors, banks, public utility suppliers, local organisations of residents, urban planners, urban and national policy-makers, are also involved in the gentrification process” (Blasius, Friedrichs and Rühl, 2016);

Point 2.8.               “In the gentrification literature, a common distinction refers to the supply and the demand side. Studies of the supply side focus on theories such as rent gap and value gap or describe actions of urban and national policy-makers, real estate agents and investors. On the demand side authors analyse the actors involved in the process: gentrifiers. This group, however, as our review of the literature reveals, is neither clearly defined nor sufficiently differentiated to adequately investigate the process of gentrification” (Blasius, Friedrichs and Rühl, 2016);

Point 2.9.              “Smith … has argued that a gentrification process is inevitable if a growing ‘‘rent gap’’ has emerged between the potential value of the land and its existing use value. The size of the gap grows until it is possible for developers to move back to the inner city and profitably realize the underlying value of the land through renovation or redevelopment of the buildings” (Phillips et al.. 2008);

Point 2.10.         “It can be of the traditional or classic form – that is, by individual gentrifiers renovating old housing through sweat equity or by hiring builders and interior designers and so leading to the embourgeoisement of a neighbourhood and the displacement of less wealthy residents. It is now also increasingly state-led with national and local governmental policy tied up in supporting gentrification initiatives” (Shaw, 2008);

Point 2.11.         “The irony is that gentrification proceeds most confidently in the places that need new investment least: gentrification-induced displacement is still so far from the reality of the heavily de-industrialised cities of Europe and rust belts of America, where governments are actively trying to promote ‘gentrification’ through urban regeneration projects in order to alleviate problems of crumbling infrastructure and miserable poverty” (Shaw, 2008);

Point 2.12.         “…while gentrification is very much a localised construct—the product of ‘the relationship between individual structures and lots and neighbourhood-scale dynamics in the land and housing markets’ …— it is also important to adopt a ‘wider purview’ … in which gentrification is seen as a manifestation of more generalised and indeed globalised processes of capitalist ‘uneven development’…” (Phillips et al.. 2008);

Point 2.13.         “A key understanding is that gentrification requires social class transition, with the displacement of households with lesser power in the market place (and normally at city hall as well)” (Ley and Teo, 2014);

Point 2.14.         “Class change, rather than physical environment, is the defining feature of gentrification ….; that is, residents’ (and ex-residents’) class as well as class-based changes in neighbourhood characteristics (e.g. use of public spaces, cultural amenities, service provision) rather than physical characteristics (e.g. whether structures are preexisting, the area is residential and/or located in the inner city)” (Lemanski, 2014);

Point 2.15.         “Initially gentrification involved the renovation of older inner-city neighbourhoods in large white-collar cities by in-migrating young professionals, commonly of urbane left-liberal dispositions, often improving properties through their own sweat equity. Over time that sub-market has expanded to include more mature and wealthy professionals and managers, retired households with considerable property equity, national and international absentee investors, and even families with children. The housing stock has also diversified, with the addition of new-build condominiums and town houses constructed by national and international developers located not only in redeveloped residential neighbourhoods, but also in old industrial areas, office districts and other land uses” (Ley and Teo, 2014);

Point 2.16.         “It remains a sociological truism that ‘early’ gentrifiers not only help destroy the features that lured them to the inner city, but predicate their own displacement in turn” (Shaw, 2008);

Theme 3: Main research topics and issues

Point 3.1.              “Since 1980s, academics used to deal with gentrification as a haphazard process. While on 2000s, gentrification is no longer perceived as a haphazard process but rather a planned process. As urban neighbourhoods exposed to gentrification, physical, economic, social and cultural changes take place. Gentrification can also process reversely named as “Degentrification”. “ (Eldaidamony and Shetawy, 2016);

Point 3.2.               “At the risk of over-simplification, initially the conceptualisation debate [on gentrification] centred on two competing approaches. On the one hand there was the production (or supply) side theorisation involving the rent-gap theory of Smith …  It emphasised the process of investment (and disinvestment) in bringing about gentrification and, according to Davidson …  ‘has been central to the creation of globalised gentrified spaces’…  On the other hand there was the consumptive (or demand) side approach which placed greater emphasis on population, rather than financial, movement … …. Over time, however, these concepts have become viewed as complementary” (Stockdale, 2010);

Point 3.3.               “…..gentrification’s larger literature, produced by key scholars and recognised as an urban studies theme, provides great depth to the concept. In contrast, downward raiding is rarely the primary focus of research and certainly not considered an urban theme itself, having received virtually no theoretical critique or development, and thus their analysis is unequal. At their most basic, both concepts involve higher-income groups moving into lower income areas. Furthermore, both prioritise in-movers (gentry/raiders), representing a higher class/income than previous residents” (Lemanski, 2014);

Point 3.4.              “…gentrification and downward raiding refer to very similar processes of urban change, and the absence of prior comparison is surprising” (Lemanski, 2014);

Point 3.5.              “Neither gentrification nor downward raiding terminologies are commonly used to explain urban change in South Africa. This is not because these processes do not exist, but the explicit terms are rarely employed” (Lemanski, 2014);

Point 3.6.               “Clark suggests that ‘the collective efforts of gentrification researchers has given the world a chaotic conception’ as research has focused on complexity and contingency, arbitrarily lumping things together and dividing unnecessarily, as with the separation of rural and urban gentrification which, Clark argues, is ‘another bad abstraction that arbitrarily divides gentrification’ …” (Phillips et al.. 2008);

Point 3.7.              “Most gentrification scholars are working now to identify new forms and cases of the process, especially as its reach becomes truly global” (Shaw, 2008);

Point 3.8.               “Gentrification is being found in more and more locations, but for Clark this might be more a reflection that researchers are looking to apply the concept of gentrification to more places rather than there has been a substantive spread in the processes of gentrification” (Phillips et al.. 2008);

Point 3.9.              “Maloutas … has challenged the global reach of the concept of gentrification. The term, he observes, best describes a distinctive set of processes in large cities in Anglo-America, but it travels poorly outside that culture realm. Gentrification emerged and was named in a specific regional context and to extend its use is to practise ‘conceptual stretching’ that uncritically assumes that similar outcomes elsewhere in the world are the result of the same processes, when in fact local conditions add significant complexities” (Ley and Teo, 2014);

Point 3.10.          “The causes of gentrification have been the subject of debate from the moment the phenomenon was identified. Many commentators and scholars agree that the discussion must move on from the causes and effects of gentrification to what to do about it” (Shaw, 2008);

Point 3.11.         “The impact of gentrification on street drinking has been the subject of limited social and political discussion in Australia and elsewhere. However, there has been some attention to the way in which the issue of social class and street drinking has influenced urban design in the United Kingdom (UK)” (Pennay, Manton and Savic, 2014);

Point 3.12.         “There is general consensus, however, that the humanist and Marxist perspectives offer relatively translucent views of gentrification in isolation (Hamnett, 1991). An integrated explanation is needed, one that accommodates supply factors (the production of devalued areas and housing) and demand factors (the production of gentrifiers and their specific consumption and reproduction patterns)…” (Torrens and Nara, 2007);

Point 3.13.          “… one could argue that the literature on rural migration, and specifically counter urbanisation, has indirectly been investigating rural gentrification for some time but has largely failed to make this explicit conceptual link” (Stockdale, 2010);

Point 3.14.         “As cases of gentrification are increasingly documented across the globe …, researchers have also begun ‘to no longer restrict the term to processes located in the city centre’ …. Lees observed in 2003 that gentrification is increasingly used to refer to changes in suburbs and rural townships, and she expressed some alarm that this ‘myriad of forms’ made the meaning of the term ‘so expansive as to lose any conceptual sharpness and specificity’..” (Shaw, 2008);

Point 3.15.          “Some researchers viewed the characteristics of the gentrifiers to be of greater importance in the understanding of gentrification” (Phillips et al.. 2008);

Point 3.16.         “The importance of displacement as a defining characteristic of gentrification has also been debated. Some authors …. question its contemporary relevance” (Stockdale, 2010);

Point 3.17.         “Gentrification scholars …. [argue] that the media garner support for gentrification and divert attention from its costs … Many regard reporters, editors, and publishers as “important actors in promoting gentrification”..” (Brown-Saracino and Rumpf, 2011);

Point 3.18.         “While research affirms media influence on gentrifiers, a growing body of work raises the possibility that it no longer straightforwardly encourages a frontier and salvation framework, instead encouraging self-consciousness among some gentrifiers. As Neil Smith … acknowledges, there is some evidence that gentrification has become a “dirty word.” (Brown-Saracino and Rumpf, 2011);

Point 3.19.         “…the very term ‘gentrification’ identifies an even more specific location than Anglo-America, with language that reveals a distinctive British class and status formation. This word fits uncomfortably (if at all) in the United States whose social history involves a very different social hierarchy” (Ley and Teo, 2014);

Point 3.20.         “Gentrification disguised as ‘social mix’ serves as an excellent example of how the rhetoric and reality of gentrification has been replaced by a different discursive, theoretical and policy language that consistently deflects criticism and resistance” (Slater, 2006);

Point 3.21.         “Up until the late 1980s, very few, if any, scholarly articles celebrating gentrification existed. The academic literature was characterized by increasing theoretical sophistication as researchers tried to understand the causes of the process, and this was often in response to the clear injustice of the displacement of working-class residents, and the far from innocent role of both public and private institutions” (Slater, 2006);

Theme 4: Major trends and issues related to practices

Point 4.1.              “The current era of neoliberal urban policy, together with a drive towards homeownership, privatization and the break-up of ‘concentrated poverty’ …, has seen the global, state-led process of gentrification via the promotion of social or tenure ‘mixing’ (or ‘social diversity’ or ‘social balance’) in formerly disinvested neighbourhoods populated by working-class and/or low-income tenants” (Slater, 2006);

Point 4.2.              “…not all inner-city renovation activity is gentrification-based; much of it is performed by existing city residents. This “incumbent upgrading” is a relatively predictable and continual occurrence in historically stable areas” (Helms, 2003);

Point 4.3.              “Though gentrification did not herald the end of suburbanization, neither was it a transitory trend. It has steadily persisted, if not gathered momentum, over the past three decades. During this time, gentrification has revealed itself to be less often a one-way migration back to the city than a continual circulation through the city: as one demographer straightforwardly explained (about Chicago), “You’ve got all these 20-year-olds coming in, and all these 30-year-olds going out.”..” (Helms, 2003);

Point 4.4.               “Temporal changes in the form of rural gentrification have … been witnessed. For example, Smith and Phillips …. in their study of Hebden Bridge report an early stage whereby migrants purchased cheap run-down properties, often in remote areas, and renovated them using their sweat equity and a later stage, concentrated on the settlement itself, where developers provided new-build properties aimed at attracting managerial and professional groups” (Stockdale, 2010);

Point 4.5.               “…gentrification in Asia Pacific invariably produces landscapes of high-rise redevelopment. Renovation is extremely rare as a form of reinvestment, and is limited to leisure and tourist-based reconstructions, like the shop houses in Singapore … or the selective preservation of shikumen houses in Shanghai’s Xintiandi district” (Ley and Teo, 2014);

The quotation list on gentrification is quite long (see also the Literature on gentrification Facebook page). For this reason, they cannot be put into a table for a convenient idea scope analysis. Instead, the points are grouped into the table. Next, the writer studies the ideas scope of an article on gentrification in Hong Kong from Chan (2014).  The article extract from Chan (2014) is shown in Table 2 with the thematic analysis points inserted:

Table 2: Extract from Chan (2014) with thematic analysis points inserted

Newspaper article 1 (Chan, 2014) “Gentrification seems to be taking off in the world's most prosperous urban centres. [2.12; 4.1] In New York and London, for example, people are seeking to move further out, to areas like Brooklyn and the docklands where rents are lower, again driving out local residents and businesses….. In Hong Kong, we associate this trend with the huge influx of mainland shoppers, which has caused a major expansion of designer and luxury stores. Rising rents have caused the closure of much-loved outlets catering to local residents [2.9; 3.15]. However, the impact may prove temporary….. In the longer term, our gentrification may well be more like that in San Francisco and other cities. We can expect continued inflows of bankers, for example, from the mainland, Asia and the rest of the world. Other professionals will probably come as new high-value activities develop, like creative industries, or indeed technology. [1.1; 1.3] More districts like Kennedy Town will become trendy and less affordable, and more dilapidated blocks in areas like Sham Shui Po will be targeted for redevelopment…… This is not new. The reason cities have skyscrapers in the centre is because land prices go up there as the economy grows. [2.9] There is bound to be spillover into once-poorer areas nearby over the years…… But global trends are adding to the effect. Globalisation has facilitated greater mobility of people and their fortunes [2.8]. Chinese, Russian, Middle Eastern and other Asian wealth has grown, and the new rich want to diversify their holdings. Some of it might go into art and yachts, but a lot goes into real estate. Hong Kong, like Vancouver and California, has seen a lot of mainland Chinese wealth going into property [2.7] [2.14] …. At the same time, many cities have clearly lagged behind in expanding their housing stock. We think of this as a Hong Kong problem, but home building has not kept up with population growth in many centres on the east and west coasts of the US, the south of England and other areas. High liquidity and low returns in other investments have further pushed housing prices up [2.8] ….. Most of all, globalisation goes with a widening gap between rich and poor, and the way people with certain education and skills are accumulating a greater share of wealth. [2.2; 2.12] If the better-off cluster in particular cities, it is easy to see how gentrification of poorer neighbourhoods can follow …… As a successful city, our population and physical area are likely to grow along with the economy. Our definition of "downtown" will expand, and something will have to give. It is hard to see how we can preserve whole ageing neighbourhoods in the urban area, or keep every cheap noodle place [4.1; 4.5] [2.11; 3.3] …… This all leaves a very serious question in Hong Kong, with its limited space: where will the less well-off go? We need to earmark sufficient space for public and subsidised homes and facilities.”. [1.3; 2.2] [3.16]

Referring to Table 2, the points that are explicitly applied are inserted with [ ] brackets that are bolded. Those that appear to be vaguely touched on are inserted with [ ] brackets that are in italics. Based on the review of Chan’s (2014) article, the idea scope boundary of his article is now revealed in Figure 2, as follows:

For a type 1 evaluation, the line of reasoning of Chan’s article is quite reasonable with good understanding of some of the gentrification concepts covered in the gentrification literature. With the type 2 evaluation, Chan’s article is quite dominated by neo-liberal urban policy rationale (re: thematic analysis point 4.1) while being insensitive and unsupportive to the humanist and Marxist perspectives (re: thematic analysis point 3.12).

Concluding remarks

The purpose of this article is quite simple: to introduce a 2-step exercise to study newspaper articles as an HI technique to examine newspaper articles. The gentrification article from Chan (2014) used in the illustration here also deals with a relevant topic in Housing Studies. Readers interested in learning more about this 2-tep exercise are recommended to study the literature on the mind mapping-based literature review (MMBLR) approach and Housing Imaginations.

Bibliography

1.      Chan, B. 2014. “Something has to give amid gentrification of Hong Kong” South China Morning Post April 18 (url address: http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1485847/something-has-give-amid-gentrification-hong-kong) [visited at February 7, 2017].

2.      Ho, J.K.K. 2016. Mind mapping for literature review – a ebook, Joseph KK Ho publication folder October 7 (url address: http://josephkkho.blogspot.hk/2016/10/mind-mapping-for-literature-review-ebook.html).

3.      Ho, J.K.K. 2017. “Mind mapping the topic of gentrification” Joseph KK Ho e-resources blog January 26 (url address: http://josephho33.blogspot.hk/2017/01/mind-mapping-topic-of-gentrification.html).

4.      Housing imagination Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho url address: https://www.facebook.com/housing.imagination/).

5.      Literature on gentrification Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/literature.gentrification/).