Original Research Article

European Journal of Political Theory

1–22
Gentrification and everyday © The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/14748851221137510
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Jamie Draper
Nuffield College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Abstract
This article diagnoses a novel problem with gentrification: that it can hinder valuable
forms of everyday democratic communication. In order to make this argument, I
develop a democratic interpretation of Iris Marion Young’s ‘ideal of city life’, according
to which social differentiation is valuable because of the epistemic role that it plays in the
production and circulation of diverse social perspectives. I then leverage that ideal to
examine two kinds of spatial and demographic changes associated with gentrification:
community disintegration in enclaves and homogenisation in public spaces. I argue
that community disintegration in enclaves can make the production of social perspec-
tives within disadvantaged communities more difficult. I then argue that homogenisation
in public spaces can undermine the role of such spaces as sites of democratic perform-
ance for the wider circulation of social perspectives in the public sphere. Finally, I reflect
on the reach of my argument for broader judgements about the permissibility of policies
that foster or permit gentrification.

Keywords
Gentrification, democracy, Iris Marion Young, public space, epistemic democracy

‘Gentrification’ has a negative valence. As Margaret Kohn (2016: 89) puts it, ‘city
officials may promote mixed-income neighborhoods, livable cities, urban renaissance, revi-
talization, and renewal, but almost no one defends gentrification’. Political philosophers,
however, have had relatively little to say about gentrification so far. Kohn is an exception;
she identifies a number of different harms associated with gentrification, though her focus
is largely on whether existing residents should be subsidised to prevent them from being
displaced as rents rise (Kohn, 2016: 87–112). Others have similarly focused on the injust-
ice of residential displacement, either by reference to individuals’ ‘occupancy rights’ to

Corresponding author:
Jamie Draper, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
Email: jamie.draper@nuffield.ox.ac.uk
2 European Journal of Political Theory 0(0)

remain in a particular place (Hoffman, 2020; Huber and Wolkenstein, 2018), or by exam-
ining the ways in which landlords and gentrifiers dominate and exploit existing residents
by inflicting or threatening the harm of displacement (Jenkins, 2022; Putnam, 2021;
Zimmer, 2017).1
In this article, I open up a different line of inquiry. Rather than focusing on the injust-
ice of residential displacement, I focus on another problem with gentrification: that it can
hinder valuable forms of democratic communication. Drawing on the work of Iris Marion
Young, I argue that background conditions of social differentiation are conducive to the produc-
tion and circulation of social perspectives within a democratic society. Gentrification is objection-
able when and because it undermines those background conditions, and thereby makes it difficult
for marginalised social groups to produce and circulate their own social perspectives. I identify
two ways that gentrification can have this effect: community disintegration in enclaves and hom-
ogenisation in public spaces. These processes do not take place in democracy’s formal represen-
tative institutions but in its informal, everyday manifestations. One upshot of this argument is that
we may have reason to object to gentrification not – or not only – because of its effects on those
who it affects most directly through residential displacement, but also because of its broader
effects on the everyday forms of democratic communication that we all have reason to value.
From the outset, it is worth making two clarificatory points. First, the considerations
that I adduce are not the only ones at stake in the moral evaluation of gentrification. My
argument does not provide the grounds for an all-things-considered judgement against
policies that permit or foster gentrification. Rather, it identifies one defeasible – but
underappreciated – reason to object to them. Articulating this reason helps us to get a
more fine-grained understanding of gentrification’s moral terrain. Second, my argument
does not give us grounds to condemn all cases of gentrification. The argument that I
develop depends upon a set of empirical claims about the consequences of gentrification.
I do think – and seek to demonstrate – that those empirical claims are plausible in many
contexts, but I cannot hope to establish them conclusively here. As such, my argument
remains conditional: we have reason to object to gentrification insofar as certain conse-
quences – community disintegration in enclaves and homogenisation in public spaces –
do in fact follow from it. This limits the argument’s reach, but this limitation is useful, in
that it can help us to distinguish between cases of gentrification that we have reason to
condemn and those which we do not – or at least, that we only have reason to
condemn on grounds apart from those identified here.
The article proceeds as follows: first, I develop a democratic interpretation of Young’s
‘ideal of city life’, which explains the epistemic value of social differentiation. Next, I
clarify the concept of gentrification. Then, I leverage the democratic interpretation of
the ideal of city life as a critical tool to examine community disintegration in enclaves
and homogenisation in public spaces. Finally, I conclude by reflecting on the implications
and limitations of the argument.

The democratic interpretation of the ideal of city life

One reason that we have to value democracy is that it functions as a method for identi-
fying and motivating solutions to pressing social problems. This view of democracy has
Draper 3

been articulated by Elizabeth Anderson (2006), who uses it to explain the epistemic value
of diversity and deliberation. The diversity of citizens is valuable because it means that
democracies can draw on ‘the fact that citizens from different walks of life have different
experiences of problems and policies of public interest’, which has ‘evidential import for
devising and evaluating solutions’. Deliberation – understood here in a wide sense – is
valuable because it is a ‘means of pooling this asymmetrically distributed information’
(Anderson, 2006: 14).
The background conditions against which deliberation takes place can foster or fetter
the production of the epistemic goods that help democratic inquiry to function as a
method for collective problem-solving. Background social conditions can affect the
quality of deliberation at different levels, and my focus here is on the level of ‘everyday
talk’ (Mansbridge, 1999). As theorists of deliberative democracy have identified, the
everyday processes of opinion-formation that take place in informal public spheres are
an important part of the wider deliberative system of a democratic society (Habermas,
1996: 307–308; Mansbridge et al., 2012).
My suggestion is that the vision of cultural pluralism articulated by Young as the ‘ideal
of city life’ models the background conditions of social differentiation that are conducive
to the epistemic function of democracy. Young presents the ideal of city life as an alter-
native to liberal-individualist and communitarian visions of social relations. Unlike the
communitarian ideal, the ideal of city life values the flourishing of group difference.
At the same time, the ideal of city life values an openness to ‘unassimilated otherness’
that goes beyond mere liberal toleration (Young, 2011: 241). Young (2011: 238–239)
describes the ideal of city life as follows:

In the ideal of city life freedom leads to group differentiation, to the formation of affinity
groups, but this social and spatial differentiation of groups is without exclusion. The
urban ideal expresses difference as … a side-by-side particularity neither reducible to iden-
tity nor completely other. In this ideal groups do not stand in relations of inclusions and
exclusion, but overlap and intermingle without becoming homogeneous.

In a slogan, the ideal of city life consists in ‘being together with strangers’ (Young,
2011: 237).
The spatial aspects of the ideal of city life are more explicitly captured in another nor-
mative ideal that Young (2002: 221–228) sets out in Inclusion and Democracy: that of ‘dif-
ferentiated solidarity’. Differentiated solidarity is an ideal of social and political inclusion, which
Young proposes as an alternative to both segregation and integration. Differentiated solidarity
‘oppose[s] actions and structures that exclude and segregate groups’ whilst at the same time
allowing ‘a certain degree of separation among people who seek each other out because of
social or cultural affinities that they have with one another’. Differentiated solidarity ‘affirms
a freedom to cluster’, but also contains a commitment to non-discrimination and, again, an
‘openness to unassimilated otherness’ (Young, 2002: 221–225).
In Young’s articulation of these ideals, the value of social differentiation is mostly
explained in terms of the kinds of relationships that it makes possible between citizens,
which involves the affirmation of group difference and the emancipatory potential of
4 European Journal of Political Theory 0(0)

reclaiming social group identities (see Young, 1989, 2011: 156–191). The bonds of affin-
ity that exist within socially differentiated groups may be sources of value for their
members, and in Young’s view, those bonds of affinity are something to be affirmed
and celebrated, rather than something that should (or can) be transcended. This view
of the value of social differentiation, though, is not uncontroversial and is likely to be
rejected by critics of multiculturalism or the ‘politics of difference’ (e.g. Barry, 2001).2
The democratic interpretation of the ideal that city life that I develop here does not
depend on any controversial claim that social differentiation is valuable in itself.
Instead, it shows that social differentiation is instrumentally valuable for a flourishing demo-
cratic society. The relationships of group affinity amongst members of socially differentiated
groups that Young celebrates are intertwined with the production and circulation of social per-
spectives, which are epistemically valuable at the level of the democratic system. The central
idea of the democratic interpretation of the ideal of city life is that a social order which instanti-
ates the ideal of city life will foster the background conditions that are conducive to a flourishing
democratic society. At points, Young gestures towards this value.3 But in order to fully under-
stand the democratic character of the ideal of city life, we need to examine the role that social
differentiation can play as an epistemic resource.
Young (2002: 114) argues that in socially differentiated societies, people who occupy
different social positions ‘have particular knowledge that arises from experience in their
social positions, and those social positions also influence the interests and assumptions
that they bring to inquiry’. For example, Black women in the USA may have particular
knowledge arising from their experiences of job discrimination, inadequate child support
and inferior housing which is not captured in dominant frameworks for understanding
social issues (Collins, 2000: 255). What such knowledge amounts to is a social perspec-
tive: a ‘point of view group members have on social processes because of their position in
them’ (Young, 2002: 137). As Maxime Lepoutre (2020: 49) points out, social perspec-
tives have descriptive components, which are the particular facts to which one has
access as a member of a particular social group, and normative components, which are
the evaluative judgements that emerge because of the salience of particular societal con-
straints for members of different social groups.
Importantly, we need not think that those in disadvantaged social positions have epi-
stemic virtues that others lack in order to accept that social perspectives are epistemically valu-
able. As much as anyone else, they may misinterpret facts, display bias, or indulge in
self-serving forms of motivated reasoning (Young, 2002: 117). Moreover, we need not think
of this form of knowledge as infallible or complete: the knowledge that we get from our experi-
ences as occupants of particular social positions is only ever partial (Young, 2002: 114). A
multitude of social perspectives is epistemically productive, though, because it provides us
with multiple distinct points of view from which to assess matters of public concern. An
ideal exchange of social perspectives is one in which:

[e]ach group speaks from its own standpoint and shares its own partial, situated knowledge. But
because each group perceives its own truth as partial, its knowledge is unfinished. Each group
becomes better able to consider other groups’ standpoints without relinquishing the uniqueness
of its own standpoint or suppressing other groups’ partial perspectives. (Collins, 2000: 270)
Draper 5

Together, the multiple overlapping standpoints of those who occupy different social
positions can help us to develop better-informed judgements on matters of public
concern.
The group clustering affirmed by the ideal of city life is helpful in terms of the pro-
duction of social perspectives. Where those with similar experiences have discursive
spaces in which they can come together, they can share those experiences with each
other and develop common interpretive frameworks for understanding them. Various dif-
ferent models of such discursive spaces have been proposed, including Jane
Mansbridge’s (1999) ‘social enclaves’, James Bohman’s (1996: 107–149) ‘subpublics’
and Nancy Fraser’s (1990) ‘subaltern counterpublics’. Such spaces are particularly
important for marginalised groups whose voices are not incorporated into dominant fra-
meworks for understanding social issues (Afsahi, 2020; Karpowitz, Raphael, and
Hammond, 2009). One classic illustration of the value of such spaces comes from the
development of the term ‘sexual harassment’, where the experiences that women
shared collectively in consciousness-raising meetings enabled the development of the
interpretive frameworks needed to identify, name, and diagnose the phenomenon. As
Miranda Fricker (2007: 148) points out, ‘the process of sharing these half–formed under-
standings awakened hitherto dormant resources for social meaning that brought clarity,
cognitive confidence, and increased communicative facility’.
The openness affirmed by the ideal of city life is important for the circulation of social
perspectives in a democratic society. In the ideal of city life, although groups are differ-
entiated, their borders are porous and there are open channels of communication and
exchange between them. Openness and exchange between different social groups
enable the ‘interaction among cultures and sub-publics in a larger sphere of common citi-
zenship’ (Bohman, 1996: 145). The circulation of social perspectives creates opportun-
ities for the uptake of different ideas and perspectives. Where different ideas circulate
in the wider public sphere, ‘different kinds of people pick them up and try them on’
(Mansbridge, 1999: 220). In pluralist societies, such discursive spaces are heterogeneous;
they are spaces in which we ‘should expect to encounter and hear from those who are
different, whose social perspectives, experience, and affiliations are different’ (Young,
2011: 119).
The democratic interpretation of the ideal of city life thus shows the epistemic value of
both discursive spaces where group members can share experiences and develop social
perspectives, and discursive spaces where such social perspectives can circulate and be
taken up by broader publics. Most of the time, we treat the ‘space’ in such discursive
spaces as a metaphor for the collective processes of opinion- and will-formation that
take place amongst citizens dispersed across physical space. But as we will see, the
spatial changes associated with gentrification can have real impacts on the democratic
character of a society.
First, though, it is worth considering an objection to the democratic interpretation of
the ideal of city life: that rather than being healthy, deliberation that occurs in socially
differentiated spaces is actually damaging for democratic societies. We know that
where group members share a tendency towards a particular belief or view, intra-group
deliberation can exacerbate this tendency. Cass Sunstein (2000) calls this phenomenon
6 European Journal of Political Theory 0(0)

group polarisation. Sunstein identifies a number of mechanisms through which group

polarisation takes place, including the ‘limited argument pool’ available to participants
and the desire of group members to be perceived favourably by others (Sunstein,
2000: 88–90). This latter mechanism is especially strong in contexts in which group
members share affective bonds or perceive themselves to be unified by race, class, or geo-
graphical proximity (Sunstein, 2000: 91–92). As such, we might be concerned that fos-
tering deliberation in socially differentiated spaces will only serve to create ‘echo
chambers’ in which existing tendencies are amplified.
It is too quick, however, to move from the tendency towards group polarisation to the
conclusion that deliberation in socially differentiated spaces is damaging rather than pro-
ductive for democratic societies, as Sunstein himself recognises. For one thing, views that
are ‘more extreme’ in the sense identified by Sunstein are not necessarily mistaken – they
may well turn out to be normatively justifiable or to contain true beliefs (Karpowitz,
Raphael, and Hammond, 2009: 581–582; Sunstein, 2000: 108). But perhaps more
importantly, deliberation amongst disadvantaged groups ‘promotes the development of
positions that would otherwise be invisible, silenced, or squelched in general debate’.
Broader processes of deliberation tend to be dominated by ‘high status’ group
members, whilst ‘low status’ group members tend to be excluded (Karpowitz,
Raphael, and Hammond, 2009: 582; Sunstein, 2000: 111–113). Deliberation in socially
differentiated spaces is an important way for otherwise disempowered groups to develop
their own social perspectives. Finally, deliberation that takes place in socially differen-
tiated spaces is part of a wider deliberative system that includes discursive spaces in
which the social perspectives are tested, refined, and moderated by exposure to compet-
ing views. So long as socially differentiated deliberation occurs within a broader delib-
erative system, it need not lead to the development of extreme views (Sunstein, 2000:
113–114).

Gentrification
The democratic interpretation of the ideal of city life developed above provides us with a
critical tool to diagnose two problems associated with gentrification: community disinte-
gration in enclaves and homogenisation in public spaces. But before examining each of
these problems in turn, it is worth examining the concept of gentrification a little more
closely.
In its familiar colloquial usage, gentrification refers to the process of spatial and demo-
graphic change that occurs within the city as less affluent areas are transformed into more
affluent areas. One succinct definition characterises it as ‘the production of urban space
for progressively more affluent users’ (Hackworth, 2002: 815). There are, however, some
important questions about precisely how the concept should be understood and its bound-
aries demarcated, which this definition leaves unanswered. Three aspects of the concept
of gentrification are particularly relevant here.
The first aspect relates to the particular patterns of change that the concept of gentri-
fication picks out. Gentrification is a dynamic process, which takes place over time and
space. But urban spaces inevitably develop and change over time, and there is some
Draper 7

disagreement about precisely which patterns of change count as gentrification. Influential

models of gentrification understand it as occurring in several distinct ‘stages’ (Lees,
Slater, and Wyly, 2013: 30–35). Early-stage gentrifiers may be those with high cultural
capital, such as artists and students who are attracted by the affordability of an area. Next,
come the professional classes, attracted by the area’s ‘bohemian’ culture. Then come the
speculators and real estate agents, seeking to capitalise on the reputation of the area and to
make it amenable to the tastes of the more affluent. This account is crude and schematic,
and actual processes of gentrification are a lot more ‘chaotic’ than this formula suggests
(Rose, 1984). For instance, the state as well as the market has often played an important
role in the processes of gentrification (Lees and Ley, 2008; Zuk et al., 2018). There are
also competing causal explanations of gentrification, and some see it as a symptom of a
broader set of pathologies of unequal capitalist urban development (Jenkins, 2022; Stein,
2019).4 For our purposes, however, this schematic characterisation of the dynamics of
gentrification will suffice.
The second aspect concerns how broadly the concept of gentrification should be
applied. Paradigmatic cases of gentrification are processes of change that occur within
historically disinvested residential neighbourhoods in the central city. But the term ‘gen-
trification’ is also sometimes applied to other spaces in the city, such as former industrial
zones and public spaces (Hamnet and Whitelegg, 2007; Zukin, 1995). Here, I adopt a
fairly broad view of gentrification, which includes processes of change that occur in
public spaces as well as residential neighbourhoods, for two reasons. The first is that it
captures the way that the concept of gentrification is conventionally used. It would be dif-
ficult to understand the gentrification of King’s Cross in London, for example, without
referring to the transformations that have taken place in its public spaces such as Coal
Drops Yard and Granary Square. The second is that, as we will see, changes in public
spaces are often bound up with more paradigmatic cases of gentrification, for example
because they make adjacent neighbourhoods more attractive to higher-income groups.
If we want our analysis of gentrification to inform our judgements about such cases,
then it is useful to adopt this broader view. Those who think that this overextends the
concept of gentrification can still go along with my argument, but they must take the
second part of my argument to apply not to gentrification itself, but to
gentrification-adjacent transformations in urban space that are also objectionable on
similar grounds. In my view, it is simpler to understand such transformations as part
of the process of gentrification, but nothing substantive in my argument hinges on this
conceptualisation of gentrification.
The third aspect concerns the role of displacement in gentrification. Gentrification is
commonly associated with displacement, but there is some disagreement about
whether it is a necessary part of the process. If displacement were conceptually tied to
gentrification in this way, then processes of urban change in low-income neighbourhoods
that occur without displacement would not be cases of ‘gentrification’ at all. Some have
argued that displacement is a necessary part of gentrification, either because they wish to
stress its centrality in the process (Slater, 2006), or because they wish to distinguish more
benign processes of ‘revitalisation’ from gentrification (Kennedy and Leonard, 2001).
Most, however, treat the question of whether or not displacement is associated with
8 European Journal of Political Theory 0(0)

gentrification as an empirical, rather than a conceptual, one. Here, I follow those who treat
the relationship between gentrification and displacement as an empirical question. To
stipulate that displacement occurs as a result of gentrification, and that any case that
does not involve displacement is not really a case of gentrification at all, would load
the dice against it.
Gentrification is a complicated and dynamic process that can unfold in different ways.
Despite this complexity, we can identify some common ways in which gentrification
tends to hinder democratic communication. But it is important to be clear about the
empirical and evaluative claims that I am making here. My empirical claim is that gen-
trification has a tendency to lead to community disintegration in enclaves and homogen-
isation in public spaces. By this, I mean that there are fairly reliable mechanisms that lead
from gentrification to community disintegration in enclaves and homogenisation in
public spaces. But this does not mean that those mechanisms will always be operative:
they may be defeated or pre-empted by other mechanisms or depend on background
social conditions that do not obtain in all cases (Elster, 2015: 23–39). Overall,
however, my suggestion is that just as the better football team tends to win, gentrification
tends to lead to community disintegration in enclaves and homogenisation in public
spaces.5 My evaluative claim is that insofar as gentrification does in fact have these out-
comes, this typically gives us a reason to object to it. This reason need not be conclusive,
but it should figure in the balance of reasons that inform our judgements about gentrifi-
cation. I return to the implications of these limitations below.

Community disintegration in enclaves

The first way in which gentrification can hinder democratic communication is through
community disintegration in enclaves. In gentrifying neighbourhoods, there are three
mechanisms – which I call displacement, exclusion, and disempowerment – that hinder
the production of social perspectives. Through these mechanisms, gentrification has a
tendency to disrupt the valuable epistemic function that enclaves play.
The idea of the enclave comes from the work of Peter Marcuse (1997: 242), who char-
acterised it as ‘a spatially concentrated area in which members of a particular population
group, self-defined by ethnicity or religion or otherwise, congregate as a means of enhan-
cing their economic, social, political and/or cultural development’. Marcuse was particu-
larly focused on recent immigrant communities, but the idea of the enclave has been
picked up more broadly. Edward Soja (2010: 55), for example, characterises enclaves
as spaces in which people from a similar background ‘live together for many different
reasons, from creating identity and community to eating preferred food and obtaining
other forms of nourishment and cultural sustenance to helping new arrivals to find jobs
and housing’. Enclaves, then, are spatially concentrated areas in which those who
occupy a similar social position live alongside one another and create local benefits
and goods which would otherwise be unavailable to them.
Marcuse and Soja both distinguish the enclave from the ghetto, which is a form of
spatial segregation ‘used to separate and to limit a particular involuntarily defined popu-
lation (usually by race) held to be, and treated as, inferior by the dominant society’
Draper 9

(Marcuse, 1997: 231; Soja, 2010: 55). But of course, enclaves and ghettoes are ideal
types, and the lines between them may be blurred in reality. Those forced together and
segregated from broader society may well form local networks of solidarity that create
and sustain important benefits for themselves. So although my focus here is on gentrifi-
cation in enclaves, ghettos may also display the relevant features of enclaves, and insofar
as they do, then my argument will apply to them as well – though clearly, my argument
here is not the only consideration at stake.6
Enclaves can play an important role in the production of social perspectives. By con-
gregating in spatially concentrated areas, those outside of the mainstream or majority can
form the critical mass needed in order to sustain important local institutions which
provide sites for the exchange of experiences and the production of social perspectives.
Tommie Shelby (2016: 61), discussing Black residential clustering in the United States,
notes that living in neighbourhoods with a Black critical mass can ‘enable black social
networks to flourish and black institutions to be sustained’. As he points out:

Where there is a greater residential concentration of blacks there will also be a greater array
of establishments and associations that cater to blacks’ preferences and interests …. Their
status as a numerical minority (13 percent of the U.S. population) makes it rational for
blacks to cluster in neighbourhoods so that they can benefit from local organizations that
cater to their distinctive tastes and preferences. (Shelby, 2016: 62)

Black barber shops in the United States, for example, have historically provided
spaces for the exchange of information, critical discussion of social issues, and commu-
nity mobilisation (Mills, 2013). Similarly, we might think of neighbourhoods such as
Chinatowns in cities such as Boston and New York, or the gay villages of Manchester
and San Francisco. In Boston’s Chinatown, Chinese immigrants and their descendants
living alongside one another and patronising the same businesses have identified
shared interests and experiences, and have formed local associations in order to represent
their perspectives. The Chinese Progressive Association, for example, fights for better
working conditions and against wage theft, issues which are particularly salient for immi-
grant workers (see https://cpsboston.org). Or consider the Castro District in
San Francisco, which became a prominent gay neighbourhood in the 1960s. The critical
mass of LGBTQ + people living in and frequenting the Castro district sustained institu-
tions such as gay bars and street fairs, and those coalescing around these institutions
shared experiences of police repression and social exclusion. These institutions provided
spaces for developing shared social perspectives and political organising; spatial cluster-
ing enabled the formation of a distinct political and social movement of gay liberation
(Castells, 1983: 138–170).
These examples illustrate how enclaves can become the spatial correlates of ‘sub-
publics’, ‘social enclaves’, and ‘subaltern counterpublics’. Walter Nicholls has examined
the ways in which place-based relations can encourage the formation of collective polit-
ical identities, arguing that they can ‘translate general sociological attributes (i.e. class,
race, gender, etc.) into meaningful political values, dispositions and interests’, and that
‘solidarity derived from place-based relations makes collective action possible’
10 European Journal of Political Theory 0(0)

(Nicholls, 2009: 80). It is not merely sharing the same space that makes this possible. It is
the ‘ties and solidarities built up in particular places over time’ which make the produc-
tion of shared social perspectives, and the forms of political action that stem from them,
possible (Nicholls, 2009: 82). Enclaves function as sites for the production of social per-
spectives because they enable those in similar social positions to congregate, share views
and experiences, and build up ties over time.
Gentrification can hinder the production of social perspectives in enclaves. I call this
process community disintegration (I adopt this term from Betancur, 2011: 399). The
democratic interpretation of the ideal of city life gives us good grounds for criticising pro-
cesses of gentrification that involve community disintegration: they disrupt the valuable
epistemic-democratic function that enclaves serve. There are three main mechanisms
through which community disintegration can occur.
The first mechanism is displacement. Displacement is the most straightforward way in
which community disintegration can take place: when existing residents are displaced
from a neighbourhood, for example because of rising rents, it becomes more difficult to main-
tain the local networks that foster the production of social perspectives. Similarly, when small
businesses and other local institutions are displaced, sites that facilitate the production of
social perspectives may disappear. Residential displacement has received significant attention
in the literature on gentrification, but the evidence actually presents a mixed picture of its
extent (Brown-Saracino, 2017). Some quantitative research has found little evidence of resi-
dential displacement in gentrifying neighbourhoods (e.g. Freeman and Braconi, 2004;
Gould-Ellen and O’Regan, 2011; McKinnish, Walsh, and White, 2010; Vigdor, 2002),
whereas others have criticised the methods used to generate these findings and have found
evidence that displacement is linked to gentrification (Atkinson, 2000; Chum, 2015;
Newman and Wyly, 2006). In general, quantitative research in this area is marred by a
lack of good data, the application of different spatial and temporal scales, and competing
methods for selecting gentrifying neighbourhoods and measuring displacement (Easton
et al., 2020). Much of the disagreement, however, is not about whether displacement ever
occurs as a result of gentrification, but is rather about its true scale. Where displacement
does occur, it can make it more difficult for those from a similar social position to come
together in ways that are conducive to the production of social perspectives.
The second mechanism through which community disintegration can occur is exclu-
sion. There is a normal cycle of population turnover in all neighbourhoods, and the evi-
dence suggests that higher-income newcomers disproportionately ‘succeed’ or ‘replace’
low-income residents in that cycle in gentrifying neighbourhoods – indeed, those who are
sceptical of the impact of gentrification on displacement often appeal to exclusion to
explain the changing the demographic composition of gentrifying neighbourhoods
(Freeman, 2005; Hamnett, 2003). Lower-income residents who would have otherwise
moved to the neighbourhood are excluded by rising housing costs, in a process that is
sometimes (somewhat unhelpfully) referred to as ‘exclusionary displacement’
(Marcuse, 1985). Exclusion is another way in which community disintegration can
occur, even in the absence of any direct displacement. Through exclusion, local social
networks that foster the production of social perspectives amongst those from similar
backgrounds are eroded over time, as the composition of neighbourhoods shifts.
Draper 11

The third mechanism through which community disintegration can occur is disem-
powerment. An influx of new residents with different values, priorities and social expec-
tations can result in a decline in the capacity of existing residents to form distinctive social
perspectives and mobilise around them. Qualitative research on gentrification suggests
that residents who do manage to stay in gentrifying neighbourhoods often feel alienated
by changing social norms, perceive their social networks as eroding, withdraw from
public participation and feel disempowered vis-à-vis incoming residents, especially in
contexts where race and ethnicity intersect with gentrification (Betancur, 2011; Hyra,
2015; Martin, 2007). This seems to be borne out by some quantitative work, which sug-
gests that voter turnout declines in gentrifying neighbourhoods and that gentrification
leads to lower levels of social trust and political mobilisation amongst Black residents
(Knotts and Haspel, 2006; Newman, Veliz, and Pearson-Merkowitz, 2016). This does
not mean that residents always view gentrification negatively – many residents report a
mix of both satisfaction and resentment (Freeman, 2006). But when residents feel disem-
powered as a result of the influx of new residents, then it will become more difficult for
them to form and mobilise around distinctive social perspectives.
Through these three mechanisms – displacement, exclusion, and disempowerment –
gentrification can hinder the production of social perspectives in enclaves. As the
makeup of a neighbourhood changes, either through displacement or exclusion, existing
networks and institutions can be eroded. The change in the makeup of a neighbourhood
can make it more difficult to sustain the institutions which provide sites for the develop-
ment of networks between members of particular social groups. Social norms may
change, making existing residents feel alienated from the sites of the community that
they have built over time. All of this can make the production of distinct social perspec-
tives more difficult. From the standpoint of the democratic ideal of city life, gentrification
is objectionable when its tendency to lead to community disintegration is realised and it
hinders the production of social perspectives in enclaves.
One objection to this argument is that even if gentrification does hinder valuable forms
of democratic communication in enclaves, it may not hinder democratic communication
overall. Proponents of gentrification sometimes suggest that the ‘social mix’ that it creates
in neighbourhoods will lead to greater social cohesion (Lees, 2008). Similarly, we might
think that there are epistemic benefits to be gained from the new opportunities for demo-
cratic communication that arise between those with different social perspectives in gen-
trifying neighbourhoods, which could outweigh any losses that result from community
disintegration. If this is right, then community disintegration in enclaves may only
hinder democratic communication locally, rather than overall.
It is true that gentrification will not always lead to an overall loss in terms of valuable
forms of democratic communication (a point to which I return below). But we do have
good reason to think that gentrification has a tendency to hinder valuable forms of demo-
cratic communication overall. For one thing, the opportunities for deliberation that occur
in enclaves are likely to be especially valuable from the standpoint of the deliberative
system. Marginalised social groups typically have their voices excluded from the
public sphere, which means that opportunities for the production of social perspectives
in enclaves are particularly valuable. For another thing, the dynamics of gentrification
12 European Journal of Political Theory 0(0)

are unlikely to create genuine opportunities for inter-group democratic communication

that are of comparable epistemic value. The evidence on gentrification and social
mixing suggests that although gentrifiers often profess enthusiasm for the diversity of
the neighbourhoods in which they live, they tend to form social networks with those
of the same class (Kohn, 2016: 108; Lees, 2008). And when there is communication
between members of different social groups in gentrifying neighbourhoods, high-status
incomers tend to wield greater social power, and so it is their perspectives that are typic-
ally dominant (Freeman, 2006: 125–156; Hyra, 2015). This makes it unlikely that gentri-
fication will tend to be beneficial in terms of its effects on democratic communication.
Another objection to this argument is that it proves too much. I have focused here on
community disintegration amongst marginalised social groups whose perspectives are
underrepresented in the broader public sphere. But the enclaves that are affected by com-
munity disintegration need not consist only of such groups; they might sometimes consist
of groups whose shared social perspectives are not underrepresented in the public sphere,
or whose perspectives are highly discriminatory or intolerant. Does the argument that I
have made also give us reason to object to processes of community disintegration that
occur amongst the privileged – for example when a highly exclusive community of the
rich is opened up by the expansion of affordable housing? Does it condemn processes
of community disintegration that occur amongst the intolerant – for example when
Black residents move into a white enclave inhabited by those who harbour racist views?
These conclusions do not follow if we recognise that there is an asymmetry – which
can be defended in democratic terms – between communities whose social perspectives
are marginalised in the broader public sphere on the one hand, and those whose social
perspectives are either already well-represented in the public sphere or which are
highly discriminatory or intolerant on the other. The main reason that we have to
value the production of social perspectives in enclaves is that they play an important con-
testatory role in relation to the social perspectives that already dominate the public sphere.
When those whose social perspectives already have an outsized influence in the public
sphere – such as the perspectives of the affluent – are threatened by community disinte-
gration, we have much less reason to be concerned. After all, the dominance of their per-
spectives typically hinders the process of democratic inquiry that a robust and pluralist
public sphere should aim to facilitate. By contrast, when social perspectives that are mar-
ginalised within the public sphere are threatened by community disintegration, this has an
important bearing on the quality of democratic communication in the broader public
sphere.
This explains the why, from a democratic point of view, we should not be concerned
with community disintegration as it pertains to those whose perspectives are already well-
represented in the public sphere, such as the affluent. But it does not explain why we
should not be concerned with community disintegration amongst those who hold
highly discriminatory or intolerant views. After all, their perspectives may well be mar-
ginal within the public sphere – perhaps even because they are intolerant or
discriminatory.
Here, two possible responses are available. The first response accepts that we have
good democratic reasons to regret the disappearance of such enclaves but suggests that
Draper 13

those reasons are outweighed by non-democratic reasons. Perhaps, for example, there is a
Millian argument to be made that the public airing of those discriminatory or intolerant
views serves as a check against dominant views becoming ‘dead dogma’ in the public
sphere (Mill, 2015: 35), but that this reason is outweighed by the very real harm that
is felt as a result of the expression of those views. This would allow us to say that we
should not regret the disappearance of such enclaves all-things-considered. But it does
come at an important cost: it suggests that we have at least one reason to regret the dis-
appearance of enclaves of the intolerant, which is that such enclaves do serve an import-
ant democratic function. Many, I suspect, will find this implication implausible.
The second response, however, suggests that we do not have good democratic reasons
to regret the disappearance of enclaves of the intolerant in the first place. On a broad prag-
matist picture, democratic inquiry is a tool that enables citizens to solve collective pro-
blems through the use of social intelligence (Anderson, 2006). But this is entirely
consistent with their being some perspectives – such as discriminatory and intolerant per-
spectives – that we have good reason to reject. To say that it would be democratically
valuable to develop or preserve discriminatory and intolerant perspectives misconstrues
the cumulative and progressive character of democratic inquiry. As Jeremy Waldron
(2012: 195) puts it in a related discussion of hate speech: ‘It would be fatuous to
suggest that it is the importance of our continuing engagement in a debate of this kind
that requires us to endure the ugly invective of racial defamation in the marketplace of
ideas. In fact, the fundamental debate about race is over – won; finished’. Of course,
this does not mean that the problem of racism has been solved – clearly, it has not –
but neither do we need to preserve discriminatory or intolerant views in order to maintain
a healthy collective practice of democratic inquiry.
In fact, the development and preservation of such perspectives can hinder democratic
inquiry. Genuinely collective democratic inquiry requires a robust and pluralist public
sphere in which contributions can be made and evaluated by those from a variety of
social perspectives (Anderson, 2006: 15). It presupposes that those from different
social backgrounds should be treated as equal participants. Views that deny the equal
status of those from a particular social group are inconsistent with this conception of
democratic inquiry. When they have significant influence in the public sphere, they
can block the contributions of those from other social groups – for example, through
the propagation of norms that discount their perspectives or that have a ‘silencing’
effect on them (Dotson, 2011; Fricker, 2007; McGowan, 2019). They can thus undermine
the openness to competing perspectives that are important for collective democratic
inquiry.
How does this bear on the moral evaluation of gentrification? Gentrification typically
affects enclaves made up mostly of those whose social perspectives are already margin-
alised in the public sphere. Indeed, their marginal status helps to explain why it is those
groups that are affected by gentrification in the first place. In general, this means that we
should expect gentrification to hinder democratic communication through community
disintegration in enclaves: it will tend to affect those whose social perspectives occupy
a marginal position in the broader public sphere. There may be some atypical cases in
which gentrification involves community disintegration, but where this is not something
14 European Journal of Political Theory 0(0)

we should regret from a democratic point of view – where gentrification affects relatively
privileged communities or breaks up enclaves that harbour discriminatory or intolerant
social perspectives. But in general, we should expect that gentrification will tend to
hinder democratic communication through the mechanism of community disintegration.

Homogenisation in public spaces

A second way in which gentrification can affect the democratic character of a society is
through the homogenisation of public spaces. Where enclaves serve the function of enab-
ling the production of distinct social perspectives, public spaces serve the function of
allowing different social perspectives to circulate within a broader society. In enclaves,
a certain degree of homogeneity provides social groups with sites in which they can
share experiences and develop common interpretive frameworks. In public spaces, by
contrast, homogeneity operates so as to exclude some voices, most often the voices of
the disadvantaged, from the broader public sphere. The gentrification of public spaces
homogenises public spaces in ways that promote the perspectives of the more affluent
at the expense of the marginalised.
There are myriad kinds of public spaces within cities: parks, town squares, plazas,
mass transit systems, downtown shopping streets, spaces for commemorative public
art, large boulevards and avenues, and so on. Though each of these spaces may
perform different specific functions, they are all ‘public’ spaces in the sense of publicity
affirmed by the ideal of city life. They are the kind of spaces which are (at least ideally)
openly accessible to all, and in which we should expect to encounter those with different
social perspectives (Young, 2011: 119; see also Anderson, 1993: 158–163). These spaces
are the physical counterparts of the broader public sphere in which ideas and social per-
spectives, often developed in enclaves, circulate more broadly. They are where social per-
spectives are contested and revised in the face of countervailing views, where they are
picked up, modified, and appropriated by others, and where they gather momentum
and enter into the broader process of public opinion-formation.
To see the importance of physical public spaces, we can look to John Parkinson’s
(2012) dramaturgical understanding of such public spaces as sites of ‘democratic per-
formance’. Parkinson argues that physical public spaces can act as ‘stages’, where differ-
ent democratic roles can be performed. Such public performances can be more or less
self-conscious and direct. At one end of the spectrum, disruptive forms of public
protest are performances which actively capture the attention of their audiences, drawing
their attention to new perspectives and ideas. On the other, merely ‘encountering’ others
living different forms of life in public can play an important role in broadening our awareness
and understanding of different social perspectives (McTernan, unpublished). It is through such
public spaces that social perspectives can circulate throughout broader society, and as such they
play a crucial role in a functioning democracy.
Consider first the role of spaces used for public protest, such as town squares and
plazas. As Parkinson points out, such spaces are centrally important for ‘members of
the demos itself to make public claims directly’. The particular spaces available to
those making public claims ‘has an effect on the kinds of impacts they can have on
Draper 15

particular audiences’. For example, public spaces outside of legislatures and other build-
ings associated with the formal public sphere can be strategically useful in ‘directly con-
fronting the powerful in the places where they work’ and in ‘dignifying one’s claims by
linking them visually with the symbols of the state’ (Parkinson, 2012: 146–160). Overt
political claims-making in public spaces such as these are one way in which different
social perspectives circulate, and the particular characteristics of such spaces may
enable or impede this process of circulation.
Social perspectives may also circulate through less direct and overtly political uses of
public space. Consider public spaces such as parks and mass transit systems. As
Parkinson (2012: 181) points out, parks (and mass transit systems) are generally governed
by a norm of ‘public disattendability’ or ‘civil inattention’ (Goffman, 1963: 83–88) which
‘takes primacy over engagement’. Although we expect to encounter those from different
social groups in such spaces, we do not expect active engagement with them. But the
presence of those from different social groups, engaging in different practices and
using public spaces in different ways, can invite the consideration of different social per-
spectives. Parkinson (2012: 184) argues that a lack of visibility can ‘reinforce a limited
concept of who counts as a member of the demos, and thus who gets taken seriously’.
Alexander Reichl (2016: 908) that heterogeneous public spaces matter not only as ‘spaces of
representation’, but also because of their role in ‘nudging issues and conflicts into the realm
of democratic politics’. For example, Reichl (2016: 908–909) argues that the presence of the
homeless in public space – rather than their being hidden from public view – can keep the
issue of homelessness on the political agenda. Even if encounters in public spaces such as
parks and mass transit systems do not promote direct engagement with competing social per-
spectives, diversity in such spaces can still promote the circulation of social perspectives in
these more everyday ways.
Gentrification can undermine this function of public spaces by rendering them more
homogenous. We tend to think of gentrification as exclusively concerning the transformation
of neighbourhoods, as examined above, but changes in public spaces can themselves be part
of the process of gentrification. Indeed, in what has been called the ‘third wave’ of gentrifica-
tion, municipal authorities are increasingly making active efforts to attract higher-income resi-
dents in order to increase their tax bases, partly by redeveloping public spaces within cities
(Sassen, 2001: 256–262; Smith and Hackworth, 2011).
There are two main mechanisms through which the gentrification of public space can
lead to homogenisation. The first is the forms of design that are used within gentrified
public spaces. The gentrification of public spaces involves making those spaces more
attractive to more affluent users, and this often involves using forms of design that dis-
courage the presence of other social groups.
A good example of homogenising design can be found in Reichl’s study of the High
Line in New York, which found that the High Line is a ‘troubling outlier among compar-
able Manhattan parks for the lack of visible racial/ethnic diversity among visitors’ and
that ‘lack of diversity cannot be explained by differences in neighbourhood composition
or by available tourism data’ (Reichl, 2016: 917). Instead, he points out how aspects of
the park’s design may serve to deter visitors from some social groups. For example, the
park’s recreation of ‘the aura of industrial decay’ is likely to be more attractive to those
16 European Journal of Political Theory 0(0)

who have benefitted from the post-industrial economy than those who have suffered from
industrial decline. The High Line is elevated above street level and has few entrances, so
that ‘uninformed passersby might be discouraged from venturing up into unknown turf’.
The ‘daunting list of park rules’ and linear form means that strolling is the main activity
and other uses of the space are discouraged. The High Line’s design caters to the tastes
and preferences of more affluent users, and in doing so, it homogenises an ostensibly
public space. It provides ‘little opportunity for unmediated encounters among people
from diverse backgrounds’ and so discourages people from encountering different
social perspectives. As Reichl points out, this is in stark contrast to more heterogeneous
public parks like Central Park, where visitors ‘picnic, sunbathe, play and listen to music,
play ball, throw Frisbees, swim, skate, ride bikes, fish, climb rocks, watch birds, walk
dogs, play in playgrounds, and more’ (Reichl, 2016: 907–920).
The High Line is one good example of the way in which the design of public space in
processes of gentrification can be homogenising, but there are numerous other ways in
which the design of public space can be a homogenising force – for example through
‘hostile architecture’ designed to exclude particular groups (homeless people, skateboar-
ders, loiterers, and so on), forms of public commemorations which alienate or degrade
some social groups, and aspects of the built and social environment that make public
spaces inaccessible to disabled persons. When public spaces are designed to attract
more affluent users, we have reason to be concerned that the forms of design that are
employed will homogenise those spaces, and thus undermine their democratic function
as a site for the exchange of social perspectives.
The second mechanism is the forms of control exercised in gentrified public spaces.
Behaviour in gentrified public spaces is often controlled in ways that enforce the tastes
and preferences of more affluent users, including by excluding the poor and marginalised.
Sometimes, this is done by police forces, who use their powers to target those whose pres-
ence in public space is deemed unwelcome, such as the homeless (Kennelly and Watt,
2011), or to prevent behaviour that is deemed unbecoming, such as the public consump-
tion of alcohol (Pennay, Menton, and Savic, 2014). But gentrified public spaces are also
increasingly controlled by private authorities who can exclude certain forms of behav-
iour, often with little oversight. As part of their effort to redevelop urban public
spaces, city governments increasingly enter into partnerships with private developers,
who are provided with incentives to create and manage public spaces (Smith and
Hackworth, 2011). This allows cities to attract more affluent residents without bearing
the costs of creating and maintaining public spaces.
The privatisation of public space is not a new phenomenon and has itself been subject
to important critiques (Kohn, 2004). But in the context of gentrification, developers have
the incentive to retain control over publicly accessible spaces in order to make them
amenable to the tastes of the higher-income users that they seek to attract. The powers
that private management bodies have to control behaviour within and exclude particular
people from spaces that ostensibly serve public purposes are often used to control the
sorts of activities that make public spaces useful as sites of democratic performance.
For example, when Occupy London attempted to set up an encampment in Canary
Wharf, which would have had obvious symbolic significance given the aims of the
Draper 17

movement, the Canary Wharf Group’s private ownership of the land meant that it was
straightforward for it to ban protesters from their property. As Kohn points out, where
the state is the ‘landlord’ of such public spaces, it can be held to account for its
actions and is limited by legal provisions for the exercise of free speech (Kohn, 2013:
107). Private owners of public space do not face the same limitations. Restrictions on dra-
matic protests such as occupations are also not the only way in which private owners of
public spaces exercise control: they may also use their powers to prohibit forms of pol-
itical activity such as handing out leaflets, picketing, and even wearing t-shirts with pol-
itical slogans (Kohn, 2004: 1–6).
Gentrification can play an important role in homogenising public spaces, through the
mechanisms of exclusion by design and exclusion by control. In doing so, it makes it
more difficult for the social perspectives of the marginalised to enter and circulate
within the broader public sphere. The democratic interpretation of the ideal of city life,
which identifies the importance of public spaces in which social perspectives can circu-
late, can help us to diagnose this problem with gentrification.

Conclusion
This article has argued that gentrification can undermine the background conditions of social
differentiation that enable valuable forms of democratic communication. There are two princi-
pal ways in which gentrification can undermine democratic communication: first, community
disintegration in enclaves can make it more difficult for marginalised social groups to produce
distinctive social perspectives; second, homogenisation in public spaces can make it more dif-
ficult for the social perspectives of the marginalised to circulate in the broader public sphere. By
way of conclusion, it is worth reflecting briefly on the possible implications, as well as the lim-
itations, of the argument that I have set out here.
The considerations that I have set out here could be used as building blocks within
broader arguments about the justifiability of particular policies designed to stop or
slow the processes of gentrification. In particular, policies might be targeted to mitigate
the effects of the particular mechanisms that I have identified. For example, policies of rent
subsidisation or stabilisation might be justified as an anti-displacement measure. Expansions
in the provision of affordable housing or inclusionary zoning policies might be justified as anti-
exclusion measures. Special protections might be put in place for local community institutions
that provide sites for the formation of social perspectives, as an anti-disempowerment measure.
Requirements for stakeholder participation in the development of public spaces and limits on
the powers of those who manage privately-owned public spaces might be justified as anti-
homogenisation measures. Obviously, much more would need to be said in relation to each
of these policies. The point, however, is that these problems related to gentrification that I
have identified may have important upshots for the justifiability of particular policies.
We should not be too quick to jump directly from the arguments made here to these
implications, however. This is because there are two important limits to the arguments
that I have made. The first limit is that their application to the messy and complex real-
world dynamics of gentrification will not always be straightforward. For one thing, I have
only argued that gentrification has a tendency to undermine the production and circulation
18 European Journal of Political Theory 0(0)

of social perspectives, not that it will always do so. This means that our judgements about
any particular case of gentrification will need to involve an assessment of whether the
general tendency that it has to hinder the production and circulation of social perspectives
is realised in that particular case.
The second limit to the reach of the argument developed here is that it does not identify all of
the morally relevant features of gentrification. As was noted in the introduction, the most sig-
nificant focus in the literature on normative political theory thus far has been on the injustice of
residential displacement, which I have not discussed here, except insofar as it bears on commu-
nity disintegration. I make no claim that the problems associated with gentrification identified
here capture all, or even the most important, aspects of it. Nor have I shown that there cannot be
countervailing reasons that weigh in favour of processes of gentrification, which may even out-
weigh the considerations adduced here. After all, gentrification is a process of development that
may well bring important benefits to the areas that it transforms – though, of course, one objec-
tion to gentrification is that such benefits are distributed unevenly.
All of this is to say that what I have done here is to articulate one, underappreciated
reason to be concerned about processes of gentrification, rather than providing an
all-things-considered judgement against it. To be sure, I do take the concern that I have articu-
lated to be an important one. Insofar as we value the robust pluralism of a functioning demo-
cratic society, then this concern should have considerable bearing on our broader judgements of
policies concerning gentrification. The value of articulating this concern is that it provides us
with a more fine-grained way of understanding the moral stakes of gentrification. Whatever
our ultimate judgement on the normative status of policies that foster or permit processes of
gentrification, a thorough understanding of its effects on the background conditions of a demo-
cratic society enables us to see the trade-offs more clearly.

Acknowledgements
I owe special thanks to Afsoun Afsahi, Rufaida Al Hashmi, Faye Bird, Shuk Ying Chan, David
Jenkins, Rob Jubb, Maxime Lepoutre, Alex McLaughlin, David Miller, Chigi Patel, and
Hallvard Sandven for helpful comments on draft versions of this article. This article was also pre-
sented at the Political Theory Colloquium at Normative Orders Research Centre, Goethe
Universität Frankfurt am Main; the Nuffield Political Theory Workshop at the University of
Oxford; the OWIPT seminar at the University of Oxford; and the ‘Housing in Crisis’ panel at
the MANCEPT Workshops, University of Manchester. I would like to thank the participants for
their helpful comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank the reviewers for helpful com-
ments and suggestions, and to the editors for helpful guidance.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/
or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Draper 19

ORCID iD
Jamie Draper https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0177-3382

Notes
1. For two recent exceptions, see Wells (2022) and Zimmer (2022). Wells and Zimmer focus on the
relationship between gentrification and self-respect and the racialised dynamics of gentrification,
respectively. Their contributions, like my own, focus on the way that gentrification transforms
the shared social environments that city-dwellers inhabit. But neither examines the implications
of such transformations for everyday democratic communication, which is my central focus
here.
2. One might make a more direct argument, parallel to the argument I make below, that gentrifi-
cation is objectionable because it undermines these relationships of group affinity. Such an argu-
ment would certainly be compatible with the democratic argument that I make here. But I take
the democratic argument that I make here to have a broader appeal, since it does not require us to
endorse the more controversial premise that social group identities are valuable in themselves,
only the more minimal premise they can be instrumentally valuable for democratic communica-
tion. I thank an anonymous review for pointing this out.
3. For example, Young argues that segregation ‘endangers democracy’ by discouraging public
encounters, impeding political communication, and stopping the advantaged from seeing them-
selves forming part of the same public as their disadvantaged neighbours (Young, 2002: 213).
4. For accounts that stress the structural-economic and cultural-demographic aspects, see Smith
(1996) and Ley (1996) respectively. For further discussion, see Zukin (1987).
5. I borrow this idea of a ‘tendency’ (and this example) from Moellendorf (2017: 68).
6. This means that my argument may well have implications – which I cannot fully explore here –
for approaches to addressing racial injustice that require us to disrupt patterns of spatial cluster-
ing in ghettos, rather than merely to remove the barriers that enforce such patterns
(e.g. Anderson, 2010).

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