Special issue article: Transnational gentrification

Urban Studies
2020, Vol. 57(15) 3135–3150
Ó Urban Studies Journal Limited 2019
Unpacking commercial gentrification Article reuse guidelines:
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in central Paris DOI: 10.1177/0042098019865893
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Eve Bantman-Masum
Department of English Studies, University of Toulouse 2, France

Abstract
This article documents the complex course of commercial upgrading in four neighbourhoods of
central Paris, a slow process in which transnational flows and state intervention play an outsized
role. The data was collected at 20 independent coffee shops located in the West 11th district and
supplemented by long-term observation of the business mix evolution. The article focuses on the
impact of geographic mobility – including migration and residential tourism – in the rapid develop-
ment of upmarket alternatives to French cafes and bistros. It goes on to explain how political
intervention/deregulation facilitated capital investment in commercial real estate. It then discusses
the culturally informed perceptions that helped define desirable forms of consumption for
France. The article demonstrates the extent to which cross-border flows influenced commercial
gentrification, and calls for further research into the complex interplay of local, transnational, pri-
vate and public forces driving urban change.

Keywords
coffee shops, commercial upgrading, entrepreneurs, France, gentrification, Paris, real estate valua-
tion, state-led revitalisation, transnational

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Received August 2018; accepted June 2019

Corresponding author:
Eve Bantman-Masum, Department of English Studies,
University of Toulouse 2, Allées Machado, Toulouse 31058,
France.
Email: bantman.eve@gmail.com
3136 Urban Studies 57(15)

Introduction (SEMAEST, 2018). From the south, which

borders a well-established hypergentrified
Starting in 2010, independent coffee shops
consumption area (the Marais), to the
became ubiquitous features of central Paris
socially-mixed north (Lower Belleville),
streets, luring clients away from iconic chair-
West 11th stores were taken over by new,
lined cafes and brasseries.1 Independent cof-
more international players. Four separate
fee shops first developed in the United
areas are discussed in this study and are fea-
States, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and
tured in the map in Figure 1: Lower
the United Kingdom (hereafter referred to
Belleville, Oberkampf, the Chinese wholesale
as Anglo countries), before migrants and
neighbourhood and the streets bordering the
binationals imported the concept into
Marais.
France in the early 2000s (Brones and
Researchers have described coffee shops
Hargrove, 2015). The country already had a
as a core element of the business mix of revi-
long history of coffee consumption and
talised shopping streets: Art galleries,
socialisation in dedicated spaces, yet the new
Boutiques and Coffee shops – hereafter
business surprisingly caught on. In Paris
referred to as ABCs (Zukin et al., 2016: 13).
alone, over 200 coffee shops2 opened
Their owners have been likened to pioneers
between 2013 and 2019, beginning in the
transforming ethnic neighbourhoods into
10th district, spreading to the nearby Marais
sanitised, cosmopolitan spaces of consump-
(3rd and 4th districts), before reaching the
tion – Zukin’s ‘pacification by cappuccino’
adjoining 11th district.
(cited in Rose et al., 2013: 13). A study on
The present research situates this recent
Tehran, Glasgow and Amsterdam described
addition to the retail landscape within the
coffee bars as signs of gentrification where
wider process of neighbourhood change in
the new emerging middle classes can show
the western part of the vast 11th district
off their lifestyles and social status (Shaker
(hereafter West 11th). Formerly an ethnic
Ardekani and Rath, 2017: 7). Another scho-
and working-class enclave, it first started to
lar pointed to hipsters who are acting as
gentrify in the late 1970s (Fleury, 2003: 247–
‘agents of neoliberalism, colonizing the inner
248). Now a diverse, liberal district, it
city’ (Hubbard, 2016: 3.5).3
emerged as a new consumption area in the
Here, I argue that this recent transforma-
1980s (Van Criekingen and Fleury, 2006)
tion of the Paris business mix is due not to
when one of its neighbourhoods –
neoliberal hipsters, but rather to the incon-
Oberkampf – became home to dozens of
spicuous but pervasive role of small, interna-
trend-setting venues and independent busi-
tionally mobile entrepreneurs. The influence
nesses. However, the available space for gen-
of relatively privileged migrants (Croucher,
trification was limited and the streets near
2009) on retail-led gentrification has rarely
Oberkampf actually experienced an alto-
been discussed in the academic literature,
gether different transformation when hun-
but my findings suggest that the current
dreds of brick-and-mortar stores were
wave of upgrading in small business is an
converted into textile wholesale units by
expression of transnationalism, defined by
Chinese migrants at the turn of the 1990s
Glick Schiller, Basch and Szanton Blanc
(Chuang, 2013). By the mid-2010s, the
(1995: 48) as ‘the processes by which immi-
Chinese wholesalers had been displaced by a
grants build social fields that link together
public–private programme led by the Paris
their country of origin and their country of
city government that called in a young, crea-
settlement’. Coffee shop development in
tive crowd to help revitalise the area
Paris was initiated by specific transmigrants
Bantman-Masum
Figure 1. Coffee shops in the West 11th district, Paris, 2018.
Source: Map created by Violaine Jurie.
who applied culturally informed perceptions
of consumption and gentrification, and
forged new business hybrids. The Paris cof-
fee shops are perfect examples of hybridisa-
tion – a complex interplay of several
processes of cultural change whereby global
flows are appropriated, resisted, negotiated
and adapted by agents endowed with
unequal power and resources
(Stockhammer, 2012: 28–30).
Equally importantly, the state is the other
key factor in retail gentrification. Indeed,
the abundant research on gentrification in
France systematically points to the role of
3137
state agencies and municipal authorities,
insisting on the scale and scope of govern-
ment intervention in France compared with
Canada and England (Rose et al., 2013). In
Paris, the municipal agenda has combined
planned investment in amenities (since the
1980s) with the promotion of greater diver-
sity and/or social mix (since 2001). City
authorities tend to first prophesy future gen-
trification and then implement change to the
benefit of their middle-class allies (Bacqué
and Fijalkow, 2006). All authors concur on
the role of the French state in the displace-
ment of ethnic and working-class
3138
communities in the 11th district (Chuang,
2013; Clerval, 2013; Fijalkow and Oberti,
2001; Fleury, 2003). The consensus on gov-
ernment intervention is all the more remark-
able since gentrification scholars tend to be
divided between those who apply classic the-
ory – including David Ley and Neil Smith –
and others who stress alternative paths to
neighbourhood change (Authier, 2018). In
this vein, recent French scholarship has tried
to explain the growth of gentrification as
well as its failure. Recent comparative stud-
ies have disentangled the complex interplay
of agents and processes shaping urban trans-
formations, and have insisted on local pat-
terns. Chabrol et al. (2016) examined 10
European cities including Paris, London,
Sheffield, Barcelona and Lisbon, and found
non-linear processes of regeneration, with
upgrading driven by residents rather than
displacement and eviction.
The role of gentrifiers has proven very
contentious in France where academia ini-
tially reasoned in Marxist/classist terms, dis-
cussing the emergence of novel urban
lifestyles and the parallel rise of a new mid-
dle class in the 1970s. After 2000, the grow-
ing proportion of middle-class homeowners
living in socially mixed neighbourhoods
became the focus of a national conversation
that condemned them and ignored how gen-
trification was largely driven by the state,
constructors and bankers (Authier et al.,
2018). Still, French scholarship tends to por-
tray gentrifiers as middle-class urbanites of
average means who are relocating to ethni-
cally and socially mixed peripheries because
they can no longer afford central locations
(Collet, 2008). Similarities with nearby
Belgium regarding the role of this displaced
middle class in the emergence of new trendy
peripheries have repeatedly been noted
(Chabrol et al., 2014; Fleury, 2003; Van
Urban Studies 57(15)
Criekingen and Fleury, 2006; Van Criekingen,
2008).
Though less substantial, the literature on
retail-led gentrification also views indepen-
dent shopkeepers as middle-class, liberal
entrepreneurs (Leblanc, 2017). Based on
these paradigms, commercial upgrading is
largely seen as the reinvestment in peripheral
locations that occurs when independent
businesses are chased out of exclusive central
hubs. The local activism of middle-class
entrepreneurs is understood as a strategy to
compensate for negative social and geo-
graphic mobility, rather than a desire to
evict the poor (Leblanc, 2017; Maltais, 2016;
Mermet, 2014). Regarding displacement in
retail, recent studies have shown that hyper-
gentrification in central Paris is related to
speculation on outlet value to the benefit of
global brands (Mermet, 2014). However,
there is also evidence for the resilience of
small ethnic businesses in gentrifying areas
that border the 11th (Chabrol, 2014).
The present research therefore fills a gap
in the existing literature on gentrification in
Paris by showing how transnational flows
combine with municipal intervention and
state deregulation to deliver significant retail
change. Information on the business mix
evolution comes from long-term observation
from the mid-1990s onwards. Building on
prior canvassing and exploratory research
conducted in 2015 (Bantman-Masum, 2018),
qualitative data was collected at 20 indepen-
dent coffee shops between June 2016 and
January 2019 (see Figure 1; the numbers 1
to 20 refer to specific businesses discussed in
the article). All coffee shops were visited on
several occasions for at least two hours of
direct observation, informal conversations
with staff and clients and at least one for-
mal, semi-directive interview centring on
professional and geographic mobility, trans-
nationalism, gentrification, business values
Bantman-Masum
and local embeddedness.4 Staff and owners
easily agreed to participate, partly because
they viewed interviews as a form of promo-
tion, partly because they were eager to trade
recent information on other coffee shops
and market evolution and partly because I
introduced myself as both a scholar and an
insider with professional experience in run-
ning a restaurant in West 11th (near coffee
shop number 5). This expertise proved
instrumental in creating trust. Owners and
managers shared their contacts and volun-
teered sensitive business information such as
precise figures on wages, rents and invest-
ment, and even their experiences of failure.
The method became increasingly partici-
patory5 over time, after I trained as a bar-
ista. Informants were asked to react to the
preliminary findings, which helped clarify
their views on negative–positive value terms
such as gentrification, class, wealth, eviction,
diversity, etc. Their answers are discussed
below as culturally informed perceptions of
gentrification.6 The rest of the article
explores the crucial importance of geo-
graphic mobility and the role of the
state in driving transnational commercial
upgrading.
Mobile entrepreneurs in a
transnational city
Paris coffee shops became trendy in a global
age in which the macro circulation of people,
goods and ideas translated into changes at a
micro level. When a Franco-British architect
opened his first coffee shop (5), residents and
shop-owners looked quizzically at the
English speakers, female clients lined up out-
side his miniature venue. Why the sudden
rush for overpriced eggs, pancakes and cof-
fee? Unbeknownst to the onlookers, the
newly opened coffee shop occupied a specific
market niche: a business designed to fund the
mobility of its Global North migrant owner,
employing and serving a majority of co-
3139
nationals, networking online with native
English speakers (Bantman-Masum, 2018).
Like 5, other early Paris coffee shops were
the brainchildren of internationally mobile
entrepreneurs who imported upmarket speci-
ality coffee into France (Brones and
Hargrove, 2015). The majority of coffee shop
founders in West 11th were foreigners, born
in Ireland (13), England (13), Canada (19),
Colombia (1, 11), Singapore (9), Slovakia (8)
and the Philippines (18). Others are
binationals – Franco-Panamanian (16) or
Franco-British (5 and 10, 12). Some were for-
mer migrants to Great Britain (17, 20), the
United States (3, 4, 9) and Germany (2, 15).
The French founders of 7 and 17 were con-
spicuously less international, with no experi-
ence of living outside France.7 These
newcomers overwhelmingly introduced them-
selves as geographically mobile professionals
with extensive travel experience who first dis-
covered coffee shops abroad before opening
their own in Paris. Reflecting on how the cof-
fee shop model had reached Paris, an influen-
tial blogger and professional adviser (and
former barista at 5) clarified that specialty
coffee had been ‘imported through mobility’,
based on her own experience as a migrant liv-
ing in Australia for three years (see below).
Once a sign of social distinction, experi-
ence abroad recently became a relatively
common experience for young workers.
Opportunities for temporary migration were
greatly expanded under governments that
promoted free circulation for students and
young adults: the Schengen Agreement, the
Erasmus Programme and the Working
Holiday Visa opened the doors to EU coun-
tries as well as Australia, New Zealand and
Canada. Owners and staff clearly took
advantage of these opportunities. All but
two of them were under 40 when this
research was conducted. They came of age
in a transnational, mobile time. This age
group represented a significant 34.6% of the
Paris region population in 2012 (DRJSCS,
3140
2016: 4). Since 15–44 year olds accounted
for 47.3% of the Paris population in the
most recent survey available (INSEE,
2019),8 coffee shop development can be said
to reflect the urban imprint of a geographi-
cally mobile generation of well-travelled,
urban dwellers.
Interestingly, coffee shop development
also paralleled the rise of home sharing in
central Paris. The city boasts the highest
number of listings on Airbnb (Gurran and
Phibbs, 2017). Inside Airbnb (an indepen-
dent source of information on the platform)
reported 59,881 listed properties in
December 2018, 86.8% of which were entire
homes (Inside Airbnb, n.d.). Their map
showed that the 11th district offered thou-
sands such options to visitors (5,996, 88.8%
of which entire homes). During interviews,
staff systematically listed foreigners as a key
group of clients, often specifying that they
meant expats, tourists and, above all,
Airbnb guests. Home sharing greatly
increased the pool of potential clients for
coffee shops. As in other tourist destina-
tions, a significant proportion of the Paris
housing stock was converted into temporary
accommodation. When tourists displaced
residents, the business mix was tipped in
favour of affluent mobile crowds (Cocola-
Gant and Lopez-Gay, 2020; Gurran and
Phibbs, 2017). The first coffee shops capita-
lised on this pervasive presence of foreign
visitors, until the terror attacks of 2015
caused a steep, though temporary, slump in
international tourism. The attacks took
place in West 11th and translated into a
sharp loss of business for 3, on rue Saint-
Sébastien, only a few steps away from the
Charlie Hebdo headquarters and the
Bataclan concert hall. The French owner of
this now-closed coffee shop reported a 70%
drop in business; others experienced it too,
in lesser proportions. Two years later, the
tourists finally returned, fuelling demand for
Urban Studies 57(15)
upmarket coffee shops. Other coffee shops
opened near 3, leading the former Brooklyn
restaurant owner to sell and relocate full
time to upstate New York.
But the recent process of gentrification on
rue Saint-Sébastien must also be viewed
from a longer historical perspective. In Paris,
commercial upgrading took the form of an
outbound, long-term, steady process of capi-
tal reinvestment that started in the centre
before reaching the peripheral Eastern dis-
tricts (Clerval, 2013). Wealth reached West
11th through rue Oberkampf, a street that
connected the older Paris districts of the
Marais to those, like the 11th, that were inte-
grated into the city in the second half of the
19th century (Fleury, 2003: 240–241). By the
2010s, the coffee shops in West 11th fol-
lowed the extension towards the periphery of
the nearby Marais, a hypergentrified con-
sumption area (Mermet, 2014). At rue Saint-
Sébastien, the business upgrade spanned sev-
eral decades. The wholesalers, a transporta-
tion company, two bakeries, three grocers
and two laundromats disappeared from the
street. These long-term changes produced a
greater concentration of leisure-orientated,
higher added value businesses. Residents
noted that all the restaurants, bars and
French cafes that were there in the 1970s (11
in total) survived the process, albeit under
new owners with a different business model.
The last decades brought more ABCs, as
well as everyday stores (a locksmith’s, a hair-
dresser’s, a hearing aid shop, etc.) and a pri-
vate school. In the 2010s, two coffee shops
opened on rue Saint-Sébastien, near new
upmarket ABCs with similarly mobile own-
ers (foreign designers, Global North chefs,
etc.) in what was already a gentrified shop-
ping street. In the process, the business mix
internationalised even further.
By contrast, in the northern part of West
11th, coffee shops signalled an earlier stage
of gentrification. Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud
Bantman-Masum
is located in Lower Belleville, a neighbour-
hood with a high proportion of foreign resi-
dents (Clerval, 2013: 114) which had
managed to resist full-fledged upgrading for
almost four decades after the emergence of
nearby Oberkampf (Clerval, 2013; Fleury,
2003; Van Criekingen and Fleury, 2006).
Long-term residents and scholars described
how several waves of immigration – an East
European Jewish majority in the 1950s,
Arabs from the 1960s onwards, Balkan
migrants as well as Turks in the 1970s – con-
tributed to shaping the local business mix.
At the turn of the 1990s, middle-class resi-
dents, including internationally mobile pro-
fessionals, started to move in (Smith, 2016).
From the 2000s onwards, the Lower
Belleville business mix was remodelled by
competing processes: new Arab-owned
shops blocked the expansion of the Chinese
district just as the extension of gentrified
Oberkampf led to a higher ABC concentra-
tion (Clerval, 2013: 113–130). This evolution
on rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud points to a
slow, stunted process of commercial upgrad-
ing: Muslim shops (2000s) near a mosque
sat next to a workers’ union (established in
1937) that was partly converted into a city-
owned theatre (opened 2007).
The coffee shops on that block – 8
(founded in 2013) and 9 (founded in 2016) –
were opened by transmigrant managers who
could be described as social preservationists
(Brown-Saracino, 2004). They identified
with the diverse population of Lower
Belleville and often relied on the local net-
work of businesses that included plumbers,
electricians, builders, grocers, as well as res-
taurants and bars owned by Indians, Arabs
and earlier gentrifiers. Coffee shops 8 and 9
introduced new patterns of diversity: these
multi-owner businesses were created by
nationals of many countries, including afflu-
ent Singapore, Switzerland, France and
Italy, as well as Slovakia and Morocco.
Although their businesses did signal
3141
commercial upgrading, the two managers
were, like many other coffee shop owners,
experiencing negative geographic and eco-
nomic mobility. Clearly, they were creating
new upmarket consumption spaces where
coffee cost twice as much as in traditional
cafes; yet this experience did not translate
into great economic gains. In 2017, 8’s foun-
der worked alone, seven days a week, but
could barely support herself financially; she
was just patiently waiting to sell her busi-
ness, take the money and move out of
France.
The role of the French state in
transnational gentrification
The reasons that selling an ailing business
could actually finance one’s international
mobility need to be explained. The strategy
only made sense because French tenure laws
and rules on commercial real estate allow for
the ad hoc creation of property value during
business transfers. In line with previous stud-
ies (Clerval, 2013: 55; Rose et al., 2013), my
data points to the role of the French state in
driving gentrification. I examined two key
aspects of political intervention: the law reg-
ulating business transfers and the Paris city
government’s revitalisation programme for
the Chinese wholesale neighbourhood. Even
if these are different levels of intervention
(national legislature versus municipal gov-
ernment), they illustrate the extent of state
support for commercial upgrading. It is
therefore crucial to outline the relevance of
the state in the long-term changes in the
business mix of West 11th, and how it sup-
ported transnationalisation both directly
and indirectly.
Under French commercial tenure laws,
tenants can sell the value of their business
(fond de commerce), access to the commercial
space itself (pas de porte) or their rental
agreement (bail commercial). This form of
ad hoc value creation is allowed, rather than
3142
regulated. Each time a commercial space is
transferred to a new tenant, the former
tenant cashes in on the transfer (cession).
This has become a key mechanism in com-
mercial upgrading because the amount of
capital needed typically increases at each
transfer. In 2018, the value of a bare com-
mercial space started at a few thousand
euros, up to hundreds of thousands for
prime location real estate. Newcomers, such
as independent middle-class entrepreneurs,
are structurally disadvantaged by this sys-
tem. Under the system, long-term profitabil-
ity largely depends on the newcomer’s ability
to negotiate the original rental agreement
and pay as little as possible in cession, pas de
porte or bail. In clear validation of Neil
Smith’s (1998) argument that gentrification
is first and foremost a return to the city by
capital, coffee shop founders reported that
banks had easily lent them the funds they
needed. At least 15 of them contracted a
substantial bank loan (over e100,000) to
invest in the commercial space. Months or
years later, the majority earned less than the
minimum wage (at e1188 per month in
2018). French commercial tenure contracts
are designed to protect tenants from evic-
tion, but they also fuel gentrification.
In fact, these tenancy rules – a lack of
regulation rather than legislation – made
West 11th particularly attractive to entrepre-
neurs. They knew West 11th to be an afflu-
ent district (Préteceille, 2018) with relatively
affordable rental space compared with
hypergentrified areas. In the nearby Marais,
secret pre-emption deals secure the transfer
of retail spaces to corporate big brands in
exchange for hundreds of thousands of
euros. In the 2010s, independent businesses
could only settle for less busy side streets
(Mermet, 2014). Compared with the Marais,
nearby West 11th presented new entrepre-
neurs with excellent opportunities for com-
merce as well as future value creation.
During interviews, coffee shop owners
Urban Studies 57(15)
repeatedly explained how they had based
their decision to set up shop in West 11th on
its brand image of an affordable liberal hub,
crafted by previous gentrifiers. There, they
could benefit from the existence of a well-
established space of consumption. In
France, as in other EU countries like
Belgium or Italy, young adults face daunting
systemic economic constraints in both hous-
ing and employment (Dubucs et al., 2016;
Van Criekingen, 2008). In this context, real
estate affords them unique opportunities for
wealth creation (Collet, 2008).
With speculation built into the inevitable
process of business succession, coffee shop
entrepreneurs were encouraged to regard
small business as a financial enterprise and to
participate in transnational capital reinvest-
ment. Importantly, a high proportion of cof-
fee shops (9, 12, 13, 14, 18, 19) were funded
by geographically mobile professionals: the
deregulation of business transfers actually
facilitated the cross-border circulation of cap-
ital. Of the many coffee shops that opened
following a business transfer, several were
owned by Colombian nationals. On rue
Amelot – a street away from the Marais –
coffee shop number 1 was co-founded by a
Colombian interior designer and a French
banker who paid e300,000 in transfer fees.
In 2019, they offered to sell their business
for e550,000 in transfer fees. The Colombian
co-founders of 11 paid e160,000 in transfer
fees and later added an additional e400,000
to own the actual brick-and-mortar shop
itself. With this costly procedure, 11’s co-
owners invested the capital they had accumu-
lated in diplomacy and corporate auditing.
This time, the business transfer was made
possible by the cross-border circulation of
small capital, rather than the previously men-
tioned capital reinvestment led by banks. In
addition to facilitating capital reinvestment,
the legislation on business transfer also had a
significant spatial impact. Newcomers were
limited in their choice of potential locations,
Bantman-Masum
which was reflected in the spatial distribution
of the coffee shops: the only venue (6) located
on a major shopping street – rue Oberkampf
– was actually founded by an older, highly
successful restaurant owner from the Marais.
The legislation on commercial real estate
transfers is but one aspect of state interven-
tion (or the lack thereof) to have drastically
shaped coffee shop development. Other arms
of the French state also determined the direc-
tion of the commercial upgrading of West
11th. This was the case with the city-led revi-
talisation programme in the portion of the
district occupied by Chinese wholesalers.
Not only was the programme aimed at creat-
ing a trendy consumption space aligned with
global trends, but it also invited risk-prone,
internationally mobile players to lead the
path to commercial upgrading.
The target neighbourhood first specia-
lised in textile production and distribution at
the turn of the 1990s, when hundreds of
West 11th outlets – located in a vast area
between rue Oberkampf, avenue Parmentier,
boulevard Richard Lenoir and rue de la
Roquette – were transferred to Chinese
migrants who converted them into wholesale
outlets. Soon, residents and council mem-
bers of this gentrified neighbourhood set
about ousting the newcomers in the name of
retail diversity. A public–private partnership
called SEMAEST (Société d’Economie
Mixte d’Aménagement de l’Est Parisien)
was founded on the mission of pre-empting
commercial spaces and recreating the pre-
existing business mix. SEMAEST proceeded
not by evicting tenants, but rather by taking
over vacant outlets and then marketing them
to other types of commerce (Chuang, 2013).
To encourage business transfers, municipal
authorities created a giant wholesale plat-
form outside of Paris in Aubervilliers, where
individual wholesalers partially relocated.
The revitalisation programme thus suc-
ceeded in creating dozens of vacancies that
the 11th district government sought to fill
3143
with craftspeople and multi-partner busi-
nesses with solid business plans.
A SEMAEST leaflet in circulation in
November 2018 sketched its vision for a seg-
ment of the wholesale neighbourhood (the
blocks near rue Breguet and rue du Chemin
Vert) after its revitalisation. At that time, the
business mix included, in addition to the
many remaining Chinese wholesalers, a few
organic food stores, several coffee shops and
other ABCs. The text, tellingly written in
both French and English – as if addressing a
global audience – described the revitalised
segment as a new consumption area designed
for both residents and tourists:
the textile wholesalers have given way to
young, dynamic entrepreneurs buzzing with
ideas. Established thanks to SEMAEST and
the work they have carried out to revitalise
local businesses, these new shops have suc-
ceeded in meeting the expectations of both
local inhabitants and visitors by offering a
wide variety of skilled, [sic] goods, and ser-
vices. (SEMAEST, 2018)
The leaflet portrayed the public–private
partnership behind the revitalisation pro-
gramme as a neutral alliance between
SEMAEST and innovative millennials. This
means that the revitalisation programme
never aimed at recreating the pre-existing
business mix, but rather at transforming the
Chinese wholesale neighbourhood into a
trendy consumption hub. In this sense, the
project reflected the extroverted mindset of
both the City of Paris – which controls
74.88% of SEMAEST’s capital and partly
staffs its executive board (SEMAEST, n.d.)
– and the 11th district’s head of small busi-
nesses who led SEMAEST for several years.
In order to implement their plan, officials
chose to invite specific businesses. This was
how one of the co-founders of 12 was
allowed to submit a business proposal to
transform a vacant car park taken over by
SEMAEST into a bread and coffee shop.
3144
The three partners, now on their fourth busi-
ness venture in Paris, had previously partici-
pated in a city-led project in the 17th district.
The co-founder remembered how they had
lost their initial investment when the munici-
pal authorities transferred the contract to a
new tenant. In West 11th, the partners care-
fully negotiated the terms of their association
with SEMAEST. Their past experience had
taught them that securing real estate over the
long term had to be an integral part of the
business plan. Having secured the right to
benefit from a future transfer, the partners
borrowed over e600,000 and converted the
SEMAEST car park into a trendy food
venue.
When the Paris municipal authorities
control access to rental spaces, in order to
revitalise areas of the city, they expect busi-
ness owners to assume a high level of risk.
Having evicted the Chinese wholesalers,
SEMAEST chose to support the creation of
real estate value by extracting wealth from
the new generation of entrepreneurs. In and
around the revitalised area, a majority of
coffee shops took over former wholesale
outlets (2, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20)
with the task of delivering commercial devel-
opment. Revitalisation created opportunities
that attracted players who were at ease with
risk-taking, including many geographically
mobile coffee shop founders. In this sense,
the city authorities encouraged transnationa-
lisation as if it had to be an integral element
of commerce-led neighbourhood change.
Defining cultural influence in
gentrification
Why would SEMAEST believe that it must
incorporate transnationalisation into its
revitalisation plans for West 11th? This last
section focuses on how international mobi-
lity influences perceptions of gentrification
in France. It discusses the theoretical impli-
cations of common practices, such as
Urban Studies 57(15)
comparing and contrasting Paris with other
Global North cities. Frequent references to
trendy neighbourhoods like Williamsburg
(New York City) suggest that geographically
mobile players define upgrading in a trans-
national perspective, gauging local transfor-
mation against a global backdrop. This is
analysed here as evidence for the cross-
border circulation of culturally grounded
perceptions of gentrification.
I noted earlier how coffee shop founders
commented on the high proportion of for-
eign tourists and expats visiting their busi-
nesses. During participant observation, I
noticed how English was routinely spoken at
many coffee shops. After all, many owners
and staff members were native English
speakers (5 and 10, 9, 13, 14, 19) or had lived
in English-speaking countries (3, 8, 18). At 8,
I was once invited into a conversation in
English between the Slovakian owner, her
Italian former chef, an American national
living in Paris and a French citizen who had
spent the last seven years in New York City.
The conversation jumped from the cost of
healthcare and education in France com-
pared with the United States, to the trickle-
down effect and the subprime crisis.
Observation provided numerous examples of
everyday, casual transnationalism at work in
coffee shops. These were defining experiences
for staff and customers alike: the French bar-
ista at 3 cherished his conversations in
English with tourists who had ‘an obviously
different mindset’. Compared with the
French restaurant where he had previously
worked, this was a relaxing work experience.
The Anglo component of the Paris coffee
shop culture – in this context, the close
acquaintance with the culture of English-
speaking countries like the US, Canada, the
UK, Australia and New Zealand – is one of
its commercial strengths. At first, these busi-
nesses thrived on transnationalisation.
Owners welcomed tourism-led gentrification
because they expected to benefit from it.
Bantman-Masum
International tourism fuelled their growth.
The founder of 3 capitalised on the expan-
sion of the Marais, targeting its wealthy
international crowd. The Canadian and
Filipino owners of 13 and 19 chose a location
near Bastille, a well-established commercial
hub with a steady inflow of foreign visitors
and well-travelled French professionals.
With time, founders experienced the lim-
its of relying on cross-border flows. The
aftermath of the 2015 terror attacks, with
the ensuing drop in international tourism,
clearly exposed their reliance on the outside.
To compensate for the sharp deficit that fol-
lowed the attacks, coffee shop owners
turned to French clients. They acknowl-
edged the need ‘to localise’ (9), another fun-
damental aspect of transnationalisation
whereby cultural imports are hybridised by
cultural brokers. ‘Localising’ is now so com-
mon in small business that it is analysed as a
global trend, a survival strategy blending
local and global taste in an effort to adapt
to new trends (Hattori et al., 2016: 171; Yu
et al., 2016: 74). In order to survive, Paris
coffee shops needed to blend French and
Anglo culture. French clients were intro-
duced to good coffee, a classic topic for con-
versation among coffee shop staff. The
conclusion was that France had finally
caught up with other Global North cities in
terms of product quality and service. This
idea that France must compare and compete
internationally was a recurrent theme in all
the interviews. Gentrified shopping streets
abroad served as models for owners desirous
to increase their competitive edge over riv-
als. The two founders of 20 both lived in
London, for 4 and 6 years respectively. One
of them described his business as a form of
risky venture, the goal of which was to cater
to a trendy crowd, not street residents. Such
was the vision for which they had invested
e10,000 each in access fees, contracted a
e80,000 bank loan and opened a coffee shop
in the revitalised area. Their short-term
3145
survival depended on the success of a nearby
workspace that could potentially bring regu-
lar clients. But their ultimate success implied
a more immaterial development: that the
street would soon ‘become a mix of every-
thing’, like Brooklyn or Williamsburg.
Many founders cited New York – alongside
Berlin, London and Sydney – as a model for
the typical gentrified street. Their percep-
tions of gentrification were firmly set in a
transnational perspective that seemed to dic-
tate that Paris must undergo a form of stan-
dardised upgrade to compare positively to
other trendy neighbourhoods.
At a deeper level, these individual remarks
on transnationalisation were rooted not in
one standardised representation of the gentri-
fied shopping street, but instead in several,
sometimes divergent perceptions that rested
on wider preconceptions regarding small
business and neighbourhood change.
Importantly, national origins and political
beliefs influenced individual readings of
urban transformations, and opinions as to
how individuals should act upon them.
Discourses on upgrading were culturally spe-
cific and signalled a disconnect between
French and Anglo perceptions. For instance,
residents of Lower Belleville recommended
Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, a book written by
an American expat who – they considered –
had misinterpreted how the neighbourhood
had changed. The book was a first-person
narrative of the journalist settling in Lower
Belleville at the turn of the 1990s, and then
failing as a pioneer gentrifier (Smith, 2016).
The pioneer tropes that endowed this gentrifi-
cation narrative with meaning made it rele-
vant to English speakers (Smith, 1998).9 But
since the pioneer tropes do not exist in
French, the book tapped into a cultural heri-
tage that the French could not access, and
they interpreted it as a cultural misconcep-
tion, rather than insightful analysis.
Interviews also showed that national ori-
gins combined with migrant experiences could
3146
shape and warp attitudes towards commercial
upgrading and related processes. Among my
informants, those who were born in English-
speaking countries, where gentrification the-
ory was first developed (5 and 10, 12, 19),
largely embraced the idea of commercial revi-
talisation, and happily discussed their role in
it and how they expected to thrive on it. The
Franco-British owner of 5 and 10 enthusiasti-
cally detailed his strategy: he had a clear
notion of how the business mix should evolve
to reach a perfect stage of commercial upgrad-
ing. He mentioned the need for antique shops,
barbershops and delicatessens. He premised
his sharp, straightforward observations on the
belief that gentrification is complete when a
standard and precise mix of businesses exists.
Like the co-founder of 12, a friend of his who
inspired his decision to create a coffee shop,
he built speculation into his long-term busi-
ness plan. The owner of 5 and 10 was also
very outspoken about how he would benefit
not just from commercial upgrading, but also
from the commercial tenure system. He was
the sole owner to openly praise the business
transfers, adding that he liked how French
law allowed for capital accumulation. To him,
this was a wonderful savings system.
This attitude can only be contrasted with
the way the French manager of 14, a former
foreign reporter for French public radio,
analysed gentrification and gentrifiers:
gentrification . we are all participants in it. I
came to live here because the rent was cheap,
because of the Chinese wholesalers. Now the
rents in my building are up by 20%, and at the
same time, small businesses are popping up in
rue Boule, rue Sedaine, Popincourt . Cafes,
bars, shops selling who knows what!
In a city like Paris where inclusion and
wealth redistribution are core political val-
ues, shop keeping tends to be scornfully dis-
missed as a conservative occupation
(Leblanc, 2017: 87). French owners have
learnt to downplay their local impact. The
Urban Studies 57(15)
manager of 14 quipped about this, remark-
ing that honesty regarding one’s role in gen-
trification is taboo among liberal
intellectuals. What is more, culturally
informed political beliefs can be said to
influence not just ideas on gentrification, but
business practices too. French coffee shop
owners insisted that they were infusing busi-
ness with ethics, that they related to the left-
leaning politics of West 11th, that they
wanted to preserve the social mix. This can-
not be taken as mere lip service since it
translated into tangible business practices at
coffee shops with French ownership. The
French manager of 14 made his coffee shop
accessible to all. He wanted rubbish collec-
tors and local African housewives to feel
welcome and invited them in for an afford-
able espresso. Similarly, the French owners
at 7 and 17 insisted on keeping coffee afford-
able (and speaking French). The owner of 7
went out of his way to serve everyone,
adapting to the needs of elderly neighbours
and high school children alike. On one of
my visits, he introduced me to some of his
regulars (all of them French nationals) to
prove his point about his local embedded-
ness. The founder of 2 – whose business
included a profits redistribution clause –
proudly stated that she was acting for the
benefit of the community, even if she
acknowledged her role in neighbourhood
change. Individual profit-making and com-
peting globally were not their top objectives.
These French discourses on inclusion and
how not to create an overly exclusive space
clashed with narratives of real estate valua-
tion, the pioneer spirit, etc. The sort of
transnational gentrification taking place at
Paris coffee shops must therefore be viewed
as a complex and often contradictory pro-
cess whereby international norms are intro-
duced by mobile players, and then
negotiated and hybridised. Williamsburg
and other coffee capitals of the world, such
as Melbourne and Auckland, helped define
Bantman-Masum
new urban trends for Paris-based entrepre-
neurs. Culturally informed perceptions of
commercial upgrading forged in English-
speaking countries were adopted and circu-
lated by geographically mobile players.
These norms were influential enough to be
replicated and to serve as models for state-
led revitalisation programmes. Still, one of
the obstacles to our understanding of this
transnational gentrification process lies in
the fact that gentrifiers are a heterogeneous,
multinational group, whose perceptions
reflect several culturally informed views on
neighbourhood change and social justice.
My research outlined the differences in the
way French coffee shop owners viewed gen-
trification, compared with Anglo coffee
shop owners. But this analysis is not aimed
at essentialising national characters, rather
at emphasising differences in perceptions
and practices that bear on processes such as
upgrading and hybridisation. Ideologically
speaking, France is a Global North country,
but its regulated economy and political land-
scape differ markedly from those of the
United States and the United Kingdom.
Interestingly, the issue of cultural models
and standards harkens back to the origins of
the gentrification debate. It was first raised
by Ruth Glass, over half a century ago, who
remarked that gentrification resembled for-
eign influence and homogenisation:
it is often said . that the city is in the process
of being ‘Americanized’. Indeed, judging from
general impressions of the city’s looks and
standards of living, the contrast between
Central London and mid-town Manhattan,
for example, is no longer as striking as it used
to be before. (Glass, 2010: 20)
In this sense, transnational gentrification – a
heterogeneous, negotiated, multi-faceted set
of related processes leading to hybridisation
– provides an interesting framework for
future discussions on how the local, national
3147
and global dimensions can satisfactorily be
comprehended.
Conclusion
This analysis of Paris coffee shops uncovered
a series of transnational processes that play a
part in the ongoing process of commercial
upgrading in West 11th. International tour-
ism and migration, and the circulation of
business models and ideas, were shown to
have significantly influenced neighbourhood
change. I demonstrated that the small, geo-
graphically mobile entrepreneurs who first
imported the Anglo coffee shop model into
France enjoyed the support of public and
private players, banks as well as state actors.
The business itself, described by scholars
as a core element of the gentrified street,
is viewed in France as a Global North
standard. This perception influenced the
Paris municipality discourses which encour-
aged trendy consumption in the revitalised
Chinese wholesalers’ area. However, beyond
the cross-border circulation of business
models and discourses, transnational gentri-
fication must not eclipse other key processes.
Crucially, state intervention and deregulation
encouraged specific patterns of investment in
commercial real estate, a key factor in the
high concentration of coffee shops in West
11th. In the end, transnational gentrification
should be regarded as a global process that
can be negotiated. The coffee shop model
was hybridised to fit French culture after the
2015 terror attacks: this translated into lin-
guistic adjustments – speaking French, not
just English – as well as more ideological
practices – comparing and contrasting
France with other Global North locales.
I showed how transnational processes and
players guided the development of Anglo-
style coffee shops in Paris, thereby introdu-
cing a standard feature of the global shop-
ping street into the French business mix. Yet
3148
France’s unique combination of state deregu-
lation and intervention differentiates Paris
from other cities. This is a clear example of
the existence of multiple paths to gentrifi-
cation, an idea that is defended by French
scholars. I have foregrounded striking dif-
ferences between French and Anglo owners
as evidence for the existence of culturally
informed perceptions of gentrification.
Yet, such differences should not be con-
strued as an argument to deny the existence
of heterogeneous attitudes towards gentri-
fication in France or abroad. The idea that
the cross-border flows greatly influence
gentrification merits more research into the
complex interplay of local, transnational,
private and public forces driving urban
change. Transnational gentrification must
therefore be unpacked if we are to develop
a nuanced theoretical framework that fits
the dimension and complexity of the global
scale.
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 received no financial support for the
research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
ORCID iD
Eve Bantman-Masum https://orcid.org/0000-
0002-0843-1302
Note
1. This article is in memoriam Gilles Adrien (y
2017) and his film on early gentrification –
Rue Obserkampf (2000), produced by Jean
Bréhat and Rachid Bouchareb.
2. In June 2019, TripAdvisor listed 261 tea and
coffee establishments in Paris, but this arti-
cle’s informants use different, often stricter
criteria (Bantman-Masum, 2018).
Urban Studies 57(15)
3. ‘Retail-led gentrification’ suggests that
gentrification begins with changes in the busi-
ness mix, although in this article the term is
used as a synonym for commercial upgrading.
4. Thirty interviews were carried out with own-
ers and managers. This data for West 11th
district is extracted from a larger qualitative
data set that covers coffee shops in central
Eastern Paris, including the adjoining 3rd and
4th districts (the Marais).
5. For a short history of participant observation
and a discussion of active/immersive research
methods, see Platt (1983).
6. Resistance to key concepts – such as neoliber-
alism – is explained in the article. Other con-
tentious, merely descriptive terms – like
hipster – were dropped altogether.
7. No data for 6 and 15.
8. INSEE (Institut National de la Statistique et
des Etudes Economiques) is the French office
for statistics.
9. In their book Paris Coffee Revolution, a
Swedish-American writer from Seattle and a
Paris-based coffee shop owner and photogra-
pher from Australia introduced the first cof-
fee shop owners as pioneers (Brones and
Hargrove, 2015).
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