Alternative Explanations for Inner-City Gentrification: A Canadian Assessment

Within the rapidly expanding literature on inner-city revitalization (or gentrification), there has been no attempt to assess in a comparative and systematic manner a range of explanations that have emerged from studies of single cities or even single neighborhoods. Four major explanations of gentrification are reviewed here and then made operational in a correlation and regression analysis of inner-city gentrification in the Canadian urban system between 1971 and 1981. Several of the posited explanations are not supported. Economic and urban amenity factors perform most strongly in the analysis, but demographic and housing factors have less effect. I develop an integrated model and discuss its theoretical implications, including its consistency with staple theory and the interrelatedness demonstrated between housing and labor markets.

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