Grupuri marginale în zone centrale: gentrificare, drepturi de proprietate și acumulare primitivă post-socialistă în București

Abstract

In this study I argue that gentrification in Eastern Europe involves the state as much as it does involve the market. Gentrification functions as a process of primitive accumulation, whereby capital is mobilized easily, following the state allocation of valuable properties at prices well below the market. Based on a census, interviews and archival research I describe the transformations of a centrally located area from Bucharest. The findings indicate that gentrification takes place in small pockets, rather than as something uniform across the area. Real estate agents, former owners who regained state confiscated housing, politically powerful residents and families who take quasi-kinship roles toward their elderly neighbors function as gentrifiers. Six strategies of appropriating the market value through the relocation of financially disadvantaged residents are described. The conclusions that follow from this study insist on the role of the state as the key mechanism for gentrification. It is argued that rent and utilities subsidies will not stop the process; rather the state should try to eliminate the vertical networks that appropriate the market value of privatized housing by assuming and controlling this process itself. It is also argued that in the case of the former owners, the state should try to involved them as partners in the rehabilitation of restituted housing, a process that is likely to slow down gentrification. Two other domains where the state should intervene is the protection of property rights of elders, often exposed to onerous contracts that leave them homeless and the protection of Roma population against potential discrimination by their neighbors.