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- Baeten, Guy, et al.
(author)
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Pressure and violence : Housing renovation and displacement in Sweden
- 2017
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In: Environment and planning A. - : Sage Publications. - 0308-518X .- 1472-3409. ; 49:3, s. 631-351
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Based on interview material relating to the current wave of housing renovation in Swedish cities,this article will analyse the profit-driven, traumatic and violent displacement in the wake ofcontemporary large-scale renovation processes of the so-called Million Program housingestates from the 1960s and 1970s. We maintain that the current form of displacement(through renovation) has become a regularized profit strategy, for both public and privatehousing companies in Sweden. We will pay special attention to Marcuse’s notion of‘displacement pressure’ which refers not only to actual displacement but also to the anxieties,uncertainties, insecurities and temporalities that arise from possible displacement due tosignificant rent increases after renovation and from the course of events preceding the actualrent increase. Examples of the many insidious forms in which this pressure manifests itself will begiven – examples that illustrate the hypocritical nature of much planning discourse and rhetoric ofurban renewal. We illustrate how seemingly unspectacular measures and tactics deployed in therenovation processes have far-reaching consequences for tenants exposed to actual or potentialdisplacement. Displacement and displacement pressure due to significant rent increases (which isprofit-driven but justified by invoking the ‘technical necessity’ of renovation) undermines the ‘rightto dwell’ and the right to exert a reasonable level of power over one’s basic living conditions, withall the physical and mental benefits that entails – regardless of whether displacement fearsmaterialize in actual displacement or not.
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