We all think we know what gentrification is. We sense it – it might be the new artisan bakery or an organic coffee shop on the corner – but the reality is the degutting of working-class neighbourhoods. The term was first coined by the urban sociologist Ruth Glass in 1964. She grasped that the movement of bohemian middle-class types was transforming the character of the likes of London’s Notting Hill[i]. The key motor was the displacement of working-class residents by rising housing costs.

Housing is a UK wide problem but as a Labour Councillor representing Leith in Edinburgh, I am going to draw a lot of my comments from the current situation in my area and Edinburgh. In Edinburgh the New Town was built in the 18/19th centuries so that the wealthy could leave the overcrowded medieval closes. By the middle of the 19th century the life expectancy of New Town residents was twice that of the old town, a stone’s throw from one another, they became an inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
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THE planned cuts to welfare is a defining moment for this government. Keir Starmer has a political choice to make — does he dish up more of the same austerity that the Conservatives inflicted on the most disadvantaged people in our society, or does he do the right thing and look after our most vulnerable citizens?