This thesis advances knowledge of the diverse spatialities of gentrification by examining processes of change in coastal towns, drawing upon the case-study location of St Leonards-on-Sea, in the South East of England. Based on rich, empirical findings from semi-structured interviews, content analyses of local media sources, 2001 census data, and a household survey of 173 respondents, it is shown that processes of gentrification are unfolding in St Leonards. The findings suggest that it is beneficial to distinguish between coastal gentrification, and urban/rural gentrification. To emphasise this point, it is argued that there is merit in utilising the term coastification , in order to conceptualise the socio-cultural and economic transformations tied to in-migrants seeking the coastal idyll . The thesis disrupts some dominant theorisations of contemporary gentrification, identifying the presence of pioneer gentrifiers in a coastal town setting. It is contended that simply transferring the representations of urban gentrification to other socio-spatial locations along the urban-rural hierarchy is not a straightforward process. Therefore, gentrification-based regeneration policies should not be transferred in taken-for-granted ways from one location to another. A representation of coastification allows for a fuller appreciation of the effects of gentrification on coastal regeneration policies.

This dissertation explores parent-gentrifiers’ lived experiences of the school-selection process, including the social networking and the influence of those social networks in their selection of schools. School choice and parent involvement are forms of social capital, and such social capital represents the results of social networking and parental agency. The unknown is how this scenario manifests itself in gentrifying parents’ school-selection process in Atlanta’s Kirkwood and Grant Park neighborhoods. Gentrifying children’s absence in urban public schools is of interest as residential areas integrate, while schools (re)segregate. The research paradigm is interpretivist as it investigates the qualitatively different ways in which people experience or think about a phenomenon (Marton, 1986). Purposive snowball sampling is used to reach 30 eligible participants in two neighborhoods. The methodological approach is qualitative phenomenographic interviews. The research found five options considered by parent-gentrifiers in the school-selection process that are consistent with the previous literature: public school, charter school, private school, homeschool and undecided/not yet. The forms of communication utilized in the social networking were face-to-face, phone, e-mail, social networking sites, and texting. Participants varied by work schedule, neighborhood communication infrastructure, and level of social network in their forms of communication. Parent-gentrifiers’ approaches to school selection included: activating agency, social networking, operating in social spaces, their social agenda with regard to diversity, and their educational agenda with regard to curriculum, instruction, and school characteristics. The results show that while parents espouse racial and socioeconomic diversity, their choices in the option-demand system in Grant Park resulted in racial segregation among the schools. In contrast, the lack of formal options in Kirkwood resulted in racial integration in the public elementary school. The actions interpreted and ideas constructed in the process of selecting schools as a parent-gentrifier are of practical value to district efforts to understand the urban middle-class school-selection process. In light of increasing school segregation and student attrition, continued urban revitalization efforts and the sustainability of those efforts for many major cities in the United States is highly dependent on their ability to regenerate and maintain quality schools that attract the middle-class.

À l’articulation entre sociologie urbaine et sociologie des groupes sociaux, la thèse est consacrée aux phénomènes de gentrification qui touchent les anciens quartiers populaires de centre-ville depuis plus de trente ans et à leurs acteurs habitants, les « gentrifieurs ». Caractéristiques de l’émergence des « nouvelles classes moyennes » à la fin des années 1970, désignés au début des années 2000 par la catégorie médiatique de « bobos », ceux-ci contribuent au changement urbain par leurs choix et leurs investissements multidimensionnels dans l’espace résidentiel. La première partie de la thèse est consacrée à l’étude des générations de « gentrifieurs » des Pentes de la Croix-Rousse à Lyon et du Bas Montreuil en région parisienne, de leurs profils sociologiques et des ressorts de leur choix résidentiel des années 1970 aux années 2000. La deuxième partie est dédiée à l’analyse localisée du « travail de gentrification » mené par les nouveaux résidents du Bas Montreuil et à l’articulation de ce travail à leurs trajectoires sociale, professionnelle, militante et familiale. Fondée sur des entretiens approfondis avec des « gentrifieurs » de diverses époques, étayée par l’analyse de statistiques localisées sur la longue durée, systématiquement replacée dans les contextes globaux et locaux, l’enquête permet d’éclairer les ressorts sociaux des mutations des quartiers anciens de centre-ville et de proche banlieue en même temps que les recompositions des fractions supérieures des classes moyennes. / At the intersection between urban sociology and social group sociology, the thesis addresses the phenomena of gentrification affecting historical working-class areas over the last thirty years and their key players, the gentrifiers. Typical of the emerging “new middle classes” in the late 1970s, categorized by the media as “bobos” in the early 2000s, gentrifiers contribute to urban change through their choices and multidimensional investments in the residential space. The first part of the thesis is devoted to the study of generations of gentrifiers in the Pentes de la Croix-Rousse area in Lyon and in the Bas Montreuil area near Paris; it presents their sociological profiles and residential choices from the 1970s to the 2000s. The second part is devoted to the local analysis of the “gentrification work” in which new residents of the Bas Montreuil are engaged, in connection with their social, professional, militant and family trajectories. Based on extensive interviews with gentrifiers from various waves, supported by the analysis of long-term localized statistics, systematically replaced in the global and local contexts, the survey sheds light both on the sociological changes affecting historical central and suburb neighbourhoods and on the reshaping of higher fractions of the middle classes.