Global retail capital and the city: towards an intensification of gentrification

The emerging literature on retail gentrification has not paid much attention to the link between recent reconfigurations of retail capital (concentration, internationalization, and financialization) and the contemporary wave of “generalized gentrification”. In this paper, I argue that analyzing the strategies of stakeholders involved in sectors other than housing (in this case, the retail sector) should allow us to identify different forms of gentrification intensification. I investigate the case of the Marais – that is, one of the first Parisian neighborhoods having undergone gentrification – by mapping the frontier of retail gentrification over the long term (1965–2011) and at the scale of an entire neighborhood (more than 130 ha comprising over 2,000 commercial units). The key drivers of the process (commercial real estate, new brand development strategies, changing commercial environment, the role of public policies) and its social stakes (displacement/replacement of former stores) are then discussed.