Resisting gentrification in traditional public markets: Lessons from London

This chapter discusses traditional retail markets in London as spaces where traders and citizens mobilise aroundwider urban and political issues. Recently in London campaigns have emerged to defend traditional markets from various threats: privatisation, gentrification, closure, demolition, displacement of traders, rent hikes or abandonment and disinvestment (González and Dawson, 2015). These struggles exist in a city that is increasingly unaffordable for low-and middle-income residents while at the same time being a profitable real estate market for global investment companies (Beswick et al., 2016). In particular, housing has become a key space for contestation, with many campaigns fighting against public housing demolition or privatisation, evictions or against the development of luxury and speculative housing projects (Lees and Ferreri, 2016; Watt and Minton, 2016). Less attention has been paid to other spaces where political mobilisation against the neoliberalisation of the city is taking place, such as work or retail spaces (although see Just Space, 2015).