Tech-led gentrification as futurity

Source abstract

Recent research in critical geography has explored how tech capital has reshaped urban processes, constituting a new form of ‘tech urbanism’ and new processes of tech-led gentrification. One way to build on this work, I argue, is to examine how these processes are tied to futurity. As various scholars claim, futurity is politically constructed and materializes the imaginaries, narratives, strategies, and practices through which the future is supposedly made knowable and predictable. Research shows that futurity—both racialized and gendered—has a tangible impact on the making of geographies in the present. In the context of tech industries’ increasing influence over urban imaginaries and governance, this paper argues that futurity provides new ways to problematize tech-led gentrification. This conceptual article, which includes a brief overview of the gentrifying neighborhood of Parc Extension in Montreal, argues that analyzing narratives surrounding cities’ tech-oriented ‘futures’ offers key insights into how gentrification is configured in the present.