Vi s uali z ation of Gentrification and Poverty.

1. Visualizationof Gentrification and Poverty. Symbols of Social Position in a RevitalizedCity – the Case of Lodz Lectureand exhibition Łódź, 5.07.2017 Paulina Bunio-Mroczek, Phd Jagoda Przybysz, M.A.

2. Introduction Poverty and gentrification are interrelated phenomena You can observe them in the context of revitalization processes taking place in urban space Łódź, which is the first Polish city to introduce a large and complex revitalization program, can serve as a huge observatory of poverty and gentrification 11

3. Poverty in Łódź The city of Łódź used to be the center of Polish textile industry Transformation from socialist into global capitalist system meant deindustrialization and pauperization of the working class In the 1990s, the former workers’ districts, located in and around the city center, turned into poverty pockets, inhabited to large extent by people experiencing poverty, living in old impoverished tenement buildings For many years Łódź has been considered ‘poor’ and ‘ugly’. Many hope this will change due to revitalization. .

4. Revitalization and poverty In theory, revitalization is meant to counteract poverty Revitalization is a process that is supposed to bring back to life devastated urban areas and improve the quality of life of the people who inhabit them Polish legal acts define revitalization as a process of leading the ruined urban areas out of crisis This process issupposed to be complex, integrated and focused on local communities, space and economy The municipality of Łódź, who according to the Polish law is responsible for coordination and programming of the revitalization process, defines revitalization as a wide process of social, spatial and economical changes in the areas which – like the centre of Łódź – is the „area in crisis” .

5. Revitalization and gentrification • Revitalization inevitably evokes changes in social structure in revitalized spaces. The megaproject of re-invention and re-creation of the ‘New Center of the city of Łódź’ is meant to eradicate poverty, but it also involves gentrification. • There is no single interpretation of possible results of gentrification. For example, one can ask: • Does gentrification deepen social inequalities, pushing poverty out of sight and out of the city center, or maybe it provides a desirable ‘social mix’ required to diminish the ‘neighborhood effect’? • Is gentrification a form of social violence acted by the economically and socially stronger on the poor, leading to exploitation, or is it a renewal of deprived neighborhoods, leading to social progress and improvement of quality of life? Gentrification – the transformation of a working-class or vacant area of the central city into middle-class residential or commercial use (Leem, Slater, Wyly 2008: xv)

6. Exhibition The aim of our exhibition is to capture visual symbols of social change and social position in the impoverished city areas, undergoing revitalization and gentrification. In the exhibition you can see photographs made by Robert Bobryk who likes to portrait Łódź and who does not avoid its imperfections. Choosing the pictures we wanted to show the process of change of the poor, de-industrialized city into a revitalized one as a difficult, problematic and sometimes dirty. Each picture has been matched with a quotation coming from one of the two qualitative research projects: one on poverty and social exclusion in so-called Łódź poverty pockets, the other on gentrification in the process of social revitalization. In this way, we can take a look at poverty and gentrification from the perspectives of very different social groups. Theexhibition was prepared fotthe VIIIth Conference of the European Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction (EU SSSI 2017)