1. INTRODUCTION

It is a cold Thursday night, we are outside the market (1). The air is filled with the noise of hand-trucks and echoing shouts, some swearing in between. A few meat traders smile at us. Other white men drive the carts (2), the buzz is deafening and the smell of raw meat is overpowering, it is smellable from the outside. Empty boxes are littered around the building (3), as we walk we scent a bread aroma that is coming from the bakeries around. Butchers with bloody shirts sip their coffees in cheap cafes that remain open to provide the traders with hot beverage and food (5), they emanate a vibrant feeling. The market stands proud and I feel its history, fixed everywhere there are ads: ‘offices, TO LET’ (6).

                            

                                                                         (Field notes, November, 2018)

My ethnography of Smithfield took place in the period of one day. I observed the space on a weekly day in the afternoon with a group of students and our lecturer. I felt its nightlife by sipping beer with a smaller group of students in a pub. Then, I returned with my group on the site in the night, two hours before the Market’s closing time and strolled around by myself until the streets were filled with people rushing to work (7). My main focus was to reveal how the gentrification process is conceived, perceived and lived in Smithfield. To answer my question, I gathered data from observations, photographs, field notes and informal interviews. This paper will present the key areas of research for this ethnography. Respectively, Lefebvre’s ‘production of space’, gentrification as a global strategy, and culture and tourism as methods of gentrification. Drawing on those theories, I will then evaluate the data gathered. But first, I will describe and evaluate urban ethnography as a method.

2. URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY AS A METHOD

Ethnography seeks to document the world in terms of the behaviours and meanings of the people. The ethnographer systematically records its observations on a diary and analytically engages with them (Walsh, 2012). Similarly, Urban ethnography is the long-term in-depth study of urban settings, it is the product of conscious urban experiences. However, it grasps the economic, political, demographic and sociocultural complexity, and conceptualises urban social formations by observing (Ocejo, 2013). Hence, it is a methodology that adopts techniques from anthropology and qualitative sociology and it is an effective tool to understand life in complex and dynamic cities. Urban ethnography gives attention to the relationship between micro and macro and brings out the impact of governance and urban planning on the urban environment, including both non-human agents and social relations within communities (Pardo and Prato, 2017).

By doing an ethnography, I was able to connect and bridge different fields of scholarly work, I examined my case by relating it to the bigger picture, to London as a Global City. As cities are in constant growth, the possibilities they offer are in constant change, as well as their identities. They vary both from a social and a personal point of view; during the whole set of practices, I have realised how my perspective changed from that of my colleagues, particularly while we were on the site taking field notes and photos. Our perceptions and feelings were different, we produced the space on the basis of our lives and our daily practices, therefore, space is a politically contested field (Lefebvre, 1991). As I perceived this difference in thoughts between the group, I related it to how different social classes have different interests, and why the state and the urban planners conceive and reproduce the space in certain ways, at the expense of the native population. Therefore, through ethnography, one aims to discover the relations between these entities and bring out the inequalities of urban life (Huerta and Venegas, 2010).

3. KEY AREAS OF RESEARCH FOR THE FIELDWORK

3.1 THE PRODUCTION OF SPACE

To understand how contested views and practices are produced and reproduced in the space, I employed my senses and Lefebvre’s three elements that constitute the social production of space: spatial practices, representation of space and spaces of presentation (Simonsen, 2005). Spatial practices are the perceived, the physical objects in the space; representation of space are the images mentally conceived, they refer to the planners; spaces of representation is the space that is actually lived, the experiences, the memories of inhabitants and users (Degen, 2008). Drawing on Lefebvre and his diatribe, I explored how gentrification is perceived and lived, and researched how Smithfield is conceived. Simultaneously, key theories of gentrification, and culture and tourism as gentrification practices are discussed below.

3.2 GENTRIFICATION

During the course of time, the markets are being bulldozed or redeveloped. From Les Halles, during the process of Haussmanisation in Paris (Harvey, 2003), Caledonian Market, Covent Garden Market, Billingsgate (Binney, 2013) and more recently, Queens Market in the borough of Newham (Dines, 2009). In the near future, Elephant and Castle’s Shopping Centre will disappear (Hancox, 2018), and Smithfield will be redeveloped. Hygiene, congestion, association with lack of orderliness and garbage are all common characteristics of the ‘market’(Seligmann, 2000), its importance as a social space is neglected (Dines, 2009) and cities aim to ‘regenerated’ those unsanitary sites. Today’s London has undergone many abundant renewal projects, and these ambitions in regeneration are part of its economic competitiveness as a Global City. In fact, comparable to fashion catwalks, cities compete with each other by designing and displaying a new style, an environment appealing to leisure and business (Degen, 2008) by altering their social make-up (Minton, 2017). So, while regeneration seems to restructure by reproducing socio-economic geographies, it widens socio-economic inequalities by depriving local communities (Imrie, et. al., 2009). This disruptive force that displaces the original working-class occupiers from the inner city and replace them with the middle-class is called ‘gentrification’, a term coined by the marxist sociologist Ruth Glass (1964). As animals were considered inappropriate for the urban space, and therefore, excluded from cities (Gaynor, 2007), nowadays, planners are excluding the working class.The marxist geographer Neil Smith extended the concept of gentrification by introducing the myth of the frontier: “The frontier imagery is neither merely decorative nor innocent, therefore, but carries considerable ideological weight. Insofar as gentrification infects working-class communities, displaces poor households, and converts whole neighbourhoods into bourgeois enclaves, the frontier ideology rationalises social  differentiation and exclusion as natural, inevitable. The poor and working class are all too easily defined as“uncivil”,… The frontier ideology justifies monstrous incivility in the heart of the city” (Smith, 1996:16). Hence, the space is a set of relations of domination and subordination, it is about power geometry, where urban redevelopments are used to control the society (Massey, 2005). Those that are in control decide how they want to represent the society and impose their will and force out the workers to the urban margins. Speculators colonise districts and let the prices skyrocket. Gentrification is contributing to the metamorphosis of the city, and cities have transformed into places of exclusion and policing (Vasudevan, 2017).

3.3 SPATIAL TRANSFORMATION AND REDEVELOPMENT OF SITES AS TOURIST DESTINATIONS

Generally, gentrification happens by the hands of private investors that redevelop the public space. However, that is not the case of Smithfield. It will become the new Museum of London, it will bring tourists and boost the economy by creating more jobs in an area with a ‘low level of workplace population cluster’ (Department for the Built Environment, 2014). Therefore, it is the case of justified gentrification that commodifies history to serve the goals of neoliberalism. The heritage industry is a whole business that uses history to make money; if buildings are derelict, historic conservation is an excuse for acts of intervention over urban life (Herzfeld, 2010). Since Smithfield Market will disappear to give space to the museum, the whole area will change its identity and welcome urban tourism. But what exactly is urban tourism? For Galdini, it is a product of globalisation, a process that revitalise a territory by improving the economy and the quality of life of the whole community, as well as meeting visitor’s expectations (2007). However, the neo-marxist thinker Sharon Zukin recognises that, despite it saves from the economic decline, tourism creates social differences. It is selective and, like globalisation, it works on the basis of dominant processes  (1995). For example, catapulted by the Olympic Games, Barcelona commodified itself to abide by the tourist market. The post-industrial city turned into a competitive global player also by destroying parts of working-class neighbourhoods (Degen, 2014). London is a post-industrial city

as well, and also undergoes profound changes within its physical and social structure; postindustrial buildings like warehouses become museums, like the Museum of Docklands. That means that culture has the potential to make a city prosperous and successful and production spaces are turned into spaces of consumption. It is “a powerful means of controlling cities. As a source of images and memories, it symbolizes “who belongs" in specific places. As a set of architectural themes, it plays a leading role in urban redevelopment strategies based on historic preservation or local ‘heritage.’” (Zukin, 1995:1). Hence, tourism destroys authentic place identities, it homogenises them on the basis of global capitalism. Within tourism, the global-local relations are negotiated, the places become similar but still maintaining diversity (Galdini, 2007).

4. ANALYSIS

4.1 CONCEIVING, PERCEIVING AND LIVING GENTRIFICATION

Smithfield is the last City of London’s corporation market still operating on its original site and keeps the history of the area embodied, along with other medieval sites such as the Charterhouse and the Barts, which part of it is undergoing a regeneration process (8). Constructed in 1867 by Sir Horace Jones, the buildings still stands proud, despite some of them are currently in a terrible state of rot (Sumnall, 2016) (9). In fact, recently, Smithfield risked to be demolished. In 2013, foreign investors ‘Henderson Global’ had the permission by the City of London to regenerate the market with ‘a scheme that meets the needs of a growing city’ by building offices, restaurants and shops (Morby, 2013). They wanted to keep the façade and build with steal and glass behind it. A popular practice in the UK called ‘façadism’ that consists of the demolition of a building while maintaining its ‘façade’ (Richards, 2002). In the end, the plan was rejected after a series of protests led by the Victorian Society and Save Britain’s Heritage (Brown, 2014). On the one hand, it is clear that Smithfield is currently going through a process of gentrification; from wherever I stood, I felt oppressed by the sight of cranes (10; 11; 12), adverts of offices to let (13), the modernity of Cloth street (14), chains and gentrified cafes (15) that will gradually replace those Smithfield’s cheap eats. On the other, the history of Smithfield is perceived by its small alleys (16), by certain names of streets like ‘Cowcross street’ or ‘Cock Lane’ (17), by the red bricks that confer the Market’s Victorian Style. However, those historical elements suck the attention of investors that gentrify the area and commodify its history (Herzfeld, 2010). But what history and whose? Smithfield has always been one of the city’s most important commercial, cultural and social sites (Bergrstrom and Forshaw, 1980). Used first as a burial place, it became famous not only for the live-stock but also for being the centre for cloth merchants from across the country (A London Inheritance, 2017). “The marketplace differed from the forum as from the agora: access to it was free, and it opened up on every side onto the surrounding territory” (Lefebvre, 1991, p265). It was a free public space where many incongruous activities happened at the same time, it was a place of executions, but the site also hosted a spectacular national event Bartholomew’s fair (Almeroth-Williams, 2011). Hence, it was a place of culture and social relations between common and working class people. So, I observed the environment and had informal interviews with people to get an idea of what their social classes and social relations were. Among the traders, the environment was ethnically homogenous, most of them are white British. It was a male dominated atmosphere, there were a few women (18) and most of them worked at the till, segregated in office boxes (19), probably to have less direct contact with their male colleagues. As a woman, I understand that because I received many winks during my fieldwork, thus, I realise that it might get frustrating working in such a male dominated environment. Overall, the atmosphere was frenetic, with traders rushing between spots (20), but also very sociable, everyone knew each other; the blinding light, the shirts covered in blood, the noise of the meat cleavers and the trucks, the shouts and the uncontrollable smell of dead meat were made bearable because of the warmth of the traders, some of them sang. Their identity was authentic and not manufactured. It was not a curated environment, they do not aim to satisfy customers on an appearance level, but by selling quality meat. The customers, instead, vary in ethnicity, gender, and class (21). There was a group of ladies shopping for their families ‘because the meat is good’, others were buying individual packages (22), and many were buying large amounts for restaurants and butcheries. One man told us that he has a butcher shop and he goes everyday to Smithfield to buy meat (23). Despite the main purpose of the market is to sell, customers are not only customers, they are attached to the space as well as the traders. A trader showcased power relation when he forbid me to take pictures inside the building, however, nobody told us to leave regardless of us not purchasing anything. On the contrary, everyone was welcoming and in the mood for a chat, everybody was passionate about the place. One butcher introduced me to his colleagues, they were advanced in age, worked on the site for 30 and 50 years, they said they would stop working if they had to move. The only reason they were still there was for the environment, for their lived space. While the man considered sad that everyone would have to move to Barking, he also accepted that London is changing. For the men of the market, spatial relations are vivid, they consider that the authorities are unjustly repressing the market, but they accept this condition. In this manner, the council and the developers showcase theories of power relations over the workers. I thought of the execution of Wat Tyler, killed on the site because of leading the Peasant Revolt and protested against high taxes. In this neoliberal system, things have not changed, the working class is highly taxed and displaced, and the class power is restored (Harvey, 2004) through urban planning.

4.2 REDEFINING SMITHFIELD THROUGH THE COMMODIFICATION OF PLACE IDENTITY

Hence, Smithfield escaped demolition, but it is still about to undergo a process of justified gentrification (Herzfeld, 2010) because part of the buildings of the Market are damaged, the Museum of London is bringing money to restore, preserve and transform the site into a museum by 2022 (BBC, 2017). The City Corporation of London has accepted to lend money because they will profit from its tourism. Smithfield Market/Museum of London will be part of the cultural hub called ‘Cultural Mile’, a complex that runs from Farringdon to Moorgate, a partnership between the City of London Corporation, the Barbican Centre, Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London Symphony Orchestra and The Museum of London. At the moment, the museum is not at the top 5 for tourist destination, it is not even depicted on the Big Bus London map (24). Thus, it aims to attract tourists and visitors, and intends to be the new cultural destination of London (MuseumofLondon.org.uk). Its plan will also be facilitated by the Elizabeth Line that will provide direct links with the London’s five airports and turn Farringdon into one of the best well-connected areas of London (crossrail.co.uk). Fast transport networks as the railways, interconnect cities into systems of ‘hubs’. Because distant sites are interconnected, the social influx of places are controlled (Graham and Marvin, 2001). Interestingly, during the ethnography I noticed there were cross rail signs around and it was clear that by Farringdon station there was work in progress. In a few years time, Smithfield will have an identity-crisis, prices will soar even further and the market will be a museum, only a monument ready for tourist gaze (Sheller, 2014). They are stopping the fluidity of the space and mutating it into a frozen commodity. The culture of Smithfield will be subverted and deprived from its local workers. The market was a public space where the social classes mingled with each other and, in the eighteenth century, it was the epicentre for the supply of meat. It is where the British beef cult began (Ward, 2014). Celebrations of Smithfield can be found also within the art, like in Hoghart’s ‘O the Roast Beef of Old England’ (25), Defoe described the market as “without question, the greatest in the world”(2001:91). The metropolis consumed 25 million stone of meat annually, the market generated approximately £100,000 daily and the corporation of London profited from it by collecting rates (Almeroth-Williams, 2011). Considering that the beef cult started there, I had to taste Smithfield. With £5 I had a tea (26) and the tastiest and biggest bacon and sausage sandwich I have ever had in the UK. I compared my meal to the one I had the day before at Carluccio’s, a gentrified chain restaurant that sells overpriced food, interested more at its visual appearance rather than its food quality, a restaurant that has many clones around London. It is worrying that Smithfield will steadily lose its “feeling of uniqueness and identity” (Tuan,1977:166) to give space to a gentrified environment. However, one trader told me that Smithfield has already changed a lot because of the health and safety, therefore, by means of EU rules and globalisation. He said: ‘this place will became a place like any others’ and added that Covent Garden used to be a veg market 20 years ago and he used to party there but now it is just a tourist site, and that is what Smithfield will become. That led me to the Fabric (27), I used to club there during my first period in London but I stopped because it was very expensive and mainly tourists attended those parties. It was closed for a period but Amy Lamé, London’s first night Czar intervened to reopen it (Nicholson, 2016), yet, recently, most of clubs in Dlaston have closed down and nobody is planning to reopen them. Considerable attention has been given to the Fabric because it is a symbol in rave culture, as a result, a tourist attraction that increases the economy. Hence, preserving history is another mean of hijacking culture and exploit it by means of neoliberalism. It is as a racial space practice used to gentrify places.

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17. screenshot from google maps

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 24. IMAGE RETRIEVED FROM MAPAPLAN.COM

 25. O THE ROAST BEEF OF OLD ENGLAND (‘THE

GATES OF CALAIS’) (1748) - WILLIAM HOGARTH.

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