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PALGRAVE STUDIES
IN URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY
Gentrification around
the World, Volume II
Innovative Approaches
Edited by
Jerome Krase · Judith N. DeSena
Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology
Series Editors
Italo Pardo
School of Anthropology and Conservation
University of Kent
Canterbury, Kent, UK
Giuliana B. Prato
School of Anthropology and Conservation
University of Kent
Canterbury, Kent, UK
Half of humanity lives in towns and cities and that proportion is ex-
pected to increase in the coming decades. Society, both Western and non-
Western, is fast becoming urban and mega-urban as existing cities and a
growing number of smaller towns are set on a path of demographic and
spatial expansion. Given the disciplinary commitment to an empirically-
based analysis, anthropology has a unique contribution to make to our
understanding of our evolving urban world. It is in such a belief that
we have established the Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology series.
In the awareness of the unique contribution that ethnography offers for
a better theoretical and practical grasp of our rapidly changing and in-
creasingly complex cities, the series will seek high-quality contributions
from anthropologists and other social scientists, such as geographers, po-
litical scientists, sociologists and others, engaged in empirical research in
diverse ethnographic settings. Proposed topics should set the agenda con-
cerning new debates and chart new theoretical directions, encouraging
reflection on the significance of the anthropological paradigm in urban
research and its centrality to mainstream academic debates and to society
more broadly. The series aims to promote critical scholarship in interna-
tional anthropology. Volumes published in the series should address theo-
retical and methodological issues, showing the relevance of ethnographic
research in understanding the socio-cultural, demographic, economic and
geo-political changes of contemporary society.
Gentrification around
the World, Volume II
Innovative Approaches
Editors
Jerome Krase Judith N. DeSena
Brooklyn College St. John’s University
City University of New York Queens, NY, USA
Brooklyn, NY, USA
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Preface
Simply put, this book is about the process of gentrification with a global
perspective. It is a collection of scholarly but readable essays, which ana-
lyze the process of gentrification in cities around the world through the
lenses of various academic disciplines. The editors sought contributions
that investigated the social, political, and economic significance of gentri-
fication based on original research. This particular volume examines inno-
vative approaches in focus and/or methodology. The book is divided by
regions specifically, the Global North and Global South and continents
within them. Selections utilize primarily qualitative methodologies that
emphasize ethnographic, participatory, as well as visual approaches.
Gentrification, along with resultant displacement, has accelerated
within global cities and spread throughout the world. While the concept
originated more than a half-century ago from observations in London
by Ruth Glass (1964), gentrification is expressed today in a multitude of
occasionally bewildering forms. Capital, along with advanced communi-
cation systems, has literally created a gentrifying global village. Yet, there
appears to be greater homogeneity from place to place. This volume also
reflects the many themes and “types” of gentrification presented in re-
search. Examples are: commercial gentrification, corporate gentrification,
tourism gentrification, “greenification,” regeneration, and transnational
gentrification to name a few.
As ethnographers who often take visual approaches to their subjects,
the editors’ professional and personal travels in the world have allowed
v
vi PREFACE
them to observe and take note of changes that were similar to those they
were studying in Brooklyn and New York City. For example, in Paris,
glitzy coffee shops were found adjacent to tailor shops staffed by im-
migrants. In Dublin, upscale housing was being developed near older,
smaller, and more modest housing. In Palma de Mallorca, a restaurant
named “Brooklyn” was identified, while in Berlin there was a Brook-
lyn barbershop. A vintage clothing store named Williamsburg was seen
in Madrid, and in Lisbon, one noted the construction of luxury hous-
ing (studios to penthouse duplex apartments), advertised with views of
the Tagus River. Upscaling, trendy neighborhoods are found through-
out Rome in areas that were once avoided. Thus, the idea for this global
gentrification project evolved. We are certain that this collection of well-
crafted essays will generate broad discussions of international and compar-
ative theoretical and practical issues.
DeSena would like to acknowledge the support of her family, friends,
and colleagues. Neil Sheehan offered many ideas, observations, and com-
ments. Francis Sheehan served as technical support for the assorted digital
platforms used to create the manuscript. Paul Sheehan heightened her en-
ergy as he entered college. DeSena also thanks St. John’s University for in-
cluding “global” as part of the mission. In particular, Jeffrey Fagen, Dean
of St. John’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, supported her ability to
“see” gentrification in cities in Europe. Furthermore, she would also like
to pay tribute to her colleagues in the Discover New York program for a
multidisciplinary environment allowing for the integration of various per-
spectives in her research. Finally, DeSena would like to acknowledge her
co-editor (at times co-author), mentor, and friend for being an exemplary
scholar, while maintaining his sense of humor.
Krase acknowledges the patience of his wife Suzanne Nicoletti and his
many colleagues, family members and friends who have been collabora-
tors, and occasional subjects, of his studies of urban life and culture which
began shortly after Ruth Glass coined the term. As to thanks for institu-
tional support for his work on global gentrification, he has been the ben-
eficiary of grants from the Professional Staff Congress of the City Uni-
versity of New York, the Fulbright Foundation, the International Urban
Symposium, the Kosciuszko Foundation, Murray Koppelman, and the
Polish Ministry of Higher Education. Finally, DeSena and Krase would
like to express their gratitude to the anonymous reviewers of our two-
volume proposal on Gentrification around the World and the editorial
PREFACE vii
Reference
Glass, Ruth. 1964. London, Aspects of Change. London: Center for Urban Studies.
Praise for Gentrification around the
World, Volume II
ix
x PRAISE FOR GENTRIFICATION AROUND THE WORLD, VOLUME II
“Krase and DeSena provide a timely and essential addition to the social
and cultural geography of gentrification with this remarkable collection
of accounts gentrification from across the globe. Through a variety of
innovative approaches, the contributors show the many ways
gentrification impacts cities, neighborhoods and individuals. They
also relate in detail how it reshapes the socioeconomic fabric, as well as
the iconography of places. From Helsinki’s housing estates to Buenos
Aires’ shantytowns, local perspectives allow the reader to understand the
power of gentrification as it transforms the physical fabric of our cities,
our behaviors, social norms, and even our mindsets.”
—Alessandro Busà, author of The Creative Destruction of New York
City: Engineering the City for the Elite (2017)
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Jerome Krase and Judith N. DeSena
xi
xii CONTENTS
Index 315
Notes on Contributors
xv
xvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
xxi
xxii LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 4.7 New buildings and modest homes in Atocha Alta (Source
Author’s own work) 75
Fig. 4.8 Images of the district of Orzán: ruined buildings, new
commercial premises and brothels (Source Author’s own
work) 76
Fig. 4.9 Past and present of the restored area of Papagaio (Source
Author’s own) 78
Fig. 5.1 East toward Manchester from 5th floor flat, Thorn Court
(Source Photo by John van Aitken and Jane Brake, December
2018) 84
Fig. 5.2 South toward Media City from 5th floor flat, Thorn Court
(Source Photo by John van Aitken and Jane Brake, December
2018) 85
Fig. 5.3 Thorn Court seen through Adelphi Wharf building site
(Source Photo by John van Aitken and Jane Brake, March
2019) 88
Fig. 5.4 Advertising hoarding, X1 development Media City (Source
Photo by John van Aitken and Jane Brake, February 2019) 93
Fig. 5.5 Thorn Cladding and section after removal (Source Photo by
John van Aitken and Jane Brake, March 2019) 100
Fig. 8.1 Myyrmäki—the Mecca of street art in the Helsinki
Metropolitan Area (Photo by author) 163
Fig. 8.2 MyyrYork—well-maintained concrete residential buildings
and underpasses with street art (Photo by author) 164
Fig. 8.3 The Village Road (Photo by author) 167
Fig. 8.4 The piano is used by a variety of people, however,
mostly by the young (Photo by author) 170
Fig. 8.5 Myyrmäki station, with one of the soon to be demolished
shopping malls on the right (Photo by Emma Ahlroos) 171
Fig. 8.6 The lot was originally intended for an extension to
the mall and will soon be developed into housing, with
street-level shops on the ground floors (Photo by author) 172
Fig. 8.7 Underpasses are desirable spaces for street artists
(Photo by author) 173
Fig. 8.8 The presence of the immigrants is not visible in the
street art except for foreign flags (Hungarian and Czech
Republic) (Photo by author) 174
Fig. 8.9 Street art is also subject to vandalism (Photo by author) 176
Fig. 8.10 “Welcome home.” Street art beautifying concrete
(Photo by author) 177
LIST OF FIGURES xxiii
Introduction
J. Krase (B)
Brooklyn College, City University of New York, Brooklyn, NY, USA
e-mail: jkrase@brooklyn.cuny.edu
J. N. DeSena
St. John’s University, Queens, NY, USA
e-mail: desenaj@stjohns.edu
Global North
North America
In Chapter 2, Stephanie Polsky notes that gentrification is most often
associated with a process wherein a group of higher economic and cultural
status comes into physically displace those of a lower economic or cultural
status from the local residential and commercial regions they inhabit. A
great deal of research has focused on this phenomenon in Silicon Val-
ley with a strong emphasis on its physical, visible manifestations. Such
research focuses specifically on the ways in which gentrification impacts
local patterns of consumption, the structure and patterns of public life,
and the socioeconomic appearance of the local itself. This chapter, by
contrast, aims to conceptualize gentrification as a phenomenon impact-
ing upon individuals as much as places. It looks at its effects on their
psyches through processes of social organization that seek to re-establish
cultural beliefs, norms, and behaviors which most closely conform to the
principles of physical gentrification. Not coincidentally, in Silicon Valley,
those most willing to accede to the mind-set associated with gentrifica-
tion are also those who maintain the greatest cultural capital within this
region.
Aneta Kostrzewa examines the impacts of gentrification on ethnic
entrepreneurship in Chapter 3. She argues that while classic gentrifica-
tion narratives emphasize structural forces that effect change, the core
analysis of this study turns to ethnic actors’ agency. Faced with mount-
ing economic pressures—declining number of co-ethnic customers, sky-
rocketing commercial rents, and upscale tastes of the incoming gentri-
fiers—many traditional ethnic shopkeepers struggle to keep their stores
and their livelihoods. At the same time, a group of younger entrepreneurs
innovate and adapt by catering directly to the tastes, needs, and desires
of the middle-class gentrifiers. Paradoxically, by changing store profiles,
and blurring and erasing visible ethnic and working-class markers, the
new ethic entrepreneurs undermine the area’s traditional ethnic character
1 INTRODUCTION 5
Europe
Alberto Rodríguez-Barcón, Estefanía Calo, and Raimundo Otero-
Enríquez, in Chapter 4, provide a visual analysis of the different gen-
trification processes that have been developed in the historic center of A
Coruña, a mid-sized city in the Spanish urban system. Thus, we can iden-
tify up to three differentiated gentrification processes based on their type
of development. Although all of them have common elements, it is pos-
sible to isolate the main factors that trigger the phenomenon. Therefore,
within the four neighborhoods that constitute the historic center of the
city, we can distinguish, first, a phenomenon of commercial gentrification
in a context of rent gap and reconfiguration of the “brand image” of the
neighborhood. Second, we can observe a gentrification model linked to
a historically degraded area, whose intense current touristification process
is associated with a high socioeconomic status. Finally, it is possible to
discern a third model of gentrification after a set of interventions by the
municipal government in strategic enclaves of the neighborhood and a
process of requalification of public space. Results provide a basis for con-
firming that, even in medium urban contexts such as our case study, it
is possible to observe complex and interwoven gentrification models that
interact simultaneously as expressions of global urban capital.
Chapter 5 was written by John van Aitken and Jane Brake. They
emphasize that their work does not seek to enter the long-standing debate
surrounding the critical definitions of gentrification; consequently, we
tend to employ an alternative vocabulary, such as development, redevelop-
ment, displacement, social cleansing, and accumulation by dispossession.
We place emphasis on observing, identifying, analyzing, and in some sense
artistically inhabiting the processes at work in a particular scenario, rather
than searching for an essence or immutable set of characteristics. Based
on the area of Salford, UK, there are many redevelopment projects and
each one manifests particular localized interventions, public-private part-
nerships, and distinct urban imaginaries. These must be placed within the
wider context of local government attempts to transform post-industrial
Salford into a “global city” by 2025 (Salford 2025, n.d.).
6 J. KRASE AND J. N. DESENA
South America
Waltraud Müllauer-Seichter looks carefully at the Lima, Peru, in
Chapter 10. The text focuses on the agents of citizen participation in
the case of the Metropolitano in Lima, Peru. The spatial planning of the
Metropolitano “cut” the Barranco district in two and today represents a
physical and symbolic barrier between the historic and tourist sections and
the socioeconomically poor part, which has hardly any public space and
only a minimal civic infrastructure. This case is especially interesting from
the anthropological point of view, as it is the first time that it has been
possible to observe a more transversal issue—the process of resolving an
issue that is of interest to several social strata—in the short trajectory of
1 INTRODUCTION 9
South Asia
In Chapter 12, Tathagata Chatterji and Souvanic Roy reveal the com-
plexities of brownfield urban regeneration in a developing country con-
text, by looking through the prism of post-industrial spatial restructuring
and urban transformation in Calcutta Metropolitan Region. It provides a
counter-narrative to the processes of gentrification of cities of the Global
North. Land conflict resulting out economic and spatial restructuring is
analyzed to understand the roles of actors and agencies of gentrification
and its discontents. The research shows two contrasting faces of gentri-
fication. On the one hand, a top-down state-led, organized-sector urban
renewal is producing high-value real estate to meet the lifestyle demands
of the globalized elite. On the other hand, a bottom-up gentrification
is also occurring through informal petty politician-builder networks and
local adjustments to meet the shelter and consumption demands of the
lower middle class. It draws upon field observations through ethnographic
studies, interviews with municipal officials, informed citizens, property
developers, and local political activists.
In Chapter 13, Eddie Boucher notes that every year across India, fam-
ilies anxiously await the announcement of their children’s standard board
exam results for grades ten and twelve. These high-stakes exams are at the
10 J. KRASE AND J. N. DESENA
very center of India’s education system, and they serve as the gatekeepers
for future educational opportunities and life prospects. These results are
generally announced in late May, and the event garners heightened media
attention across media platforms on the topic of education. It was this
annual event that presented the researcher the opportunity to investigate
the frequency and the content of media messages for the weeks preceding
and following the announcement for three consecutive years from 2017
to 2019. The data samples were drawn from newsprint media, television
and film, and street signage, and data were analyzed using ethnographic
content analysis as a means to intertextually triangulate emergent themes.
The primary research question asked, to what extent does Jaipur’s cultural
media domain expose people to market-model education initiatives, and
how might these messages impact educational practices and social equi-
tability for students across socioeconomic levels? The overarching find-
ing is that education in India is increasing and systemically gentrified and
inequitable, leaving low-income students with limited educational and life
choices.
References
Bondi, l., J. Davidson, and M. Smith (eds.). 2017. Emotional Geographies. Lon-
don: Routledge.
Chernoff, M. 2010. Social Displacement in a Renovating Neighborhood’s Com-
mercial District: Atlanta. In The Gentrification Debates, ed. J. Brown-Saracino.
London: Routledge.
Cybriwsky, R. 1978. Social Aspects of Neighborhood Change. Annals of the
Association of American Geographers 68: 17–33.
Freeman, L., and F. Barconi. 2004. Gentrification and Displacement: New York
City in the 1990s. Journal of the American Planning Association 70: 39–52.
Gregory, D. 1999. Scripting Egypt: Orientalism and Cultures of Travel. In Writes
of Passage: Reading Travel Writing, ed. J. Duncan and D. Gregory, 114–150.
London: Routledge.
Hackworth, J. 2002. Post-recession Gentrification in New York City. Urban
Affairs Review 37: 815–843.
Harvey, D. 1973. Social Justice and the City. London: Blackwell.
Jansson, A., and A. Lagerkvist. 2009. The Future Gaze: City Panoramas as
Politico-Emotive Geographies. Journal of Visual Culture 8: 25–53.
Knox, P.L. 1991. The Restless Urban Landscape: Economic and Sociocultural
Change and Transformation of Metropolitan Washington, D.C. Annals of the
Association of American Geographers 81 (2): 181–209.
Krase, J., and J.N. DeSena. 2016. Race, Class, and Gentrification in Brooklyn.
Lanham: Lexington Books.
1 INTRODUCTION 11
Stephanie Polsky
Campus Economics
Gentrification is most often associated with a process wherein a group
of higher economic and cultural status comes in to physically displace
those of a lower economic or cultural status from the local residential and
commercial regions they inhabit. A great deal of research has focused on
this phenomenon in Silicon Valley with a strong emphasis on its physical,
visible manifestations. Such research focuses specifically on the ways in
which gentrification impacts local patterns of consumption, the structure
and patterns of public life and the socioeconomic appearance of the local
itself. This chapter, by contrast, aims to conceptualise gentrification as a
phenomenon impacting upon individuals as much as places. It looks at its
effects on their psyches through processes of social organisation that seek
to re-establish cultural beliefs, norms and behaviours which most closely
conform to the principles of physical gentrification. Not coincidentally,
in Silicon Valley those most willing to accede to the mind-set associated
S. Polsky (B)
Institute of Art and Design, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria
gentrification are also those who maintain the greatest cultural capital
within this region.
Within this enclave, ‘gentrification is used as part of urban policy to
“gentrify people”, that is, to make their subjectivities and behaviours
more congruent with the neoliberal principles of the economy’ (Paton
2016, 40). As such what is being witnessed in Silicon Valley should be
perceived as a demonstration of the logic of the contemporary neolib-
eral restructuring of the city to coincide with corresponding geographies
that generate new spatial structures and psychosocial processes. Silicon
Valley’s Tech campuses constantly blur the boundaries between life and
work. Those able to optimally dwell within them as ‘well-resourced men
who are not expected to engage in social reproduction’ (Parker quoted
in Stehlin 2016, 9). Adding to this tension is an expanding digital infras-
tructure that is constantly busying itself with the ranking of individuals
according to specific abilities valued by the technology sector. Therein
residents are subtly compelled to adopt social behaviours and patterns of
consumption that complement the trend towards planetary gentrification
at the same time that Silicon Valley positions itself as one very large incu-
bator for profitable innovation.
Both corporations and their employees find themselves dwelling within
a new era of capitalism where contemporary gentrification exists as one
of a number of ‘competitive processes accelerated through the algorith-
mic transformation of market relations in housing, labor, and education’
(Wyly 2015, 2516). Elvin Wyly asserts that gentrification itself has evolved
and is now set ‘against the structured material inequalities of class in the
capitalist mode of production’ (2015, 2533). Housing, employment and
education have now become asset classes in their own right subject to
aggressive tools of marketisation. They, in turn, become the instruments
subject to perpetual measurement through the ranking of real estate mar-
kets, corporations and universities who must constantly demonstrate their
capacities to accelerate, expand and diversify on a planetary scale.
As a consequence, those individuals working across finance, venture
capital and technological innovation find themselves part of a burgeon-
ing cosmopolitan global elite. Moreover, they find their speculative inter-
ests now increasingly converge with those of the emergent middle classes,
political elites and university-based young entrepreneurs. This is no longer
a question of supply and demand of capable people, but rather of exploit-
ing the minds of these constituencies to believe that their power lies
ultimately in their ability to assimilate and produce knowledge. It is no
coincidence then that the emerging ‘campuses’ of Apple, Google and
2 LIFE ON THE ALGORITHMIC ESTATE … 17
Facebook are based upon older university towns and cities, as these are
elite locales in which people are striving to gain access to the cultural and
economic capital symbolised through the ideal of an institutional inter-
face. Nor is the fact that these new structural entities are strategically
plotted in ‘between localized spaces of encounter’ and ‘competitive pro-
cesses that are speeding up and becoming more geographically expansive
and dynamic’ (Wyly 2015, 2538).
The construction of new campuses coincides within a greater move-
ment in the tech world to fabricate what will, in the future, become cor-
porate ‘manners’. This process is undertaken largely through grandiose
settlement construction projects, which literally entail a clearing of struc-
tures, societal or natural, which came before them. Silicon Valley’s ‘corre-
sponding geographies “mark out” an ever-expanding sociospatial terrain
of governance—across digital and physical space—where conjuring cre-
ativity and innovation is an omnipresent objective’ (Sanson 2014, 11).
In these instances, the community in question is increasingly coerced to
become resident to labour with the relentless modulation and socialisation
of what might be considered as ‘workspaces’. ‘Such processes reorganize
our lives, rather than our labor, around the pursuit of capital, and value
extracted by creative workers is dispersed across individual firms, private
property developments, and local and national cultural enterprise strate-
gies’ (Sanson 2014, 14).
The ultimate goal in building such cognitive testing grounds is to even-
tually have them become something that is integrated into the fabric of
planetary gentrification with the housing of these hyper-intelligent human
beings acting much like first colony settlements. As the artificial suburban
campus spreads into the ‘real’ city, so too does Silicon Valley’s proto-
type for a society based on the blurring of boundaries between itself and
the rest of the world as an arena for the movement of immaterial capital
within the emerging knowledge economy. This is taking place through a
new choreography of technologies, infrastructures, skills, procedures and
capabilities currently being demoed at their campuses and judged in rela-
tion to their role in value creation. This model suggests that computing
should come into all aspects of what we perceive as lived reality. As such,
urban planning should proceed without any preordained organisation,
but rather be seen as a space that is constantly evolving and expanding
based on differences and varieties within the aggregate of its users. This
model assumes that the independent decision making of a great number
of individuals coalesces into a kind of unconscious intelligence about the
environment and its broader relation to a political economy, based on an
18 S. POLSKY
Hacker Way
The employees at Facebook’s corporate campus at 1 Hacker Way face sim-
ilar obstacles when it comes to negotiating the constructed nature of their
immediate work environment. From the offing, the new campus’s exte-
rior facade sustained itself on the pretence that it was something it was
not—the post-industrial High Line in New York City. Rather, its artifi-
cial walkway sits some 70-feet up from the marshlands of Menlo Park,
California. Its design as a walkway compels workers to progress around
a software plotted half-mile loop, rather than a comparatively heteroge-
neous, expansive urban pathway. By comparison, Facebook’s high line
presents its workers with a profoundly limited space on which to plot their
trajectory. Within this same landscape, celebrated architect Frank Gehry,
following Zuckerberg’s request, designed a plaza with h-a-c-k inlaid into
the foundation and an open meeting space called Hacker Square for his
20 S. POLSKY
employees to gather for all night ‘hackathons’ (Foer 2017, 59). Such
activity like his artificial walkway ‘has taken the language of radical indi-
vidualism and deployed it in the service of conformism’ (60). Far from
finding pathways of unauthorised access, Facebook’s class of in-house
‘hacker’ plots their route towards finding solutions according to com-
mon parameters of entry. Much like Zuckerberg’s managerial philosophy
around hacking, Gehry offers, that ‘from the start, Mark wanted a space
that was unassuming, matter-of-fact, and cost effective’ (Gehry quoted in
Metz 2015). Gehry’s first Facebook HQ building, code-named ‘MPK20’,
is meant to mimic its surroundings, not as a marker of creation, but rather
of derivation.
The interior of MPK20 fundamentally exists as one giant space, not in
order to advance geographical efficiency, but rather the transparency of
employees and the governance of their activity from a decidedly inward-
facing perspective. So much so that their employees inhabit a version of
reality that is almost entirely contrived for them by Facebook. Soon after
they leave their San Francisco homes each morning—the most desirable
of which are situated closest to Facebook’s private bus stops—they are
transported free of charge onto plush air-conditioned vehicles, which fur-
nish them with free Wi-Fi, gently nudging them to start producing ideas
for the company well before they actually arrive to work. Once there,
they are afforded free meals and snacks to keep them well fuelled to con-
tinue their productivity. Their continuous movement flows seamlessly into
their lunchtimes, which they can enjoy by sitting on ‘artfully mismatched
designer chairs in the cafeteria’ and brainstorming with peers (Bozikovic
2016). Alternatively, they can cycle over to Facebook’s older ‘classic cam-
pus’, to congregate with other like-minded creative types over free ice
creams at the ‘Sweet Stop’, which is happily free of charge to employees.
Such an atmosphere fosters a progressive inability for its workers to
imagine a life outside of Facebook’s subsumption of reality, or indeed
for it to stoke within its parameters a new form of social anxiety: fear
of missing out. Facebook litters its built environment with opportunities
for valorisation—both of the company and of one’s achievements within
it. At the same time, there are numerous opportunities to ‘perform one’s
complicity’ with its values in order to secure one’s admittance and therein
inoculate oneself against the increasing precaritisation of life beyond the
space of its private commons. From the time of one’s application to work
here, the employee becomes trapped in a never-ending quest for contin-
ued inclusion, lest one should ‘fall from the ranks’, and find themselves
2 LIFE ON THE ALGORITHMIC ESTATE … 21
among ‘the surplus populations’ of applicants that failed to get here, and
as a consequence ‘are rendered invisible, voiceless, and ultimately non-
existent’ (Pinto and Franke 2016, 29). Here, at least, you get to ‘like it’.
There is no capital registered as part of any of these psychosocial trans-
actions, and yet it is obvious that behind this facade of suburban idyll that
Facebook effectively underwrites everything laid out here in plain sight.
This includes the complicity of its inhabitants to ‘like it’, by carefully
removing any obvious elements of monetisation from the environment
that might break the spell of the company’s benevolent paternalism and
cause class friction among its workforce. The homogeneity of choices that
are designed into this model makes the experience of being on campus
appear harmonious, and masks the conditions of economic distortion that
sustain Facebook’s fanciful image of itself as a thriving village coexisting
with a declining city.
Willow Campus
In early 2018, Zuckerberg’s plans for an expanded corporate campus
mushroomed into aspirations to quite literally build a new village in
Menlo Park set to house ‘the 35,000 employees the corporation predicts
it will have within 10 years’ (Milbach 2018). He is determined that pop-
ulation will remain situated in Menlo Park, ‘effectively doubling the city’s
current population of 33,888’ (Mibach 2018). Zuckerberg claims that he
was forced to build this corporate enclave, and indeed rebuild the crum-
bling city of Menlo Park around it, because of the regional governmen-
t’s ‘failure’ to invest in its vital infrastructure. Similar to any functioning
municipality, his new mixed-use village, to be called ‘Willow Campus’, will
provide its residents with much-needed services, housing and transit solu-
tions, as well as office space. ‘On that site, Facebook wants to build 1.75
million square feet of office space, 1,500 apartments, 125,000-square feet
of retail, a 200-room hotel, a visitor center and 5,319 parking spaces. The
retail aspect of the plan calls for a grocery store and pharmacy’ (Mibach
2018).
The policy-making implications at this newly announced scale are vast
as Facebook plans on taking up some 54 acres of Menlo Park’s civic
area. Through undertaking the construction of Willow Campus, Zucker-
berg will have achieved his ambition to have Facebook function ‘more
like a government than a traditional company’ and in so doing use its
increasingly large community of workers as leverage in ‘setting policy’ at
22 S. POLSKY
ground level (Zuckerberg quoted in Foer 2017, 61). Policy making that
might ordinarily include maintaining transport infrastructure, sheltering
the homeless and the ongoing construction of new affordable housing
will now come about at Facebook’s behest, rather than Menlo Park’s.
The privatisation of publicly owned space is fundamental to this pro-
cess, which is engineered to make sure that the local population find they
have no right of place inside these meticulously fabricated commons, and
their surrounding infrastructures are held in the domain of private owner-
ship. Patrick Wolfe maintains that settler colonialism ‘destroys to replace’
and that expropriation in settler colonial contexts, ‘is a structure, not an
event’ (388). The current mayor of Menlo Park, Kristen Keith, is only too
happy to cede stewardship of essential community services to Facebook
(Neate 2017). What she failed to acknowledge in her ringing endorse-
ment of such projects is that their intricate strategies of tax evasion have
starved cities like Menlo Park of vital revenues hastening the advent of
this crisis.
The desire to establish private sovereignty over certain urban domains
on the part of figures like Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Steve Jobs
corresponds directly with the orchestrated bankruptcy of the state, as a
direct consequence of extremely lenient corporate taxation policies at the
local, state and national levels, and lax taxation rules that allow for the
illicit offshoring of billions in corporate earnings. By carefully annexing
their wealth away from their locale of generation, these corporations have
effectively lowered their tax contributions across the globe to zero. While
their public image may be one of making and doing, behind the facade
their enterprise is very much concerned with taking and owning, wherein
gentrification presents yet another opportunity to monopolise wealth.
Zuckerberg has commissioned Rem Koolhaas’ Office for Metropoli-
tan Architecture (OMA) to co-direct the design of its Willow Campus.
OMA’s projects, through their founder, are famously devoted to pro-
moting ‘the capitalist, market-driven metropolis’ based on their belief in
‘the power of capitalism to drive change’ (Dunham-Jones 2013). OMA’s
architectural designs focus on ‘the staging of uncertainty’, the genera-
tion of environments ‘that accommodate processes’, and the construc-
tion of a physical ‘infrastructure for endless intensifications and diversi-
fications, shortcuts and redistributions’ that will ultimately culminate in
‘the reinvention of psychological space’ (Koolhaas quoted in Dunham-
Jones 2013). Douglas Spencer argues that such architecture ‘makes com-
mon cause with managerial governmentality’ and reflects the interests of
2 LIFE ON THE ALGORITHMIC ESTATE … 23
Apple Park
One of the final acts that Steve Jobs accomplished before his death was to
secure planning permission from the Cupertino township council to build
his master structure, ‘Apple Park’. This awesome structure, a giant pri-
vate compound shaped like a circle, would eventually hold 12,000 Apple
2 LIFE ON THE ALGORITHMIC ESTATE … 25
Nahun beds, 95
Natural explanations, 69, 70
Naturalism borrows moral standards, 358
Natural process, 69, 74
Natural science, 186
Natural Selection, 9, 11, 12, 13, 29, 30, 152, 153, 305, 306, 350;
a theory of chance, 11, 350;
has no positive efficacy, 153;
theory has impeded progress of science, 13
Nature, 151, 185;
inorganic impotent to duplicate even laboratory synthesis, not
to speak of vital phenomena, 151
—lacks means of self-vivification, 185;
not automatic, 151
Nautilus, 118, 283
Neanderthal, 314, 315, 317, 325, 326, 329, 330, 331, 332, 333,
335, 337, 342;
bone, show some racial characteristics, 329;
cranium, 331, 332
—capacity underestimated, 333, not ancestral to Cro-Magnon
type, 335;
not more ancient than modern type, 337;
remains, 325, 332
—human, 325;
skull, cranial capacity of, 314, 325;
type of, 330, 332
Neanderthal Man, 314, 315, 317, 323, 326, 341, 342;
distinctly human, 342;
a dwarf, 314;
No.1, 323, 326;
divided opinion on, 324;
No.2, skeleton, 326
—skull missing, 326
Neanderthal type, 326, 330, 332, 333, 334, 336;
alleged to be distinct species, 332;
alleged to be more ancient, 334;
degenerate, 336;
differences, 334;
race, 334;
no longer considered oldest type, 336
Neanderthaloid, 328, 333, 341, 343;
characteristics occur in modern skulls, 333;
race, 343;
skulls, modern features occur in, 333
Nebular, hypothesis, 181
Negroes, 334
Neo-Darwinism, 10
Neo-Kantian, 203, 219;
phenomenalist, 203
Neo-Lamarkism, 10, 12, 15
Neolithic, 332
Neontologists, 76
Neotoma, 307
Neo-vitalism, 171, 201, 202;
postulates a unique force, an agent “sui generis,”171
Neo-vitalists, 58, 200, 201;
regard vital principle as force “sui generis,” a unique agent,
200, 201
Nephridia, 280
Neptune, 184
Nerve plasm, 265
Neurograms, 213, 214, 222;
extended, 222;
imprinted on neurons, 213, 214;
objects capable of stimulating an extended organ, 222;
objects of, endowed with concrete properties, 222;
proportioned to stimuli, 222;
physical basis of imagery, 214, 222
Neurons, 213, 222, 350;
sensory and central, 213;
utility of sensory, 222
New names for fossil duplicates of modern species, 119, 120
New Stone Age, prehistoric, 337
Nihilism, philosophical, 350
Nitrogen snow, 183 note;
reddish light of, 184 note
Non-cosmopolitan species, 283
Non-enents, 309
Non-opposability of human hallux, 50
Non-phenomenon or substance, 209
Non-specialist, when disqualified and when not, 189-191
Non-viable, 25
Novelty, emergent, 350
Nuclear components, self-perpetuating, 139
Nuclear reorganization, 155, 160, 161, 162;
a restorative process,
155, 161;
means of rejuvenation, 161;
none in somatogenic reproduction, 160;
periodic, 162;
primitive, 162
Nuclear sap, 139
Nucleus, 137, 138, 161;
cellular, 138;
daughter, 161;
distributed, 138;
germinal, 161;
parent, 161
Nucula, 118
Nutrition, a reflexive activity, 175
Palæobotany, 117
Palæolithic, 327, 328, 330, 333, 343;
artists, 343;
human remains, 330;
man, 328, 333
Palæontological argument, 66-127;
defects in, 75, 124;
in abstract, 66-75;
in concrete, 75-127;
a theoretical construction, 126
Palæontological evidence, 3, 8, 66, 74-80, 83, 89, 97, 105, 107,
124, 311, 312;
imperfection of, 89;
rated as outweighing physical evidence, 97, 107
Palæontological pedigrees, 3, 76, 78, 81, 82, 84, 126;
definition of, 81;
of horse, 76, 78, 81, 82, 126;
camel, 126,
and elephant, 126
Palæontologists, 76, 86, 87, 88, 91, 119, 190, 310, 313, 321,
334, 344;
incompetent to decide questions of specific origin or
distinction, 87, 88, 89, 334
Palæontology, 3, 82, 83, 88, 92, 95, 96, 114, 119, 126, 195, 311,
312, 313, 344;
facts of, 83, 195;
ignorant concerning origin of man, 344;
orthodox, 95, 96, 119
Palæotherium, 76
Palæozoic, 73, 108, 117, 118, 124 note, 125, 335
Palingenesis, 277, 288
Pan-Pacific Conferences, 344, 346
Panspermia, 182
Parallelism, 57, 58;
vs. divergence, 57
Paramœcium, 138, 161, 178;
aurelia, 138
Parasites, 46, 53
Parasitism, 52
Parathyroids, 292
Parent cell, 156
Parthenogenesis, 158, 159, 160, 162;
artificial, 159, 160
—not violation of law of genetic continuity, 159, 160
Pathology, 141
Patient, 176, 177
Pear-tree, 6, 88
Pebrine, 44
Pecking instinct of chicks, 256
Pecten, 118
Pedigrees, of genera, 84
Pelopæus, 260
Penguin, wings of, 287
Pentacrinus, 119
Perception, 208, 212, 253;
an act of, 208;
of personality, not personality, 212;
sensory, 253
Percepts, objective, 235;
sensory, 219
Periodicity, 56;
of elements, 56;
families of elements, 56
Peri Psyches, Aristotle’s, 196, 197, 215
Perissodactyla, 78
Permian, 104, 118
Persistence, 116, 119, 123;
cannot be subsumed under same principles as
transmutations, 123;
its significance intensified by current theories, 123;
of types, 119;
of unchanged types, 116
Persistent types, generic and specific, 123
Personal identity, sense of, 212
Personality, 205, 211, 212, 238;
a unitary and uniform reality, 212;
alternating, 211;
based on unchanging principle, 212;
perception of, 212
Pessimism, 355, 357
Petit-Puymoyen, industry of, 331
Phæophytin, 147
Pharyngeal arches and clefts, 278, 279
Phase, reversal of, 168, 169
Phenomena, 208, 209;
phenomenalists’ substantialization of, 209
Phenomenalism, 207, 208, 211, 212;
a purely academic philosophy, 211;
identifies mind with “thought stream,”212
Phenomenalistic school, 206
Phenomenalists, 203, 205, 206, 207;
inconsistently admit of physical phenomena while denying
subject of psychic phenomena, 206, 207
Phenotype, 5, 19, 25, 27, 41, 43, 68, 123
Philology, 339;
proves primitive man to have been civilized, not barbaric, 339
Philosophers, 220
Philosophy, 189, 190, 195;
in rôle of critic, 189;
in rôle of sycophant,
190;
materialistic, 195;
relation to science, 189
Phonetic elements, 246
Photosynthesis, 146
Phycocyanin, 149
Phylogeny, 39, 80, 122, 275, 276, 284, 285, 308;
human, 285, 308;
palæontological, 115
Phylum, 37, 38, 69, 116
Physical impressions, 213
Physical science, 352, 354
Physicochemical action, reducible to interaction between
unequally energized masses and particles, 175
Physicochemical forces, executive factors in vital operations,
201
Physiology, 350
Phytol, 147
Picotee sweet pea, 19
Piltdown skull, 320
Pineal eye, 292
Pineal gland, 292, 293, 295;
not functionless, 293
Pioneer colonies, 110
Pithecanthropus, distinctly simian, 342
Pithecanthropus erectus, 309, 313-318, 342;
cranial capacity of, 314;
a giant ape, 315;
existing casts inaccurate, 318
Pituitary body, 292, 293
Pituitrin, 294
Placenta, 276
Planarian, 278
Planetesimal, hypothesis, 181
Plantigrade, 272
Plastids, 139, 141
Platycrinidae, 92
Platyrhine monkeys, 287
Pleistocene, 78, 100, 104, 313, 319, 320, 325;
Lower, 313, 320;
Middle, 319
Pleurotomaria, 118
Plica, semilunaris, 297
Pliocene, 78, 95, 309, 313, 317, 323;
Upper, 309, 313, 317
Pluteus, 159
Polar body, second, 159
Polariscope, 144
Polymorphism, 122
Polynesians, 325
Polynuclear condition, 138
Polyphemus, the Cyclops, 293
Pompilids, 247, 248, 263, 264
Pompilius, 247, 261
Popular trust not to be abused, 345, 346
Postauricular muscles, 304, 305
Post-glacial time, 289
Preadaptations, 46, 47, 52, 53, 63, 124, 279;
adventitious appearance of, 46, 47;
divergent, 279;
entail modifications of specific magnitude, 47;
evolution as “natural explanation” of, 53;
inherited, 47
Pre-Cambrian, 100, 116, 118, 125;
terranes, 125
—extension great, 125
Preformation, 3, 160
Prehension, 50, 271, 272
Prehistoric, 337
Prehuman, arboreal stage, 309, 217
Presupposition, latent in materialistic logic, 186
Pre-tertiary, 312
Primates, 308
Primitive man, 338, 342, 343;
not irrational, 342, 343;
not a savage, 338
Primula, 19
Principles, 171, 172;
entitive and dynamic, 171, 172
Priocnemis, flavicornis, 248
Priority, 76;
a “sine qua non” condition of ancestry, 76
Process, 206, 209, 225;
divorced from agents, 209;
of reflection entails identity of observer and observed, 225;
subjectless and sourceless, of phenomenalists, 206
Prognathic face, 332
Prognathism, 325, 330, 333, 341;
of upper jaw accentuated, 341
“Progress,”355, 359;
modern, 359;
of science, 355
Progression, 50, 271, 272, 317;
bipedal, 272;
modes of, 271, 317
Prehistory, undocumented, unreliable, 340
Pronephric duct, 281
Pronephros, 280, 281 note
Prophylaxis, 356
Propliopithecus, 309, 311
Prosthenic, 271
Protein, 140, 144, 145, 147, 151;
multimolecule of, 140
Proterotheres, 78
Proterotheriidæ, 78
Proterozoic, 104 note, 117
Protista, 5, 59, 136, 138, 156, 157, 163;
polynuclear condition not rare among, 138
Protoplasm, 141, 143, 144, 151, 160, 161, 175, 181;
dead, 143;
how reinvigorated, 160, 161;
invisible structure, 141;
not a chemical compound but a complex system, 142, 143;
persistent specificity of, 144;
ultramicroscopic structure of, 143;
visible, a picture of, 141
Protococcus, 151;
viridis, 151
Protons, 103, 174
Protophytes, 135, 136
Protoplasmic architecture, 174
Protozoa, 117, 118, 135, 136, 170
Psyche, 179, 200
Psychic, 198, 205, 230, 233;
and physical dualism of Descartes, 198;
functions, 205, 233
—of organic type, 233;
states, correlated with organic states, 230
Psychology, 196, 197, 198, 204, 205, 208, 211, 235, 236, 361;
alone competent to pronounce origin of man, 196;
as science of behavior, 198;
human, 235;
positive, 361;
reveals psychic activities as modification of abiding ego, 205;
sole science that studies man on his distinctively human side,
196;
vulgar, 236;
without a soul, 208, 236
Psychophysical, 198, 206, 236;
dualism, 198;
parallelism, 206, 236
Psychosis, 213, 235, 255, organic, 213, 235
—has for agent and recipient the psycho-organic composite,
213;
psycho-organic, 255
Physiological process not reducible to mere physicochemical
reaction, 199
Potency, 199
Purpose, 11, 249, 255, 258, 259, 298;
Divine, 249;
unconscious of, 255, 259
Purposiveness, 248, 249, 262;
no intelligence, 262;
objective, 248, 249;
unconscious, 248
Quadrumana, 296
Qasr-el-Sagha, 115
Quaternary, 98, 319;
Early, 319