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the polysemic (that is, possessing several meanings) fundamental geographic concept of "place" is defined by "a locality that has a certain relationship of affection between the geographic space and the person who interacts with it". this word receives meanings from different corners of epistemology: while the classical antiquity philosopher aristotle in his work physics describes the "place" as "the limit that surrounds the body", the author of principles of philosophy rené descartes improved the concept, stating that the "place" must also be expressed .
in the conception of the field of humanistic geography, moreover, the word "place" takes the position of a key concept. emerging in the early 1970s, this concept values human-spatial affectivity relationships, with the chinese geographer yi-fu tuan and the irish thinker anne buttimer as major authors in this field. for adherents of the humanistic current, "place" is, essentially, a product of human experience— according to tuan; or, in the words of buttimer, .
within the process of urban formation coined "gentrification" by the british sociologist ruth glass, this concept suffers from ambivalence and ambiguity—it becomes a "place" for some, while it ceases to be a "place" for others. this happens because the geographic transformations resulting from the spatial revitalization (even the purely aesthetic ones) change the individual perception of those who reside or attend there. that said, it can be inferred that this process leads to the financial expulsion of populations with low purchasing power and the insertion of populations with more money in the same location.
firstly, the concept of "gentrification" is given by the process of "becoming gentry", an expression in the english language that refers to the most elite portion of the population in a given space. with this in mind, it is reasonable to assume that, by "becoming elite", the place loses the population with lower purchasing power, as its value in the real estate market becomes more expensive. with that in mind, one can affirm that this process of urban formation is extremely impactful on the population profile and on the dynamics of these local populations.
secondly, during the gentrification process, as the financial, economic and, above all, real estate valuation of the place becomes higher, a certain space attracts investments both from national and international private capital. thus, a location that was previously undervalued in the real estate market becomes attractive to multinational companies. this is precisely due to the fact that there is a significant change in population dynamics and in the very profile of the population that attracts the previously mentioned companies.
