Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.
The broad aim of the research is to investigate the social and economic consequences of the middle class settlement of inner London in recent decades in order to assess whether there are variations between different areas. A subsidiary aim will be to investigate the relationships between the middle class and other social groups in these neighbourhoods and whether, if these differ, the quality of these relationships can be related to the area and the social composition of the groups involved. Have the middle class exacerbated social exclusion in the city as some claim (Smith 1996)? At the heart of the research proposal is the assumption is that it is no longer possible to identify a single middle class and that different groups will have different social, economic, political and cultural interests and, for this reason, will have different relationships to their localities and populations. More specific objectives are: to identify what are the dominant patterns of middle-class settlement in inner London and how these are differentiated - by occupational characteristics, by social background, or by age-cohort; to identify the consequences of middle class settlement particularly in terms of networks, patterns of sociation, the relations between work and non work associations; to investigate to what extent these social and possibly economic interactions involve other social groups and if so how these variations might be explained; to identify if possible what one area might learn from another - in other words, are there policy recommendations that can be made to improve the attractiveness of some areas and minimize their negativities?
Main Topics:
The research was centred on the ways in which inner London has changed over recent years and in particular on the process of gentrification. It did this by investigating the consequences of the middle classes upgrading different areas of inner London since the 1970s and examining the consequences of this both for the neighbourhoods concerned and in relation to other non middle class groups. Fieldwork was conducted between 1998 and 2000 in six areas: three south of the river Thames and two north, a sixth area comprised the London Docklands which was subdivided into three. These areas were: 'Telegraph Hill' (New Cross in the London Borough of Lewisham) Brixton (Herne Hill and Tulse Hill in the London Borough of Brixton) 'Between the Commons' (Battersea in the London Borough of Wandsworth) 'Barnsbury' (in the London Borough of Islington) 'London Fields' (Dalston in the London Borough of Hackney) Docklands: 'The Isle of Dogs' (in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets) 'Surrey Quays' (in the London Borough of Southwark) 'Britannia Village' (in the London Borough of Newham) The dataset contains the results of interviews undertaken with respondents drawn from these areas. Standard Measures ONS Social Class classification was used.
No sampling (total universe)
Face-to-face interview
