Gentrification: The meaning of gentrification has gone through a series of changes in the past several decades. The root word, "Gentry", partly explains the terms gentrification: it gives us a sense that the city is being upgraded by adding middle or upper class people. However, this kind of development is no longer equivalent to the past experiences of gentrification, where, according to Neil Smith and Jeff Derksen, people don't mind to rub shoulders with unwashed masses.
By tracing back to the original meaning of gentrification, Neil Smith and Jeff Derksen, in the essay "Urban Regeneration: Gentrification as Global Urban Strategy", have identified "three waves of gentrification". The first wave is simply a plain process of transforming working-class to middle-class; the second wave, which is originated in 1970's and 1980's, involves a higher rate of economic restructuring; finally, in the third wave of gentrification, this process has become a fully capitalized strategy. As stated in the essay, the final phase, which came out in 1990's, of gentrification has five distinct characteristics: the transformed role of state, penetration by global finance, changing levels of political opposition, geographic dispersal, and the sectoral generalization. All these characteristics explain the uneven social structure results in the last phase of gentrification. .
Unlike its old version, the new process of gentrification, as Neil Smith and Jeff Derksen quotes in the essay, "involves a lot more than simply providing gentrified houses." In fact, the sign of prosperity we see in our everyday life is consisted of elements such as shopping malls, technology, facilities, etc., and these elements have further polarized the level of development in the society.
Using the urban regeneration that takes place in Vancouver as their dominant piece of evidence, Neil Smith and Jeff Derksen declares that the major cause of the evolution of gentrification is the "world economy".