[Glice]

Yeah - agreed - I suppose I'd say that gentrification tends to be conflated with other economic processes. But I can't think of anywhere I've ever been that's been gentrified in the strictest terms. Somewhere like Knightsbridge or Chelsea have, so far as I know, always been full of cunts; further afield from urban areas, there's great slews of the UK which have long since been homes to horses/ hunting/ boarding school people. So perhaps the relative definition of gentrification is different here to in the states? I suspect for a more strict example of gentrification here I'd have to look into post-war re-building projects, which I'd suspect is already a massively different economic paradigm.

Wealth inequality is pretty bad here. I know that much. And there's less of a sense of meritocracy here; people often feel tied into their (self-assumed) class. Better or worse, I don't know, but I know a lot of non-British people find our attitudes towards class baffling and infuriating - so culture unfortunately plays quite a part in things (as it does in the relative 'definition' of gentrification).