Fringe Gentrification and the Critique of the Contemporary Urban Dreamworld

Drawing from Lefebvre, Benjamin, and Lyotard, this thesis continues the critical sociological investigation into urban-experience and the urban-imaginary. It does so through illustrating a particular regime of desire -- a libidinal-economy -- that currently expresses itself through and exudes influence over concrete-space. It argues that within London, at particular moments, one finds the contemporary “Urban Dreamworld”. A phantasmagoric element of the city, one that ‘promises’ an experience of consumption beyond that facilitated by capitalist urbanism. The thesis documents this libidinal-economy, through walking-interviews and digital-ethnography, and illustrates the particular “Theatre” through which it functions; its constitutive complexes, phantasies, and desires. Importantly, this thesis investigates the "Urban Dreamworld" through the analytical language of “Gentrification” studies. In doing so, it provides a constructive critique of the established explanatory paradigms of gentrification while questioning the ontological assumptions upon which the academic study of gentrification is grounded. Namely, the established literature fails to substantively recognise that gentrification is a latent characteristic of commodified space, one that exists in a parasitic relationship with other social phenomena; including the "Urban Dreamworld". Accordingly, alongside capturing an aspect of the phenomenological experience of contemporary London, it illustrates the fundamental relationship that exists between libidinal-economy and political-economy. In effect, it illuminates that the production of space is a mediated libidinal process.