Started: 2020
Thesis title: Gentrification and its impact on network inequality
Supervisory committee: Dr. Carmela Cucuzzella, Dr. Norma Rantisi, Dr. Amy Poteete
Damoon Nasseri is a PhD student in the Individualized Program at Concordia University. He has a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical engineering and a master’s degree in urban planning. He is interested in the fields of gentrification, segregation, urban inequalities, and community development. His previous researches have been on the physical and spatial separation in urban neighborhoods, and the impacts of physical renovation actions on residents’ sense of place. He gives credence to the observation that almost all the urban problems are rooted in inequalities that result from different economic, social and political issues.
Currently, he is investigating gentrification-caused displacement and its relation with the social capital. According to Lin, Social capital is the “investment in social relations with expected returns in the marketplace” (Lin, 2004: 29). As displacement originated from gentrification has destructive and even in some cases fatal effects on residents and displacees in terms of social, economic and psychological aspects, Damoon realizes that a strong social networks of residents as an agency and subjectivity in a community can be considered as an asset and capital to struggle and resist against the capitalist structure, and can pave the way for achieving the right to the city. His research is centered on Parc-Extension and Villeray where a large and diverse immigrant population is living. These neighborhoods have been experiencing gentrification and this process has been accelerated by a large number of students of Université de Montréal who are looking for housing. In this respect, he employs qualitative research methods including ethnography, interviews, focus groups, and discourse analysis to find the relation between the gentrification displacement and social capital, and explain the inequalities stem from social capital disruption.