The atypical gentrification of Quebec City between 1971 and 2016: A portrait of a medium-sized polycentric city
While gentrification in Quebec City has received recurrent attention since the 1980s, most analyses have focused on individual neighbourhoods. Adopting a systemic perspective, this article presents a statistical portrait of gentrification in the Quebec City CMA between 1971 and 2016. More specifically, we characterize the evolution of the phenomenon in three different historical periods, and then observe its relationship with certain predictors. Our cartographic analysis shows that gentrification has reached all of the central neighbourhoods and a few peripheral sectors, but that it has evolved in a discontinuous manner and experienced stagnation and setbacks. A regression analysis, for its part, confirms the connection between gentrification and the increased presence of artists, young households and homeowners. However, the lack of a clear relationship between gentrification and average rent raises questions about the buffering role of social housing and the segmented dynamics of the displacement of disadvantaged households to dense inner-city areas.