News · Academic work
On the risk of gentrification
Selen Baş Ağca completed her postgraduate term project in the Construction Management programme of the Graduate School of Science and Engineering at Yıldız Technical University in June 2026, supervised by Dr Ozan Okudan. It is titled “Assessing the Risk of Gentrification in Urban Projects: A Systematic Literature Review”.
The question it asks is this: when does an urban project trigger the rise in value that displaces the people already living there, and can that risk be measured before the project is approved?
The study searches the Scopus database under the PRISMA 2020 protocol. After the titles and abstracts of more than three hundred articles were screened, eleven empirical studies were read in full. They come from places as far apart as Brisbane and Milan, Monterrey and Shenzhen.
Three things come out of the review. First, different types of project produce different mechanisms of risk: transport, green space, climate, culture-led and urban renewal investments each generate their own pattern of displacement. Second, the risk indicators used in the literature are gathered into thirteen clusters. Third, an assessment framework is proposed, built on three components: the vulnerability of the area, the exposure created by the project, and the capacity for social protection.
The policy proposal is equally plain: a gentrification risk report should be required before large projects are approved, and an early-warning system should read title deed transfers, rental listings, building permits and occupancy data together.
