Extending the scale of critical housing studies: Towards ‘cross-border gentrification’?

Drawing upon the case of a polycentric cross-border metropolitan region in western Europe, this paper seeks to explore population mobility and housing market developments at the regional/international scale. Transnational linkages within this cross-border region intensified with the opening of the borders and the economic development of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg as a global financial centre and a centre for European Institutions. Today about 44 per cent of employees working in Luxembourg live nearby across the Belgian, French or German border. One of the reasons is that housing prices in Luxembourg are nearly twice those in the neighbouring border regions. This increased mobility has an impact on the residents living in these areas. The research that guides this paper aims to detect perceptions of this phenomenon. Therefore principles of municipal policy, urban planning documents and the local media of three medium sized towns in the borderland are reviewed. Following a rather open research concept based on qualitative approaches (discourse analysis, grounded theory), findings reveal that locational advantages such as the proximity to Luxembourg do play a role; the perception that affordable housing is becoming increasingly critical leads to resentments that mix up with national stereotypes; while city officials report displacement due to the border-effect, they also illustrate the opportunities for regional development; at the same time property developers foster the internationalisation of urban planning. Pointing to the relational geographies that link these different places, the paper discusses the pros and cons of an umbrella concept that might be called ‘cross-border gentrification’.