Urbs Nullius: Gentrification and/as Settler-Colonialism

The ideological rationale and material effects of gentrification in major Canadian cities are best understood when existing explanatory frameworks are placed in conversation with the emergent literature on settler-colonialism and Indigenous decolonization. Although anti-gentrification scholars are correct to identify gentrification as a contemporary form of colonization — especially in settler-colonial contexts like Vancouver – they have yet to sufficiently reflect on what this analysis means for how we think of the relationship between anti-gentrification efforts and urban Indigenous land and sovereignty struggles. This scholarship risks anchoring anti-gentrification efforts to a decontextualized notion of “the commons” that threatens to inadvertently treat settler-colonial cities as urbs nullius – urban space void of Indigenous sovereign presence and land rights.