'Foodscapes as Sensecapes' — Conflicting Accounts of Food Gentrification from the Hansaviertel and Train Station Area of Münster, Germany

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Abstract

This paper challenges the conventional notion of gentrification as a disembodied process driven by political, economic, and cultural forces. Instead, it offers a situated account of contemporary gentrification by examining how people perceive and experience gentrification through sensory interactions with urban environments. The study focuses on food gentrification in Münster's Hansaviertel, a gentrifying urban foodscape that reflects the growing diversity of post-migrant Germany. By analyzing the "language of things and products" (Lefebvre 1991, 80) and applying the emerging perspective of sensory urbanism (Fiore 2021), this research illuminates the relationship between human senses and the gentrification of food and urban space. It examines the sensory perceptions and influence of local actors involved in the production of food and space—including restaurateurs, real estate agents, and municipal authorities. Drawing on an extensive sensory ethnography conducted from 2021 to the present, the paper argues that changes in the built and food environments reflect and perpetuate certain groups' desire to establish and impose their sensory preferences on others. In light of these findings, this paper reconceptualizes foodscapes as sensescapes and frames gentrification as a process mediated by the appropriation of “sensuous power” (Degen 2008). References Degen, M. M. 2008. Sensing Cities. Regenerating Public Life in Barcelona and Manchester. Milton Park, UK: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. Fiore, E. 2021. Gentrification, Race and the Senses. A Sensory Ethnography of Amsterdam’s Indische Buurt and Rome’s Tor Pignattara. Dissertation. Nijmegen. Lefebvre, H. 1991. The Production of Space. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing.

Speakers from the University of Münster

Schrobenhauser, Maximilian Viktor Louis

Professorship of human geography with specialisation in economic geography and globalisation research (Prof. Sippel)