Differential productions of rural gentrification: illustrations from North and South Norfolk Martin Phillips Department of Geography, University Of Leicester, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK Received 16 October 2002; received in revised form 10 August 2004 Abstract This paper focuses attention on the making of space for rural gentrification, both discursively and materially. The paper empha- sises the differential constructions of gentrification within urban and rural studies. Connections are drawn between production-side theories of gentrification, notions of the Ôpost-productivist countrysideÕ and studies that have related rural demographic change and gentrification with planning and property relations. Drawing on these three sets of ideas, the paper explores gentrification in rural Norfolk. It is argued that the contemporary geography of rural gentrification may in part reflect historic structures of landownership as well as settlement classifications associated with the land-use planning system. Country and District level analysis is followed up by detailed study of gentrification of two villages in Norfolk, which highlights how gentrified rural spaces may be produced in rather different way and through different agencies, and as a result takes different forms. Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Gentrification; Rurality; Social construction of space; Property; Norfolk 1. Making space for rural gentrification: an introduction The term gentrification is often interpreted as a lar- gely urban phenomena, with urban gentrification being a widely acknowledged research subject—even research frontier (van Weesep, 1994)—and having become a het- erogeneous and contested discursive space, with highly divergent interpretations of gentrification being ad- vanced and debated. In contrast, rural gentrification ap- pears as a small, restricted and rather unremarkable discursive space. A relatively small number of people use the term rural gentrification, and when it is used is often accompanied with little or no justifying commen- tary: rural gentrification is either largely ignored or pre- sented as a commonplace referent to some changes in contemporary rural life. The title of this paper in one sense points to the differential production of these two discursive spaces, and to a continuing endeavour (see for example, Phillips, 1993, 2001b, 2002b, 2004) to transform the discursive space of rural gentrification into something more akin to that of the urban, whereby gentrification is seen as an important but congested and contested term. As noted in Phillips (2001b), this trans- formation does not imply that rural researchers neces- sarily have to import all the ideas and practices of urban studies into the rural discursive space as there may well be significant differences between processes and senses of gentrification in rural and urban areas, dif- ferences which need to be reflected in the interpretations of gentrification adopted (see also Smith and Phillips, 2001). However, there may also be significant common- alities of process and complex interconnections in senses of urban and rural gentrification which are wor- thy of exploration, and which if anything appear to increase, not lessen, the complications of interpreting gentrification. 0016-7185/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2004.08.001 E-mail address: mpp2@le.ac.uk www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum Geoforum 36 (2005) 477–494