Gentrificering og mytomani

Abstract

Abstract Inspired by contemporary urban sociology and spatial theory this article explores how Jan Sonnergaard in his novel Frysende våde vejbaner (2015) depicts and criticizes the gentrification of Copenhagen. I argue that Sonnergaard, through the main protagonist Jesper, demonstrates a double perception of the gentrified city, respectively an ‘excluded’ and an ‘included’ variant. Through this technique Sonnergaard firstly explores how the city has become a ‘non-place’ for those who do not have the capacities to participate in the new urban middleclass-culture and secondly what kind of social mechanisms that are at play within the same urban middleclass. The article concludes with a discussion of how the main character Jesper may also be ignorant of his own role as gentrifier due to his self-image as an urban bohemian, his idolizing of countercultural music and fiction, and his ownership of a flat in a housing cooperative.