This book grew out of a 2012 international seminar series co-organised by the editors, entitled ‘Towards an Emerging Geography of Gentrification in the Global South’. We thank the Urban Studies Foundation and the Urban Studies journal who funded the two workshops in London and Santiago de Chile. A special thank you to all those who took part and were willing to try and think outside the ‘gentrification box’. In addition, our thanks to Alison Shaw and Laura Vickers at Policy Press and an anonymous reviewer for all their work in supporting this book.

This collection is in memory of two distinguished professors who researched and wrote about gentrification: the sociologist Hilda María Herzer, who was a co-investigator on the seminar series that underpinned this book but who very sadly passed away in 2012; and the geographer Neil Smith, who also very sadly passed away in 2012, whose assertions about gentrification as the leading edge of global urbanism also underpinned, and indeed continue to underpin, this book.

Hilda, Neil, this book is for you both.