Food, Gentrification and Located Life Plans

Even though the phenomenon of gentrification is ever-growing in contemporary urban contexts, especially in high income countries, it has been mostly overlooked by normative political theorists and philosophers. In this paper we examine the normative dimensions of gentrification through the lens of food. By drawing on Huber and Wolkenstein’s (Huber and Wolkenstein, Politics, Philosophy & Economics 17:378–397, 2018) work, we use food as an example to illustrate the multiple ways in which life plans can be located and to argue that both existing residents and newcomers have an interest in occupancy rights. More specifically, while newcomers have an interest in moving freely to new neighbourhoods in order to purse their preferred life plans, they also have an interest in being able to continue to pursue those life plans once they have acquired them, and this requires occupancy rights and the implementation of measures aimed at regulating and slowing down gentrification. Moreover, when residents belong to already disadvantaged groups, more significant anti-gentrification measures can be implemented in order to prevent injustices from being compounded.


Introduction
Even though the phenomenon of gentrification is ever-growing in contemporary urban contexts, especially in high-income countries, it has been mostly overlooked by normative political theorists and philosophers. In a recent analysis which constitutes an exception to this trend, Jakob Huber and Fabio Wolkenstein (2018) argue that gentrification is wrong because it undermines residents' occupancy rights, which are grounded in their interest in being able to pursue located life plans. In this paper we pick up on Huber and Wolkenstein's fruitful idea that gentrification interferes with located life plans. We use the example of food to illustrate the locatedness of life plans. Many food experiences are located experiences, i.e. they are linked to specific places, and these located food experiences are important parts of life plans. These located food experiences are one kind of experiences that render life plans located. Because these food experiences are tied to a particular place, the life plans that they are part of are tied to a particular place.
Exploring food experiences is an interesting way to examine gentrification and located life plans, for three reasons. First, food experiences are good examples of located experiences. Food and the enjoyment of food are often inherently place-based (Joassart-Marcelli and Bosco 2017) and for many people they are valuable, or especially valuable, because of where food is consumed. In addition, many places acquire their distinctive nature and appeal also thanks to the food that is produced and/or sold and/or consumed in or around them.
Second, food is often one of the driving factors of gentrification (Cohen 2018). When new supermarkets, restaurants, cafes and other various food outlets are introduced in a neighbourhood, this often attracts new people to it. New food experiences draw these people into neighborhoods. People who move into a neighbourhood, it should be noted, are not always part of a process of gentrification. Whether that is the case depends on a number of other factors that are often beyond their control, including economic changes as well as private and public investment (Lees et al. 2008). And even if they are part of a process of gentrification, these people may not always be aware of it. For these reasons, we refrain from using the term 'gentrifiers' to refer to these people in our paper, since that term implies a level of agency and awareness with respect to the process of gentrification which, we believe, people who move into a neighbourhood do not always have. We use instead the more neutral term 'newcomers'. Furthermore, we only focus on individual newcomers and set aside issues concerning collective actors, such as corporations or franchise chains, that may also move into a neighbourhood.
Third, as well as being a driver of gentrification, food-and, more specifically, food production, distribution and consumption-can also be affected by gentrification processes. Gentrification can change the mix of food outlets in a neighbourhood, and their inventory and prices, thereby reducing food access and food security for residents. House price and rent increases may force some of those involved in the production and distribution of food in a neighbourhood (e.g. owners of take-aways, restaurants and grocery stores) to relocate elsewhere, thus transforming the culinary character of the neighbourhood and, potentially, that of the displaced culinary culture(s). Thus focusing on food experiences can help to illustrate both what newcomers gain from moving into a gentrifying neighborhood and what neighborhood residents lose as a result gentrification.
We are not claiming that these are among the most serious consequences of gentrification. When residents are displaced or see their neighbourhood radically change as a result of gentrification, this will have an impact on their lives which goes well beyond food experiences, and will affect their family life, employment, and social relationships. Yet using food as an example, we aim to illustrate how there is, empirically, a continuity between the causes and consequences of gentrification, and between the interests of newcomers and those of displaced (or otherwise affected) residents.
Our paper proceeds as follows. In the next section, we discuss Huber and Wolkenstein's account of gentrification as well as Margaret Kohn's (2016) analysis of this topic. In Sect. 3, we examine ways in which food experiences can be constitutive of life plans, ways in which these food experiences can be located, and thus ways in which located food experiences render life plans located. In Sect. 10, we consider the food-related effects of gentrification on people who remain in a gentrified neighbourhood, the food-related effects on people who are displaced, and the effects on newcomers. Gentrification cannot be viewed as a purely negative phenomenon. It has both losers and winners, and the latter may include both long-term residents and newcomers who, thanks to gentrification, have the opportunity to pursue food-related life plans that might have not been as feasible and/or successful for them beforehand.
In the final section, we discuss the justice or injustice of gentrification and policies to stymie or slow it down. We argue that we should consider both the rights of residents whose life plans are disrupted by gentrification and the claims of would-be newcomers to move into neighborhoods where they can fulfil their life plans. This argument captures the tension between residents' occupancy rights (which justify measures to stymie or slow down gentrification) and would-be newcomers' claim not to be prevented from moving into a neighbourhood (which speaks against anti-gentrification measures). Both residents and newcomers, we contend, have an interest in exercising a fundamental moral power, i.e. 'the capacity to form, to revise, and rationally to pursue a conception of one's rational advantage or good' (Rawls 2005: 19). This requires that they be able to live or move into the kind of neighbourhood that will best enable them to pursue that conception of the good. Are we, then, at a stalemate, unable to reach general conclusions about whether there is a justice-based case to stymie or slow down gentrification? We argue that we are not, for two reasons. First, newcomers may someday be long-term residents with life plans located in that neighborhood, and thus have an interest in slowing down or preventing further gentrification in order to continue enacting their located life plans. Therefore the same fundamental interest that speaks in favour of allowing gentrification -an interest in fashioning and enacting a life plan-also justifies measures to slow down gentrification even from the very perspective of newcomers. Second, gentrification often takes place against background injustices and compounds these injustices, and this fact needs to be taken into account when morally assessing it. We therefore conclude that efforts to stymie and slow down gentrification are justifiable from a justice perspective even once we recognize the importance of gentrification for enabling newcomers to enact life plans.

The Existing Debate on Gentrification in Political Theory and Philosophy
Gentrification involves both demographic and spatial changes (Glass 1964). It can be understood as 'a transformative process driven by the influx of middle-class people into formerly lower-class areas, which consists in a change of the spatial appearance and social composition of urban spaces and which can yield implications for both residents and those who engage in economic or social practices in those spaces that range from the mere transformation of neighborhoods to the expulsion of those who reside or work there' (Huber and Wolkenstein 2018: 381). Before delving into the analysis of food and gentrification, it is necessary to briefly outline what are the central claims of existing normative accounts of gentrification in normative political theory and philosophy. As we mentioned in the introduction, the only two substantial discussions of gentrification in the literature are those provided by Kohn (2016) and Huber and Wolkenstein (2018). We will consider them in turn.
According to Kohn, whose analysis of gentrification is part of a broader project on justice and injustice in urban contexts, gentrification is unjust because those who are displaced from their neighbourhood, or who may see their neighbourhood change in ways that are no longer compatible with their life plans, are victims of bad luck. More specifically, Kohn grounds her argument in the theory of luck egalitarianism, according to which inequalities are only unjust if they result from people's bad luck and unchosen circumstances, rather than from their choices (Lippert-Rasmussen 2018). Based on a luck egalitarian perspective, Kohn (2016) argues, gentrification is unjust because many residents' desire to continue to live in a specific neighbourhood (a desire that gentrification may prevent them from realizing) is an 'expensive taste' resulting from 'bad price luck'. In other words, since 'the market determines whether a taste is expensive or inexpensive and the individual is not able to control the market' (Kohn 2016, p. 98), the fact that some people may have to leave their neighbourhood because it has become too expensive to live there is not something they can be held responsible for. It is, therefore, an injustice that needs to be addressed.
While luck egalitarianism is central to Kohn's argument, so is attachment to a place, also called 'topohilia' (Tuan 1974). Attachment to a place involves such diverse sources as aesthetic pleasure, familiarity, a sense of a community, and the resulting networks of support, trust and social capital that all of this generates (Kohn 2016: 99). We stress this point both because we think it is plausible and because it is also central to Huber and Wolkenstein's (2018) account of gentrification.
More specifically, Huber and Wolkenstein ground their analysis in the idea of 'located life plans', the view that 'the plans, projects, and relationships of human beings are in numerous ways intertwined with certain spatial arrangements, in particular with one's location of dwelling' (Huber and Wolkenstein 2018: 382; see also Moore 2015;Stilz 2013). Because of the locatedness of most of our life plans, '[i]ndividuals…have a strong interest in the continued use of, and secure access to, a place of residence, and indeed, places in which their economic or social life is situated…given that this is a necessary background condition for the pursuit of virtually any conception of the good' (Huber and Wolkenstein 2018: 383). This strong interest provides the moral foundations for individuals' 'occupancy rights', 'i.e. rights to continuously occupy the place in which their social, cultural, and economic practices are anchored' (Huber and Wolkenstein 2018: 379). Like Kohn, therefore, Huber and Wolkenstein assign a special importance to people's attachment to place, even though they embrace a rights-based rather than luck egalitarian approach. And, for them, protecting the rights of residents will require implementing such measures as rent stabilization regulations and zoning laws, which will enable residents to avoid, or at least delay, their displacement (Huber and Wolkenstein 2018: 387). Other anti-gentrification measures include imposing taxes on vacant properties in order to increase the housing stock and reduce housing prices, providing residents with opportunities for organization and mobilization, building more affordable housing, reducing or freezing property taxes for existing long-time residents, providing support for senior homeowners, and limiting the building of luxury developments (Price 2014;Williams 2020).
In summary, both Kohn and Huber and Wolkenstein's accounts are grounded in the view that gentrification threatens the located enjoyment of one's life plans; we pick up on this feature of their accounts. In other words, we think that in order to appreciate the injustice of gentrification one must accept the premise that there is something valuable (and relevant from a justice perspective) in the located character of many of our life plans. Our goal here is to illustrate the located nature of important experiences, and the role of these located experiences in located life plans, using the example of food. Ultimately, however, we will depart from both Kohn and Huber and Wolkenstein's accounts. Unlike Kohn, we will not embrace a luck egalitarian approach, since we consider this too controversial (for an overview of some of the criticisms of luck egalitarianism, see Lippert-Rasmussen 2018). Moreover, while we will draw more extensively on Huber and Wolkenstein's account, unlike them we will consider the rights of both those who are negatively affected by gentrification (e.g. those who have to relocate or whose neighbourhood is significantly transformed as a result of gentrification) and the claims of would-be newcomers to move into neighborhoods of their choice.
Our broader perspective is grounded in the idea, famously defended by John Rawls (2005: 19), that citizens in a liberal society have two 'moral powers', i.e. 'the capacity for a sense of justice' and 'the capacity to form, to revise, and rationally to pursue a conception of one's rational advantage or good' (Rawls 2005: 19). Our focus is specifically on the latter. In a liberal society, citizens have an interest in enacting a life plan and thus pursing a conception of the good. If a person is practically unable (or it is very difficult for them) to live or move into the kind of neighbourhood that will best enable them to enact their life plan (e.g. by working, studying, or building relationships there), then their ability to pursue their conception of the good is seriously hindered. Both the interests of existing residents and those of newcomers can be traced back to the fundamental interest all citizens of a liberal society have in exercising their second moral power.

Food-Related Goods, Food Experiences, Life Plans, and Locatedness
The causes of gentrification are complex and diverse. They include, for example, economic changes, private and public investment, the so-called 'rent-gap' (Smith 1987) (i.e. the gap between the existing rental value of a property and its potential value), and the influx into a neighbourhood of individuals and groups who seek new lifestyles and opportunities. These factors are often interrelated (e.g. Lees et al. 2008).
Food plays a key role in the process of gentrification. This role is extensively documented in the empirical literature, which has highlighted the presence of different food-related sources of gentrification. For example, the presence of supermarkets and grocery stores, which guarantee access to (healthy) food, has been shown to render a neighbourhood more appealing and thus contribute to gentrification (Cohen 2018: 2;Johnson Gardner 2007;Anderson 2017). Gentrification is often also driven by the presence of trendy restaurants (Slater 2006), including those serving 'ethnic' foods (Hanser and Hyde 2014;Hyde 2014), which are often associated with 'authenticity' (Cohen 2018: 3). Furthermore, coffee shops may also contribute to gentrification when they are perceived 'as "third places" between work and home, and workspaces for knowledge workers and those in the gig economy' (Cohen 2018: 3; see also Papachristos et al. 2011). Public markets and farmers markets can also contribute to rendering a neighbourhood more desirable and especially appealing to 'affluent consumers seeking authentic interactions with growers' (Cohen 2018: 4; see also Gonzalez and Waley 2013), and so can community gardens (Voicu and Been 2008).
Each of these types of food spaces can act as a driver of gentrification, but why? To answer this question, it is important to understand the various food-related goods and food-related experiences people have, the various roles that food plays in people's lives, and thus the various ways in which food is connected to individual and community well-being.

Food Experiences and Food-Related Goods
First of all, food can be conceived as a resource necessary for sustenance and survival. When there are no food outlets at all, and especially when some people may find it difficult to travel to other neighbourhoods in order to find food outlets (e.g. due to lack of private transport and/or absence of suitable public transport options), then sustenance and survival may be endangered. This is perhaps, though, a rare scenario in contemporary urban contexts, at least in high-income societies. In such societies it may be more common, instead, for people not to be able to realize a different set of food-related goods and experiences, i.e. those associated with food as a source of good nutritional outcomes, health and well-being (beyond mere survival). When people, for example, live in so-called 'food deserts' (Walker et al. 2010), i.e. areas in which good quality and healthy foods are unavailable, and healthy eating takes too much money, time and effort, then their access to those food-related goods and experiences is limited.
In addition to its role in promoting nutrition, health and well-being, food also has a key social function. More specifically, sharing food and eating together (e.g. at restaurants, at homes, with members of one's family or broader community), like giving one another food in times of need or as a friendly gesture, can contribute to building and fostering social relationships (e.g. Mulvaney-Day and Womack 2009). At the same time, social and community relationships can enhance an individual's food experience, either because one already has meaningful relationships (e.g. love, friendship, etc.) with the specific others one shares or exchanges food with, or because other people (not necessarily specific ones -e.g. the kind of people who frequent certain restaurants or food shops) can be part of the aesthetic and cultural experience (the 'vibe') that make one's eating experience more enjoyable. Furthermore, social relationships can also help to increase our food resources, as when people borrow food from one another in times of need, thus reducing food insecurity (Mulvaney-Day and Womack 2009).
Food can also be linked to social and cultural identities, e.g. when it is prepared and consumed as part of specific religious and cultural traditions, rituals, etc., or used to express certain lifestyles (e.g. Barnhill et al. 2014). In this way, food experiences can shore up group identity and group membership beyond the immediate community. Of course, these kinds of group experiences can also occur within a local community and serve to strengthen bonds in that local community and between that community and the larger group -for example, the celebration of a Passover Seder by neighbours. It is important, however, to point out that the more strongly food and food experiences are related to social, cultural and moral identities of different kinds, the more they will present both positive and negative dimensions, by marking boundaries between groups in ways that shore up community but that also exclude outsiders (as in the case of certain middle/upper middle-class lifestyles that also come with particular ways of eating, e.g. veganism).
Further, food may be central to the expression and fulfilment of certain moral and ethical commitments, as in the case of food choices driven by an ethical commitment to animal rights and welfare, environmental justice, and global justice (De Tavernier 2012).
Finally, food can have an aesthetic value, and be central to a person's self-expression and creativity, or to their aesthetic appreciation of a certain place. Here we would like to distinguish between two different types of connection between food and place. On the one hand, there are place-based food experiences, i.e. food experiences that are deeply affected by (and considered especially valuable because of) the place in which they take place, e.g. because that place somehow influences, 'colours' or conditions the experience. For example, eating a bagel in a Jewish bakery in Montreal or a pizza in Naples are not quite the same experiences if we change the locations to Heathrow Airport or Covent Garden in London. A related but distinct kind of experiences is what we could call food-based place experiences. These are ways of experiencing certain places more fully by having certain experiences with food, e.g. as when eating a locally produced food enables someone to have a fuller experience of that place, such as having a fuller experience of Tuscany by eating locally grown tomatoes and wines. A single experience could be both a place-based food experience and a foodbased place experience: eating pizza in Naples could be meant to give you a better experience of the pizza as well as a fuller experience of Naples. What seems to be distinctive about these two types of aesthetic food experiences is that they are inherently located, in the sense that they must take place in a particular location. I.e. it is their being located in this place (e.g. Montreal rather than Heathrow Airport) that renders them valuable, and it is by nature of being this specific place (e.g. Tuscany) that they provide a fuller experience. This does not mean, however, that other types of aesthetic food experiences, or of food experiences more generally understood (including all the other previously illustrated categories) do not have any relationship with place. While they might not be as inherently located as place-based food experiences or food-based place experiences, they can become part of located life plans, and therefore acquire an indirect locatedness themselves.
Let's summarize the aforementioned analysis by listing the following types of foodrelated experiences: a) sustenance and survival; b) nutrition, health and well-being; c) family and community; d) social and cultural; e) moral and ethical; and f) aesthetic.
These food-related experiences might act as drivers of gentrification. Nutrition, health and well-being, for example, can be drivers of gentrification, e.g. if new supermarkets, grocery and healthy food stores are built in a neighbourhood. Similarly, family and community experiences can also be drivers of gentrification, e.g. if a neighbourhood provides food-related resources and experiences that might help one's family and community to flourish, and so can social and cultural food experiences, e.g. those contributing to the maintenance of one's religious or national identity. Likewise, moral and ethical food experiences can act as drivers of gentrification-e.g. when vegan restaurants or organic food shops open in a neighbourhood-and so can aesthetic food experiences, as when certain restaurants and cafes act as drivers of gentrification because of the architecture that surrounds them, or simply because of their non-located aesthetic value-e.g. new wine-tasting bars or chocolate-tasting cafes opening in a neighbourhood. In short, these food-related experiences can be valuable to newcomers, and thus when a neighbourhood enables these experiences and transforms to better enable these experiences, that can be a driver of gentrification. We discuss this more below.
Analogously, these food-related experiences, when present in a neighbourhood, can be valuable to its existing residents. If the neighbourhood enables existing residents to have these experiences, then being dislocated from the neighbourhood will undermine their ability to have these experiences. So, too, the neighbourhood could be transformed by gentrification in ways that undermine existing residents' ability to have valued food experiences. We explore these ideas in Sect. 10. First, though, it is worth exploring briefly the role of food experiences and food-related goods in life plans.

How Food-Related Experiences and Goods Relate to Life Plans
In order to understand the relationship between food-related experiences and life plans, we should draw a distinction, first of all, between food-related experiences that are constitutive of one's life plan and those that are only instrumentally necessary for its realization.
Some specific food-related experiences are a constitutive part of one's chosen life plan, and valuable for this reason. For example, if your life plan is to open a restaurant and/or to be a chef, a number of food-related experiences (e.g. aesthetic, social, etc.) will be constitutive of your life plan and, for that very reason, valuable (because your chosen life plan is what gives value to your life). These food experiences are directly constitutive of your life plan. However, some food experiences may be indirectly constitutive of one's life plan. Some of them, for example, are part and parcel of the personal, family, social/community or cultural experiences that are themselves a constitutive part of one's life plan. For example, your life plan may include a rich family life, and food (e.g. in its aesthetic and social dimensions) may be a big part of that family life. Here the link between food experiences and life plan is indirect, and while these experiences are still valuable, they may be less so because of their looser relationship with your life plan. In summary, food experiences can be directly or indirectly constitutive of one's life plan, and (more or less) valuable for this reason.
A life plan may also include expressing your cultural, national or ethnic identity and experiencing it with others (within and beyond your family), and food can be a central part of that. For example, suppose your life plan includes being part of the Polish community in the neighbourhood in Brooklyn where you were raised, and a significant part of that community life involves eating Polish food with family members, neighbours, and in local restaurants.
A life plan may also include aesthetic experiences involving food, e.g. a life plan might include regularly eating delicious foods, regularly trying new foods, or becoming an expert on haute cuisine. The aesthetic experiences included in a life plan could be place-based food experiences. For example, it could be part of your life plan to have a series of place-based food experiences-eating pizza in Naples, bagels in a Jewish bakery in Montreal, fish head curry in Singapore, or whatever place-based food experiences you can have. A life plan could also include specific place-based food experiences, for example regularly eating Polish food in the neighbourhood you grew up in. Similarly, it might be part of your life plan to have a full experience of place, in whichever place you happen to live, and to do that by experiencing the foods distinctive of that place by going to farmers markets or farms, eating locally grown food and local specialties, and enjoying local cafes and restaurants.
Some food experiences are instrumentally necessary for one's life plan, even though they are not constitutive of that life plan, either directly or indirectly. Having access to affordable nutritious food, for example, enables health and thus generally enables one to pursue one's life plan, insofar as the latter requires a certain level of health. Convenience vis-à-vis food also enables one to pursue a life plan. Feeding work-procuring, planning, and preparing food-takes significant time, money and effort as well as regular attention. The demands of feeding work can limit the other activities people have the time and energy to engage in. Thus if food is convenient or readily available, this can free people up to engage in pursuits that would otherwise be unfeasible. For example, procuring varied foods may be relatively easy in your neighbourhood, either because of the availability of affordable shops and other outlets or because you are part of a network of people who routinely engage in the practice of exchanging different kinds of foods. While it may not be constitutive of any of your life plans, this food access may be instrumentally necessary for you by enabling you to eat a healthy diet even while pursuing other life plans.
To give another example, suppose that your neighbours feed your children after school when they are hungry and you are at work, which enables you to pursue your life plan of working at that job. Having that network of neighbours and having them feed your children is not part of your chosen life plan but is an experience that enables you to pursue your life plan-i.e. you are able to work at your preferred job and meet your children's needs because your neighbours will help out with your kids while you are working (and you may help them in turn if and when they need).

Food Experiences and Located Life Plans
In the previous subsections, we discussed key food-related experiences and goods, and then discussed ways in which these experiences and goods can be constitutive of life plans or can be instrumentally necessary for life plans. Let's now connect up those ideas with Huber and Wolkenstein's (2018) view that life plans are sometimes located, and people must remain residents in a particular neighbourhood in order to realize their life plans. Recall that, according to Huber and Wolkenstein, when people have located life plans (and most people do) these located life plans can be disrupted by gentrification, thus resulting in the violation of their occupancy rights. And this, we argued, undermines their ability to exercise their second moral power, i.e. their ability to form and pursue their preferred conception of the good. This constitutes an injustice. When we think about the relationship between gentrification and food-related experiences, then, we should consider the ways in which food experiences are part of a life plan, and the ways in which those food experiences, as part of those life plans, are located, such that dislocation can undermine the located food experiences and thereby undermine the life plan.
Here, it should be noted, we are not referring solely to those aforementioned food experiences that are inherently located, such as aesthetic place-based food experiences and aesthetic food-based place experiences, but also to food experiences more generally, since any of them (even if not inherently located) may acquire locatedness via the life plans of which they are part. Do some food experiences constitutive of or instrumentally necessary for life plans require being located, or remaining located, in a particular neighbourhood? Do some food experiences that are constitutive of or instrumentally necessary for life plans render those life plans located?
We here discuss three ways in which food experiences may require being located in a particular neighbourhood: i) by being inherently located (e.g. place-based food experiences where the place in question is the neighbourhood); ii) by being instrumentally located, i.e. there are features of the neighbourhood instrumental to having the food experience, such as infrastructure, walkability, climate, or combinations thereof, and it so happens that these features cannot be replicated elsewhere; and iii) by being socially located, i.e. by requiring specific people who reside in the neighbourhood or a network of people in the neighbourhood that cannot be replicated elsewhere.

Inherently Located Food Experiences
We have already seen that certain food experiences are inherently located. These include aesthetic place-based food experiences and aesthetic food-based place experiences, which may be constitutive of a person's life plans and require being located in a particular neighbourhood. For example, if regularly eating grilled sardines in the streets of Lisbon Old Town where you grew up is constitutive of your life plan, e.g. because that unique urban environment 'colours' your food experience and makes it aesthetically valuable for you, then no longer being able to live there would deprive you of having that place-based food experience, and this would be detrimental to your life plan.
However, not all place-based food experiences require being located in a particular neighbourhood. For example, if it is part of your life plan to have a series of place-based food experiences-eating grilled sardines in Lisbon's Old Town, pizza in Naples, bagels in a Jewish bakery in Montreal, fish head curry in Singapore, and so forth-this requires you to travel and have a variety of experiences but does not require you to have any particular experience or to reside in a particular place. Similarly, suppose your life plan includes having food-based place experiences-e.g. experiencing places more fully by eating locally produced foods and enjoying local cafes and restaurants. This need not require you to live in a particular place but just requires you to pursue these kinds of food experiences wherever you happen to live.

Instrumentally Located Food Experiences
In some cases, food experiences are not inherently located, i.e. there may not be an intrinsic link between a food experience and a place. However, the actual space of a neighbourhood, or of a geographical area more generally-including its infrastructure, walkability, climate, etc.-can be instrumental to these experiences. If these key neighbourhood features are not available elsewhere, then the food experiences are de facto located in that neighborhood. For example, Eaton Mall in Oakleigh, one of Melbourne's many suburbs, is a pedestrianized area that features many Greek restaurants, cafes and cake shops. Its pedestrianized character (unusual for a Melbourne suburb, and resembling similar pedestrianized areas in European cities) provides an infrastructure that facilitates conviviality and al fresco dining, multiplying opportunities for social interaction. In the case of the many Greek customers who regularly fill the tables of the various eating outlets, this experience is also enhanced by the opportunity to interact with fellow Greeks (or Greek-Australians), speak Greek, and participate in Greek cultural festivals (which are often held along Eaton Mall). Being forced to relocate to another suburb due to gentrification might deprive locals of this opportunity for socially valuable food experiences (or make it more difficult to enjoy), given the lack of similar pedestrianized areas in other suburbs. 1

Socially Located Food Experiences
It is, however, a third category that may constitute the most common type of food experiences. These are what we call socially located food experiences, i.e. food experiences that are located because they require specific people who reside in the neighbourhood or a network of people in the neighbourhood that cannot be replicated elsewhere.
Many of the food experiences that are central to our life plans, or are necessary for our life plans, require being located in a particular neighbourhood. For example, if you are a restaurant owner, your life plan may have gradually become located to the extent that your restaurant depends on the people who live and/or work in the neighbourhood where the restaurant is located. Perhaps initially you could have opened that restaurant in any other similar neighbourhood, which could have provided you with the kind of infrastructure that you need in order to succeed (e.g. pedestrianized access, walkability, etc.). However, you chose this neighbourhood and, with time, locals have become attached to your restaurant, and you to them. They have over time learnt to appreciate your food, and you have increasingly become dependent on them. Your life plan, which is centred around food, has therefore become located, and you would find it very difficult to relocate to another neighbourhood. Similarly, some of your customers, whose life plans revolve around the aesthetic appreciation of food, may have become so attached to your restaurant (because of the aesthetically stimulating food you serve, the tasting classes and cooking courses you regularly organize, etc.) that they would also find it difficult to relocate to a new neighbourhood and be unable to appreciate your food, or to do so less regularly. Another example of a socially located food experience is having a social network that provides you or your family with food experiences that you otherwise would not have. This might be, for example, a social network that provides more reliable access to food-i.e. neighbours who share food, or who feed each other's children. Because you live in this neighbourhood, you have been able to build a network of people you know and trust. If you move elsewhere, you cannot simply move your existing network of people to the new neighbourhood, and you may not be able to easily establish a new social network.
From these examples, it seems that one way in which food experiences are located in a particular place is that they involve other people who are located there. In such cases, the food experiences are located but not necessarily place-based (e.g. like place-based aesthetic food experiences). Think again of the aforementioned Lisbon example. It might be that you value eating grilled sardines in Lisbon's Old Town not because of the aesthetic features of that urban environment but because of the people who participate in that activity with you, e.g. people who, like you, grew up in that neighbourhood. Socializing with them by regularly eating sardines along those alleys, e.g. in the many local festivals regularly held there, is central to your life plan. In this case, it is not the fact that these experiences occur in this place per se that renders them valuable but the fact that they happen in connection with certain people who are located in this place-if you could relocate those people with you to a new neighbourhood, you would not lose that social locatedness. However, and this is the key point, those people cannot easily be untethered and moved to a new place.
Here we should make another distinction. On the one hand, the people located there, who make your located food experience valuable, may be specific people who cannot simply be replaced by other people who live in a new location. For example, if you regularly share a meal with a particular dear neighbour-an experience that may even be central to your life plan (e.g. because of the special friendship you have with that neighbour, resulting from many experiences you shared together over the years while living next to each other)-you cannot simply replace them with a new neighbour elsewhere. And neither can you easily replace the friends you grew up with, and with whom you enjoy sharing certain eating experiences-as in the aforementioned Lisbon example. Of course, meeting new neighbours and friends elsewhere might with time result in new valuable located experiences but it will not enable you to regain the located experiences you have lost by leaving your previous neighbourhood. Similarly, you may have a relationship with a particular grocer, formed over years. You care especially about this grocer and they care about you. The produce they sell, and the advice the grocer constantly gives you, have become a central part of your located food experiences, whether these are constitutive of your life plan (e.g. a grocer who provides you with kosher food if you are Jewish, or with food that complies with animal welfare standards if you are an animal rights activist) or just instrumentally necessary for it (e.g. a grocer who provides you with nutritious and healthy food, which enables you to engage in your (non-food-related) life plan).
In other cases, food experiences do not essentially involve particular others but just require certain types of people who serve certain roles. For example: you may value the experience of having a grocer who keeps track of your family's food needs and preferences, even though you have not become attached to this or that specific grocer. Or you may value having a network of neighbours who give each other food, share meals and feed each other's kids, though you are not particularly attached to the specific people who are part of this network. Also, you may like to be surrounded by a certain kind of people enjoying similar things (including similar foods and food experiences) to those you enjoy. In such cases, the specific members of the community are fungible, i.e. they could in principle be replaced by similar others without the relevant experiences changing significantly. In such cases, it may be argued that such food experiences are not located (at least, not for this reason, though there might be other reasons why they are). For example, if what you enjoy is a hipster culinary culture, then living either in the Mission District in San Francisco or in Fitzroy in Melbourne (and relocating from one to the other, or vice versa) may not make much difference. However, even when people or networks of people are in principle replaceable, they may not actually be feasibly replaced. For example, in the new neighbourhood you are forced to relocate to as a result of gentrification you may not be able to find a network of neighbours or a community of hipster foodies who render your food experiences valuable. In such cases, the food experiences that you may lose if you are forced to move elsewhere are located.

Located Food Experiences and the Life Plans of Neighbourhood Residents and Newcomers
In the previous sections we argued that food experiences can be constitutive of or instrumentally necessary for a life plan, and reliably having certain food experiences requires being located in a particular neighbourhood. This has implications for both neighbourhood residents, whose life plans may be disrupted by having to relocate to a new neighbourhood or by change in the neighbourhood, and for would-be newcomers, whose life plans may require moving into a neighbourhood.
As gentrification transforms neighbourhoods, this exposes residents to displacement/ expulsion or to transformation (Huber and Wolkenstein 2018). Gentrification may compel local residents to relocate elsewhere, for example because they can no longer afford housing in the gentrifying neighbourhood. If they stay, the neighbourhood may be deeply transformed. Either outcome may undermine their ability to engage in the food experiences on which their life plans depend.
The effects of displacement and expulsion are fairly obvious, also based on the foregoing analysis. While some food-relevant features of a neighbourhood might potentially be reproduced elsewhere (e.g. its infrastructure), others might be very difficult (e.g. a social network of people) or sometimes impossible (e.g. the view of a specific distinctive landscape-e.g. the Mount Vesuvius in Naples) to reproduce elsewhere. The effects of transformation for local residents may include negative ones such as food becoming more expensive, preferred foods becoming less available (as the mix of restaurants and stores changes), and harder-to-characterize social and cultural effects (e.g. new restaurants that are not culturally accessible for long-time residents). For example, in recent years many traditional London pie and mash shops in gentrifying areas have introduced vegetarian options, especially in order to accommodate the dietary preferences of new residents. This has sometimes caused a tension with longstanding residents and shop owners, with the latter lamenting these changes and, in some cases, refusing to adapt to newcomers' requests in the name of tradition (Ranta 2018). Two additional points should be considered.
First, in both displacement/exclusion and transformation processes, the pace of the process matters. Sometimes, residents who decide and/or are able to stay may be able to adapt to the changes brought about by gentrification, for example by purchasing low-priced properties to avoid rising rent costs or by increasing housing occupancy (Pearsall 2012). Similarly, if one is able to plan well in advance they might be able to relocate elsewhere in ways that will not be too disruptive of one's life plans and food experiences. If, however, the changes resulting from gentrification happen too fast, this is likely to undermine people's ability to adapt and therefore to continue to pursue the located food experiences they find valuable.
Second, there might be both winners and losers when it comes to the effects of gentrification. For example, it is possible to imagine that some restaurants and stores become heavily frequented by those who move into the new neighbourhood. This might lead these places to raise their prices and transform into upscale versions of their former selves. This could in turn (a) harm those neighbourhood dwellers who used to frequent the relevant places but now cannot afford eating there anymore (a harm that is aggravated if other food outlets are being priced out of the area and are forced to close) but also (b) benefit those who transform their restaurants/food outlets in accordance with new demands. So, there might be a quite complex picture as to who are the winners and losers in the transformation process resulting from gentrification, i.e. what good and harm gentrification causes, and for whom. What is especially important in this claim is that gentrification may not only dismantle/disable food experiences for (many) long-time residents but also enable food experiences for other residents.
When considering the positive and negative effects of gentrification, the effects on newcomers should also be registered. The ability to move into a neighbourhood allows newcomers to have experiences that might have been unfeasible for them beforehand. This is especially the case when the experiences would-be newcomers seek are placebased, i.e. inherently linked to the specific place or neighbourhood they would like to move into. But it may also be the case when would-be newcomers want to move into a neighbourhood where they can have the kinds of experiences that they could not access in the place where they currently live (e.g. a car-based suburb as opposed to a vibrant pedestrianized hipster neighbourhood). The fact that food is a driver of gentrification suggests that would-be newcomers may be seeking certain kinds of food experiences, and moving into a gentrifying neighbourhood may enable them to have those experiences. In some cases, would-be newcomers may have life plans requiring those food experiences.

The Justice or Injustice of Gentrification
We have argued that gentrification cannot be viewed as a purely negative phenomenon. It has both losers and winners, and the latter may include both long-term residents and newcomers who, thanks to gentrification, have the opportunity to pursue food-related life plans that might have not been as feasible and/or successful beforehand. This is not simply a sociological observation but something that has important normative implications.
To understand why, recall Huber and Wolkenstein (2018)'s analysis: according to them, people have located life plans, in virtue of which they have occupancy rights. However, Huber and Wolkenstein also acknowledge that even if we have a right to something, there may be countervailing moral considerations that need to be taken into account when deciding whether to implement anti-gentrification measures-i.e. the changes caused by gentrification may be pro tanto injustices but not all-things-considered injustices. In this vein, it is important to recognize that long-term residents' occupancy rights can come into conflict with other moral claims.
To understand what these claims might be, recall also that all citizens in a liberal society have two fundamental morel powers, the second of which is 'the capacity to form, to revise, and rationally to pursue a conception of one's rational advantage or good' (Rawls 2005: 19). Their interest in enacting a life plan and thus pursing a conception of the good, we explained earlier, requires that they be able to remain or move into the kind of neighbourhood that will best enable them to realize their life plan, lest their ability to pursue their conception of the good be seriously hindered. Therefore, it can be argued that would-be newcomers' interest in moving into a neighbourhood because of the life plans they can enact there is the kind of interest that a liberal society should generally protect, for example by not passing anti-gentrification policies that make it more difficult for would-be newcomers to move into a neighbourhood. But in what sense do anti-gentrification policies infringe on would-be newcomers' interests? We saw earlier that such policies come in different forms. Take, for example, rent stabilization policies and support for senior homeowners. These measures can limit the extent to which existing residents are displaced from their neighbourhood, thus de facto reducing the housing stock (and, potentially, the retail space) available to newcomers. And when these measures are also accompanied, for example, by anti-luxury development policies, this can render the neighbourhood even less appealing to wouldbe newcomers, especially wealthy ones, who will have fewer chances to live and/or set up business in the new neighbourhood. In sum, as a result of anti-gentrification measures, it will be more difficult for would-be newcomers to move into a neighbourhood and pursue their food-related life plans there, whether as restauranteurs, foodies, or something else.
If one is to be able to form and pursue a conception of the good (e.g. a life as a foodie in a cosmopolitan metropolis), one will need to be able to move and reside where opportunities for that kind of life plan are ripe, e.g. a neighbourhood with an up-and-coming restaurant and cafe scene. However, that choice (combined with other factors) may contribute to gentrifying processes that will transform that neighbourhood and/or displace its current inhabitants. It therefore seems that the interests of would-be newcomers, and a society's enabling of them, may come into conflict with the occupancy rights of those who, as a result of gentrification, will be displaced from their neighbourhood-or will have to adapt to a radically transformed neighbourhood-and therefore lose their ability to pursue their life plans, including their food-related life plans.
Where does that leave us, regarding the justice or injustice of gentrification, and of measures to prevent or slow it down? There may seem to be two conflicting claims-residents' occupancy rights and would-be newcomers' claim not to be prevented from moving into the neighbourhood-both of which we can see as grounded in Rawls's second moral power, namely the capacity to develop and pursue a conception of the good. Should we just consider gentrification on a case by case basis, balancing these two considerations to reach a conclusion about what justice demands in each case? Is there no general justice-based case for policies to slow down gentrification? We believe that the answer to these questions is negative, for two reasons.
First, newcomers may someday become long-term residents with life plans located in the neighbourhood they are moving into. They therefore have an interest in slowing down or preventing further gentrification (e.g. through some of the aforementioned policies) in order to be able to continue enacting their located life plans in the future, even if that makes it more difficult for them to move into that neighbourhood in the first instance. A second reason, which has been lurking throughout this paper, is that gentrification often takes place against background injustices and compounds these injustices. Thus we may conclude that efforts to stymie or slow down gentrification are justifiable from a justice perspective, even once we recognize the importance of gentrification for enabling newcomers to enact their life plans. Let's consider each of the two reasons in turn.

Newcomers' Interest in Slowing Down Gentrification
Newcomers are future long-term residents of a neighbourhood. If would-be newcomers have an interest in moving into a neighbourhood because it is suited to their envisioned life plan, then they will likely have an interest in the future in remaining in that neighbourhood to continue enacting that life plan. While they may not have yet life plans that are already located in that neighbourhood, they may eventually come to have such life plans. Let's use again the example of food experiences to illustrate this point. While some of the food experiences newcomers seek by moving into a neighbourhood may be place-based (e.g. the aesthetic experience of eating certain foods surrounded by a certain architecture), they are not (yet) part of located life plans. Eating at restaurants and cafes is, more simply, part of how many people are knitted into a neighborhood, part of what makes that an appealing neighborhood for them (in the same way in which, for example, eating locally grown tomatoes and locally produced wines render the Tuscany countryside truly appealing for many people who decide to move there). Food experiences enable an experience of place-really being knitted into the neighborhood, experiencing it closely-that many people (e.g. those who grew up in carbased suburbs) might not have previously had. Food experiences make an urban space into a place, experientially. Gentrifying neighborhoods may therefore start out as somewhat generic spaces from the perspective of would-be newcomers-what makes a neighbourhood suitable for gentrification is a set of resources and infrastructure. Gentrification requires not this particular place, but just a suitably good location. Gentrified neighbourhoods then become treasured places for newcomers, in part as a result of newcomers' food experiences and how these knit them into the new neighborhood and help them to fully experience that place.
The crucial point is that gradually newcomers may develop located life-plans in the new neighbourhood. The located life plans might be as simple as 'I plan to spend my whole life here' or 'I plan to live here until I have children and need more space'. The life plans might also be more complicated-e.g. you get involved in local politics, or the local school. These located life plans may then themselves involve food experiences, including place-based food experiences: e.g. I plan to continue growing this community garden here, because it is here, in this neighbourhood. In other words, newcomers may start out with a life plan that involves having food experiences somewhere, though it is not (at the inception of gentrification) a located life plan: I want to have experience of a neighborhood in a way that prominently features food, though that could occur in New York City, Melbourne or many other cities. Of course, there may still be a placebased dimension here-e.g. I may be looking for a cosmopolitan metropolis rather than a small hilltown or a countryside village-but this is a very generic kind of place-basedness which, crucially (and due to its generic character), is not part (yet) of located life plans, i.e. life plans that have become attached to a specific place. The key point, however, is that what starts out as a general thirst for generic place-based experiences of a neighbourhood centered around food, which could be satisfied by moving into any number of gentrifying neighborhoods, can with time become a genuine located life plan.
How does this reconnect, then, with Rawls's second moral power? Newcomers, we have seen, come to form life plans that are located in their new neighbourhood. The key point is that many people who decide to move into a neighbourhood because of its appeal expect and desire that their life plans will become embedded in it, and that they will be able to continue to pursue them there. At first, it may not make much difference for them whether they move into this or that neighbourhood, in this or that city (if they are looking for certain generic features that are available in many more or less similar cities and neighbourhoods). But at the same time they expect that they will gradually acquire located life plans in whichever neighbourhood they choose to live, and they find this prospect valuable. Some of them, of course, may be content with moving regularly from one neighbourhood or city to the next. But for many people, perhaps most, moving involves an expectation that one will somehow become established in their new surroundings, and build located relationships and experiences (including food experiences) there. This implies that newcomers themselves have an interest in being able to continue to occupy the places where their future life plans, which they will gradually build in their new neighbourhood, will be located. And this interest therefore grounds the same kind of occupancy rights that at first seemed to conflict with would-be newcomers' interest in moving into a neighbourhood.
Indeed gentrification is not a one-off process, and newcomers cannot assume that once they have moved into a neighbourhood their position is secure. Gentrification manifests itself in stages. For example, the phenomenon of so-called 'super-gentrification' involves 'the transformation of already gentrified, prosperous and solidly upper-middle-class neighbourhoods into much more exclusive and expensive enclaves' (Lees 2003(Lees : 2487. Therefore-apart perhaps from a few at the top of the economic pyramid-most of those newcomers who, with their choice to move into a new neighbourhood, contribute to the process of gentrification may also at some point in the future become victims of gentrification. And since, we have argued, everyone has an interest in choosing where to pursue one's life plans, but also an interest in being able to continue to pursue such life plans once they become located, then there is a sense in which occupancy rights can be in synergy withrather than just in tension with-would-be newcomers' interest in residing where they want. Therefore, occupancy rights (and the constraints they impose on gentrification) should not be viewed as entirely inimical to would-be newcomers' interest in moving into a new neighbourhood. Instead, both those constraints and the ability to fulfil that interest can help newcomers to form and pursue their conception of the good and their (located) life plans in the long term. At the same time, being able to move into new neighbourhoods of their choice is also important for the existing residents of a neighbourhood, who even in the absence of gentrification might decide to move elsewhere to pursue new life plans. In other words, being able to move into a new neighbourhood and occupancy rights should be seen as two sides of the same coin, rather than contrasting principles. They jointly enable people (often, the same people) to form and pursue their conceptions of the good and their life plans. Therefore limits imposed on either of them are sometimes necessary in order to secure the other.
On the one hand, people cannot expect to have absolute freedom to move wherever they wish, unconstrained by anti-gentrification measures, if they want to protect their interest in being able to continue to pursue located life plans once they have acquired them. On the other hand, occupancy rights cannot justify anti-gentrification measures so restrictive that they will de facto prevent people from moving into new neighbourhoods, thus preventing them from even initiating certain life plans to begin with.

Gentrification and Background Injustice
Gentrification can take place against the background of existing injustices, be enabled by these injustices, and compound them. This gives us another reason to conclude that efforts to stymie or slow down gentrification are justifiable from a justice perspective, as a general matter, even once we recognize the importance of gentrification for enabling newcomers to enact life plans. Presumably the residents who are driven out of a neighbourhood by gentrification generally have less income or wealth than newcomers, and this is precisely why they are driven out: they, unlike the newcomers, cannot afford the higher rents and cost of living ushered in by gentrification. If the background distribution of income and wealth is unjust, then gentrification is in effect enabled by injustice.
Those negatively affected by gentrification may also be members of disadvantaged and marginalized social groups that are already subject to forms of structural injustice, subordination and marginalization (for example, ethnic minorities); this kind of social inequality is likely to be compounded by gentrification. Moreover, members of these groups may rely on the dense networks of support that exist in the urban areas in which they tend to concentrate (Ryan et al. 2008). Relocation, which is likely to be accompanied by geographic dispersion, can for them be a source of significant injustice because they already have a marginalized and subordinated status within their society, and the loss of their support networks can deprive them of one of the key resources they can rely on in order to pursue their located life plans.
What follows then from this point? When societies already display power asymmetries and forms of structural injustice, marginalization and subordination, then certain injustices-such as those resulting from people's inability to enjoy located life plans-are amplified, both pro tanto and all-things-considered. And this implies that while the interests of newcomers in enacting life plans and exercising their second moral power cannot be discounted, those of displaced local residents carry a heavier weight if such residents are already subject to certain forms of injustice. In other words, measures aimed at regulating and slowing down gentrification, which would in any case be justified also to protect the long-term interests of newcomers, are further demanded by justice when those at risk of being displaced are members of groups already suffering from forms of structural injustice, marginalization and subordination. In such cases, the interests of would-be newcomers in moving into a new neighbourhood can be permissibly curtailed to a greater extent than if residents belonged to non-marginalized groups. This is not to backtrack on a key point of our paper, i.e. that we must consider both residents' interests and would-be newcomers' interests in living in places that allow them to enact their life plans and exercise their second moral power, i.e. the capacity to form and pursue a conception of the good.

Conclusion
In this paper we have examined the normative dimensions of gentrification through the lens of food. By drawing on Huber and Wolkenstein's (2018) account of gentrification, we have used food as an example to illustrate the multiple ways in which life plans can be located and to argue that newcomers too have an interest in occupancy rights. More specifically, while would-be newcomers have an interest in moving freely into new neighbourhoods in order to purse their preferred life plans, they also have an interest in being able to continue to pursue those life plans once they have acquired them, and this requires occupancy rights and the implementation of measures aimed at regulating and slowing down gentrification. Moreover, when residents belong to already disadvantaged groups, more severe anti-gentrification measures can be implemented in order to prevent injustices from being compounded.
Authors' Contributions Both authors contributed equally to this manuscript.

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