Abstract

This chapter explores the links between rural gentrification and wilderness gentrification, seen also as ‘greentrification’. In so doing it looks at antithetical concepts, such as gentrification and wilderness, the former being associated with areas of humanly constructed built environments that act as housing for people, whilst the latter is associated with spaces showing little or no trace of human habitation. The chapter suggests that assumptions about rural gentrification and wilderness gentrification being somewhat different may need to be reviewed. Gentrification scholars may need to look again at claims that wilderness provides the basis for its own strand of gentrification based on recreational as opposed to residential capital. The chapter also takes the idea of wilderness gentrification outside of North America to England and Wales in the UK where dominant social and cultural representations of wilderness are closely tied to the geographic distribution of National Parks, finding rural gentrification in wilderness areas.