From Yuppies to Yupps: Family Gentrifiers Consuming Spaces and Re-inventing Cities

Abstract

This is a study of family consumption in an upgraded Amsterdam neighbourhood. It aims to unravel the relationship between the increase of middle-class families and the establishing of new family-related consumption spaces, both commercial and public. Based on observations and interviews in Amsterdam, we identify an increase in family and child directed consumption spaces. They reflect parental wishes to continue their former childless lifestyle, the need to combine work and care, and the wish to educate children in a wide range of skills. The more intensive consumption of parks and sidewalks reveals new practices of public parenting in urban contexts. It is argued that the transformation from childless yuppie to young urban professional parent (yupp) not only goes along with new consumption cultures but also with the production of a new city. This re-invented city has potentials for age and gender equality, however unequal class relations appear to continue.