Gentrification is no longer an exclusive phenomenon of a limited number of the Global North cities. It is a "global urban strategy"
[1], a "'blue-print' which is being mass-produced, mass-marketed, and mass-consumed around the world"
[2]. Gentrification is a polycentric process that can be found everywhere, outside the global cities in different sites, and furthermore beyond the inner city, at the urban periphery
[3].
Meanwhile, gentrification is different in different countries and cities, is "embedded in the soil and institutions of those countries"
[4]. In post-socialist space, different forms of 'domestication of gentrification' have been identified – 'soft gentrification', 'organised gentrification', 'façade gentrification', gentrification with 'tele-urbanization'
[5]. Spatially this is manifested in the emergence of 'islands of gentrification.' Sykora emphasized that gentrifying areas are "small islands in a wider sea of stagnation, decline"
[6], and later Kovacs et al. suggested that "the islands of gentrification will most probably expand further, pushing the gentrification frontier outward"
[7].
Our findings from the study of new-build gentrification of the former brownfield in Kyiv's Soviet-time neighborhood
Sotsmisto have confirmed the island character of the gentrification. Moreover, we can talk about "Kyiv new-build archipelago" with a growing number of "islands of civilisation in a sea of delay"
[8] in terms of transformation, modernization etc. These islands have "hard, rocky cliffs" because social contacts between locals and newcomers are characterized by indifference, rather than confrontation, and fragmentation, rather than cohesion
[9].
'Gentry' part of the word 'gentrification' is not always the main part of the real process. Sometimes it's enough to paint the facades calling it 'renovation' (partly within the meaning of gentrification). Brightly colored houses in this case should show the positive changes against the typical grayness of the Soviet built environment. But such a 'rainbow'-effect does not always indicate higher status, better environment or new social infrastructure.