Gentrifiction! I love it.
Thanks for the recommendations, worrior. I read Soft City a few months ago and—you're right on the money—it was helpful in delineating some of the distinctions between 1970s and contemporary gentrification, although admittedly these are often more evident in what Raban does not write.
Might as well throw Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities out there, which at times reads like a theoretical seedbed for the first wave of gentrification. (Not that interested in the American side of things, though.)
Do you know if there's any Ballard that might fit the bill? High Rise came to mind, although in the end the architectural phenomenon it describes doesn't seem to represent a gentrifying force, but rather one of Ballard's vague and affluent non-places.