Marcuse’s article remains a foundational account of displacement because it refuses to separate gentrification and abandonment into opposite urban processes. Its iconic idea is that both are linked through the restructuring of urban political economy: high demand and declining demand may occur side by side, each intensifying pressures on lower-income residents. The theoretical contribution is to expose displacement as the shared outcome of neighbourhood reinvestment, disinvestment, fiscal policy, class polarisation and public-sector choices. Methodologically, the article combines theoretical modelling, neighbourhood analysis and policy critique, moving between city-wide patterns and localised dynamics. Its conceptual operation is relational displacement: loss of place is produced not only by eviction, but by linked market forces, abandonment, pressure, public incentives and selective investment. The bridge to the wider field connects urban law, planning theory, housing studies, political economy and anti-displacement policy, making gentrification legible as a structural process rather than a benign aesthetic upgrading of neighbourhoods.