Gentrification Pros And Cons

The process of gentrification is defined as the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents. ‘Global Gentrifications’ by Loretta Lees highlights case studies on the gentrification, expansion, and development that has taken place in different cities. The book focuses on the breakdown and renewal of poor cities and neighborhoods. Both Puebla, Mexico and Janeiro, Brazil went through the process of gentrification, however, each city went about it in different ways and caused different reactions. In Puebla, Mexico, along with many other places, the idea of gentrification in neoliberal times is intertwined with the importance of culture

The inhabitants of the city were infuriated at how little attention was being given to the barrios “which were, after all, the ‘natural’ space for the popular class and represented as indigenous even though this was inaccurate of their ethno-demography”(Lees, 281). This idea of the gentrification of Puebla started in 1993, when a candidate for state governor, Manuel Bartlett, announced his intention to modernize Puebla by starting a ‘mega-project’ called Angelópolis. This plan was basically composed of a “range of ‘sub-projects’ that included major highway upgrades, a recycling plant and a complex of malls, private universities and gated communities”(Lees, 270). “Angelópolis aimed to ‘re-found’ and to ‘recover the grandeur’ of Puebla”(Lees, 270). As Mexico began to embrace neoliberalism, the economic potential became obvious and promising, despite the current state of economic decline. The major concern was focused on the wellbeing of the capital as a whole, not individual interests. The corporate

After struggling from dictatorship and hyper inflation, Brazil’s economy improved and the investments in infrastructure and tourism continued to improve due to hosting the Olympics. In 2013, the idea of gentrifying the favelas was introduced. “This more generalised process of gentrification in Rio has three components: first, through a pattern of favela removal, usually inhumane and unjustified by any public purpose; second, (ironically) through social integration programmes of security and urbanisation; and, third, through the ‘favela chic’ phenomenon, wherein a class of newcomers, as consumers of place, is migrating to select favela communities”(Lees, 84). Although the government tries to urbanize the favelas, it is extremely difficult for lower class residents to afford to live there, when services such as electricity and the internet are making the prices of the houses go up. “The real problem of economic displacement will be experienced over the longer term, as centrally located favelas become middle-class enclaves.Without access to these expanding territories of privilege, the bottom classes will end up even further out on the periphery of the metropolis, worsening the existing problem of socio-economic segregation in Rio de Janeiro”(Lees, 95). To add to the segregation problem, sellers in the market are more