ABSTRACT
The paper sheds light on the recent spatial transformations in the core of the Guadalajara Metropolitan Area (GMA), in western Mexico, by critically analysing the contested socio-political dynamics and visualizing its materializations in the urban landscape at different scales. The actually existent entrepreneurial urban governance is addressed, arguing that the free-market logic imposed on the urban development has evacuated the properly political dimension from the urban, in which the impossibility to drive spatial transformations through accountable and democratic ways portrays a ‘post-political’ condition in the city; ultimately generating material and symbolic expressions of gentrification. The paper unravels the vengeful spatial transformations encouraging more expensive forms of consumption in the most symbolic part of the city: the historic centre. In parallel, a rapid verticalization of the built environment is paving the way for a ‘reconquest’ of the low-density metropolitan centre by the wealthy classes. Such architectural materializations, along with the rearticulation of retail and commercial practices are backed by a ‘redensification’ discourse, and advanced through strategies that rely on gentrification as the only option for renewing and repopulating the central metropolitan area.