POST-POLITICAL MATERIALIZATIONS A CROSS-SCALAR MAPPING OF GENTRIFICATION PROCESSES IN GUADALAJARA, MEXICO.

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.

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