State intervention and urban (re)structuring. A study on gentrification

Abstract

According to this paper, gentrification is a consequence of changes not only in the quality, composition and distribution of labor force, but first and foremost in space reorganization for commodity production, circulation and consumption. According to this view, the concept should be understood as part of a wide and complex process of urban (re)structuring; in addition, it links the concept to specific processes of spatial (re)organization, thus widening its meaning so as to enable it to explain some gentrification processes that would otherwise remain unknown. To illustrate our proposition, we present the case study of “Dona Teodora”, in the city of Porto Alegre, where the State is not only the main conductor of the urban restructuring processes, but also the agent of the gentrification process.