Can we talk about gentrification in favelas?

Case study on urban requalification in Bairro da Paz

Abstract

The article discusses the use of the gentrification concept in contexts of land valuation in territories on the urban periphery that undergo socio-spatial transformations resulting from the intervention of public authorities, private initiative and complex processes of real estate speculation. Transformations also impacted by the struggles of social movements, which in an Afro-descendant Bahia manifest unique sociocultural characteristics and dimensions. First, the term gentrification is revised in order to further develop how the presence of gentrifying agents in the local transformation of Brazilian cities also occurs in peripheral areas, impacting in a peculiar manner the way of life in these places. From the analysis of an ethnographic case study in the city of Salvador-BA, we analyze the main impacts that a process of land regulation in a popular neighborhood has on this kind of “gentrification”, illustrating how processes of certain “bourgeoisization” begins to its interior.