URBAN REQUALIFICATION AND EVICTIONS IN SALVADOR'S NEW AND OLD CITY CENTERS

The city of Salvador replicates the process of “accumulation by spoliation” characteristic of the neoliberal urbanism around the world. In this paper, we compare how the logic of urban requalification operates in two areas of the city. The first area is a large and historically combative favela located in the region that has become the latest “new Centre” of the city. In this region, the key issues are the new urban mobility projects and the construction of housing for other social classes. The second area is the colonial Center of the city, which is undergoing a new gentrification phase. There, the historical heritage policies meet other policies, transforming the remaining public spaces of the securitized neoliberal city into safer areas for tourists and wealthier residents. We emphasize the worth of an ethnographically-based understanding to comprehend the meaning of these changes to poor residents of the city, as well as the complexity, heterogeneity and ambiguity of their different reactions.

Keywords:
Cities; Pelourinho; Gentrification; Evictions; Resistances