Gentrification by Ground Rent Dispossession: The Shadows Cast by Large-Scale Urban Renewal in Santiago de Chile.

By Ernesto López-Morales. 2010

132 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The rent gap theory, a consistent explanation of gentrification in inner-city spaces, sees a growing disparity between capitalized ground rent (CGR) and potential ground rent (PGR) as a catalyst for large-scale property reinvestment and thence gentrification. In historical working-class Santiago’s peri-centre (inner city), not only is there a measurable rent gap, but a state-subsidized market in high-density urban renewal based on the accumulation of increased CGR by a few large-scale developers. This article focuses on a low-income municipality of Santiago, which has a local government that aims to attract this market via the liberalization of its local building regulations (seeking to increase the PGR), and deliberate underperformance in a national programme for housing upgrading (seeking to devalue the CGR in spaces previously targeted for renewal). It is observed how, in this city, two forms of ground rent exist, a lower one capitalized by current owner-occupiers (CGR-1) and a higher one capitalized by the market agents of renewal (CGR-2). This is seen as a form of social dispossession of the ground rent and a necessary condition for gentrification. It is concluded that the state-led strategy of urban renewal in Santiago needs to be refocused on more participative forms of distribution of the rent gap.

Subfields: Finance, Urban Studies

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fb363ffcc6aa206688374f867b42014ac31cefbd

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Finance

1. M. Aalbers
2. Soo-Hyun Kim
3. Brett Christophers
4. H. Shin
5. Desiree Fields
6. Jathan Sadowski
7. Steffen Wetzstein
8. Gertjan Wijburg

In Urban Studies

1. M. Aalbers
2. Soo-Hyun Kim
3. Brett Christophers
4. H. Shin
5. Steffen Wetzstein
6. Desiree Fields
7. Jathan Sadowski

Citations in the corpus

• The developmental state, speculative urbanisation and the politics of displacement in gentrifying Seoul (2016, background): “benefited from increased ground rents (Desai and Loftus, 2013; Goldman, 2011; López-Morales, 2011; Shin, 2009).”
• Centring Housing in Political Economy (2014, background): “…the dispossessions engineered by the architects of neighbourhood gentrification (Smith 1979; Marcuse 1985; Lees, Slater, and Wyly 2008); and in the evictions effected (Desmond 2012) and monopoly rents charged (Berry 1981; Harvey 1985; López-Morales 2011; Fields, forthcoming) by private landlords.”