The Politics of Gentrification and Slum Evictions

• In Event: Spatial Distributive Politics Using Geospatial and Machine Learning Techniques

Abstract

City governments across the Global South face a conundrum: the extension of infrastructural public goods to slum communities can result in rent hikes that price out a new wave of the poor. Under what conditions does the urban poor demand these services, despite their gentrifying effects? Under what conditions do local governments adopt strategies that can offset such gentrification? Under what conditions does the state use public infrastructure investments strategically as a means to gentrify and outprice the poor? I explore these questions using a geocoded database of different types of infrastructural public goods across cities in Brazil and an original survey of household preferences for 420 neighborhoods in São Paulo. I make the assumption that infrastructural public services vary in their gentrifying effect: public transit stations have the biggest impact on rent prices, while clean water pipes and sewer lines much less so. Rapid transit bus lines are in-between. Exploiting this variation, I argue that leftist pro-poor politicians actively withhold the most gentrifying public services (i.e., public transit lines), but not the least gentrifying ones (i.e., water and sewage pipes). In contrast, local administrations that represent the middle and upper classes implement more gentrifying services, and they actively build them proximate to slum communities in “inconvenient” locations. The paper spotlights the “hidden” politics of gentrification that drive slum evictions and urban segregation.

Author

• Alice Z Xu, University of Pennsylvania