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This paper discusses the modalities and possibilities to apply the term gentrification in the context of Latin-American cities. For this purpose, it is crucial to develop a critical exercise that dissociates the term from the traditional debates arising from the Anglophone world. As a result of this dialectical process, we propose its application in two dimensions for which it appears to have a particular relevance: the gentrification by real estate agents and the interrelation between gentrification and neighbourhood struggles. These are the two aspects we consider appropriate to reveal the hidden consequences of contemporary urban policies and to re-politicise urban studies from a perspective that is related to the demands of citizens. Such critical reflection leads us to a conceptual proposition that is latter exemplified by the case of Santiago, Chile, a paradigmatic city for the application of neoliberal urban policies causing gentrification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses four decades of public initiatives to recover the historic center of Bahia, with its approaches, intervention models and changing emphasis: tourism, political marketing. We expose the old center’s historical process of decay and underscore the lack of sustainability of the programs carried out since 1991. Also, we evidence the double process of evicting marginal population and the housing function of the historic center; and the reappropriation of the place by many Afro-Brazilian groups. In conclusion we criticize imported models of intervention and plead for the development of a Latin-American theory about the requalification of our historic centers, and for searching new solutions based upon our specificities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]