The ‘blemish of the past': (un)usual paths of gentrification in a Mediterranean city throughout history

Teresa Graziano

City, 2022, vol. 26, issue 2-3, 473-495

Abstract: Contemporary gentrification challenges long-entrenched conceptualizations. In particular, in ‘peripheral’ urban contexts of the Global North, the phenomenon is often interwoven with variegated processes stemming from the specific evolution of their historical centers. This paper scrutinizes the transformations of a marginal central district in a Southern Europe ‘peripheral’ city, Catania, named San Berillo. A series of postwar demolitions and reconstructions, followed by the local community’s forced displacement, fueled socio-economic decline and growing rates of territorial stigmatization. Since the early 2000s, some transformations partially modified narratives about the district. By retracing the evolution of San Berillo I deconstructed the role of the ‘blemish of the past’ in (re)shaping old and current imaginaries upon which the district’s identity is built. The aim is to understand, from an historical perspective, to what extent the Haussmann-like postwar demolition and eviction programme can be judged through the lens of gentrification and urban stigmatization, and if contemporary transformations have been shaping a context at risk of being gentrified (or re-gentrified). In so doing, the paper provides novel theoretical insights about gentrification in Southern Europe by mobilizing the concept of intersection to explain the phantom-like gentrification emerging as a (in)visible repertoire of past memories that loom over the district at different levels: as an operational framework for community-led and/or tourism-based initiatives, as a heterotopic discursive practice, as a buzzword for anti-gentrification counter-narratives.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13604813.2022.2054222 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cityxx:v:26:y:2022:i:2-3:p:473-495

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CCIT20

DOI: 10.1080/13604813.2022.2054222

Access Statistics for this article

City is currently edited by Bob Catterall

More articles in City from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().