Geography of shopping in historic districts: Between gentrification and heritagezation. A study case in Seville

Abstract

As urbanization and gentrification have become planetary processes, research on commercial geographies has progressively gained importance. In studying the capitalist city, literature has generally focused on urban transformations, the housing market dynamics or indigenous population displacement in relation to neoliberal politics and policies at different scales. However, changes on the commercial fabric have also attracted scholarly attention in recent years. This paper delves into the geography of shopping in urban heritage contexts, specifically through a study case in Seville's historic district. My hypothesis is two parallel processes have unfolded and fed back: gentrification and heritagezation, what I explore by analyzing the evolution of traditional retail shops, franchises and large firms in the last two decades. To do so, the article combines quantitative and qualitative analyses on diverse bibliographic and statistical sources on the topic.