Real estate market and urban metamorphosis in intermediary cities. Gringolandia in Cuenca: The promised land

Abstract

The smaller cities have entered the competition for capital and for positioning themselves in the various international rankings. Cuenca, Ecuador, is one of them and is taken as a case study due to its hierarchical status and the success of the urban marketing strategies that have inserted it into the dynamics of the international tourism industry and the real estate market for foreign retirees in the last decade. The article analyzes the urban transformations derived in two specific areas of the city between 2000 and 2017, where gentrification and creative destruction processes have been unleashed, articulated to broader dynamics of capitalist accumulation and the commodification of the urban.