%0 Journal Article
%T Producing a ¡°Successful City¡±: Neoliberal Urbanism and Gentrification in the Tourist City¡ªThe Case of Palma (Majorca)
%A S¨°nia Vives Mir¨®
%J Urban Studies Research
%D 2011
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2011/989676
%X Since the 1990s, the intensification of capital accumulation, especially in its financial dimension, has been one of the keystones for the triumph of neoliberalism. Spanish neoliberal policies have focused on the flexibilization of the real estate sector, leading to the specialization in the secondary circuit of accumulation. This has generated a third real estate boom which has been accompanied with an outstanding housing bubble. The Balearic Islands are a paradigmatic case within these logics, tourist specialization being the main trigger of the process. In Palma, the region's capital, neoliberal urban planning policies have been implemented in order to convert it into a ¡°successful city¡± within the global urban network competition. These policies have led to Palma's uneven geographical development through processes like gentrification, as is the case of the Gerreria, a neighborhood of Palma's city center. 1. Introduction Fern¨¢dez Dur¨¢n [1] has defined the Spanish physical and social landscape transformation as an urban-development tsunami. The specialization of the Spanish capitalism in the secondary circuit of accumulation has been understood as the spatiotemporal solution to the crisis of the nineties [2]. (Harvey [3] introduced Marxist analysis in order to explain the capitalist urban process. According to Harvey [3], the secondary circuit of accumulation is based on two parts: the formation of fixed capital and the consumption fund. On the one hand, fixed capital consists in the physical framework which aids the production process, used over a long-time period. It is the machines and the factories, but also public works. On the second hand, the consumption fund comprises commodities that aid the production process, items enclosed within the consumption process, and others acting as physical framework for consumption. It is consumer durables and the built environment for consumption such as housing). The production of new space is subordinated to the logics of the regime of flexible accumulation through financialization, flexibility, and privatization. Since the nineties, the expansion of neoliberalism has involved the entrepreneurial turn of local governments, by playing a new role in the urban governance. Local governments, in conjunction with private agents and urban elites, have turned into promoters developers, producing the city based on competitive logics, in order to scale positions in the global urban hierarchy. In this sense, gentrification policies have been one of the main urban strategies that have driven cities towards success in the
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/usr/2011/989676/