MISCELÂNIA DESCOLADA OU GENTRIFICATION?

Baixo Augusta - São Paulo

Abstract

Based on a historical mapping of Rua Augusta, in São Paulo city (Brazil), we seek to discuss the (in)adequacy of the concept of gentrification to understand recent landscape changes that have occurred in the central portion of the street, known as “Baixo Augusta”. In the mid-2000s, when a revitalization movement took place in Rua Augusta, two characteristic phenomena of gentrification could be observed - the real estate boom and an increase on the land’s value. However, due to peculiarities of the urban dynamics in Baixo Augusta we question the direct “application” of the gentrification concept in our case study. In this sense, we argue that the articulation of the concept in urban realities far from its Anglo-Saxon origin, can lead to a kind of epistemic violence (SPIVAK, 1988). In order to escape this type of epistemological trap, we suggest that the treatment of the urban dynamics of Baixo Augusta occurs through ethnographic practice, as an intellectual enterprise that puts the theoretical and the empirical in constant relationship.