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ResumoEste artigo tem como objetivo entender os processos recentes de reestruturação urbana que vêm tomando corpo no centro antigo de Salvador, mais particularmente, as ações corporativas e públicas apoiadas na lógica da gentrificação e da privatização do espaço urbano. Para tanto, concentramos a presente análise na proposta de intervenção no Bairro 2 de Julho, buscando entender como esse processo vem se constituindo nesta área reconhecida pela Unesco como Patrimônio da Humanidade. Nos empreendimentos privados apoiados pelo poder público, evidencia-se processos de exclusão social, produzidos por um modelo de planejamento urbano excludente pautado na concepção do urbanismo corporativo, que se utiliza de mecanismos de desvalorização e revalorização de patrimônio histórico-cultural. Contribuindo assim, para facilitar e ampliar o processo de ressignificação do patrimô-nio urbano e a expulsão da população mais pobre.Palavras-chave: centro antigo de Salvador; gentrificação; Bairro 2 de Julho; Patrimônio da Humanidade; privatização do espaço. AbstractThe purpose of this article is to understand the recent urban restructuring processes that have taken shape in the historic center of Salvador, particularly the corporate and governmental actions supported by the logic of gentrification and privatization of the urban space. The analysis focuses on the proposal for intervention in the Neighborhood 2 de Julho, in order to understand how this process has taken place in this area, which has been recognized by Unesco as a World Heritage site. In the private developments supported by the government, social exclusion processes are evident. They are produced by an exclusionary model of urban planning based on a conception of corporate urbanism that uses mechanisms of devaluation and revaluation of the historic-cultural heritage. This contributes to facilitate and expand the process of resignification of the urban heritage and the expulsion of the poor population.

Salvador is a Black city. Besides being a place mainly inhabited by a population which is racialised as Black, any urban phenomenon in Salvador is inseparable from the complexities and violence typical of the sites of racial encounter. In this article we explore two collaborative experiences that brought together the authors and different grassroots movements around two urban struggles in the city. The first experience unpacks the 30-year conflicts surrounding the Programme of Recuperation of the Historic Centre of Salvador, where thousands of people were evicted to turn a stigmatised Black neighbourhood into a scenario for cultural heritage enjoyment and tourism. The second experience uncovers plans underway to replace the Subúrbio railway with a monorail, a project which will negatively affect several Black neighbourhoods in Salvador and its metropolitan region and hundreds of thousands of Black daily life practices. These serve as just two examples of urban initiatives cyclically carried out by Salvador’s elites and official spokespeople which, under the discourse of modernisation, always threaten the improvised ways of inhabiting the Black city. We argue that the urban struggles that we analyse in this article trace a continuity with the historical struggles for the affirmation of Black life within sites of racial violence. For this reason, this article establishes a dialogue between urban studies and Black theory, through ideas of Black city and Black fugitivity.

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