Transnational gentrification: Globalisation and neighbourhood change in Panama’s Casco Antiguo

Abstract

Drawing upon the case of Panama's Casco Antiguo, this paper establishes the theoretical concept of 'transnational gentrification': a process of neighbourhood change both enabled by and formative of a spatially embedded transnational 'gentry' whose locational mobility creates new possibilities for profitable housing reinvestment in geographically disparate markets where such possibilities would not have otherwise existed. Globalisation does not just create a common political-economic structure driving urban change or a common ideology for a gentrifying cohort. In this case, it creates historically and geographically specific connections between places, which themselves can become pathways along which gentrification processes propagate, connecting local capital to international consumer demand. The case of the Casco Antiguo offers a provocative inversion of a standard critical narrative of globalisation, whereby capital is freed from national constraints and able to roam globally while people largely remain place-bound. In the Casco Antiguo, residents are transnational and property developers are local.

Handbook of Gentrification Studies

“…This echoes several empirical observations on transnational gentrification such as in Panama where redevelopment capital is local but the demand does not come from a single city-region but is transnational (Sigler and Wachsmuth 2016). Another compelling example of the tension between 'global wealth migration and local affordability' (Stiem 2016) is Vancouver.…”

Displacement by disruption: short-term rentals and the political economy of “belonging anywhere” in Toronto

“…They argue that if short-term rental platforms can create rent-gaps in otherwise stable or inflating land markets, that they may enable gentrification to occur with little, if any, reinvestment by property owners. Specifically, this functions through the platform's capacity to extend the field of demand for accommodations to travellers from outside the city, facilitating what Gotham (2005) calls "tourism gentrification" and Sigler and Wachsmuth (2016) call "transnational gentrification". As these are accommodations which straddle the line between rental units and hotels, they are likely to affect prices in both the long-term rental and hotel markets, meaning a short-term-rental-induced rent gap should equalize between these two competing pressures.…”

Commodifying Lisbon: A Study on the Spatial Concentration of Short-Term Rentals

“…Indeed, the rent gap of Lisbon's historic center has a remarkable global dimension due to the significant difference between the median hourly earnings and disposable income of Portugal and those of France, Germany, and the UK-which provided nearly half of the Airbnb guests in Lisbon in 2015 (Airbnb 2016;Eurostat 2017aEurostat , 2017b. As suggested by Sigler and Wachsmuth (2016) in their study of transnational gentrification in Panama's Casco Antiguo, global demand sets house prices and opens up a rent gap that would not otherwise exist. Following Cocola-Gant (2018), we argue that in Lisbon, the consumption capacity of tourists generates the profit opportunities that are not provided by local demand due to the fragility of the domestic market amid crisis and austerity.…”

“…In their case study of Panama's Casco Antiguo, Sigler and Wachsmuth (2016) argue that the international mobility of a leisure-oriented, global middle class fuels transnational gentrification by creating a rent gap that would not otherwise exist. Unlike the classical form of gentrification, this phenomenon occurs where global rent gaps force local households to pay property prices set by global demand (Wachsmuth and Weisler 2018).…”