Lifestyle migration and socio-spatial segregation in the urban(izing) landscapes of Cuenca (Ecuador) and Guanacaste (Costa Rica)

Abstract

Globalization and changing mobility patterns have significantly altered the urban landscapes of Latin America over the past decades. Efforts by the state and the private sector to regenerate urban areas and free up land for the sake of investment and wealthy city dwellers have shaped processes of privatization and socio-spatial segregation. While ‘privileged mobilities’ such as lifestyle migration can be assumed to play a role in such urban transformations, research on the link between urban change and lifestyle migration in Latin America is still in its infancy. This paper focuses on the impact of lifestyle migration on the extent and speed of socio-spatial change in intermediate cities and urbanizing regions. More concretely, the paper underscores the importance of lifestyle migration in shaping contemporary urban space in Latin America by comparing socio-spatial transformations in Cuenca, an intermediate city in southern Ecuador, and the urbanizing coast of Guanacaste province in northwest Costa Rica. These research sites currently are two of Latin America's main destinations for international lifestyle migrants, and hence are experiencing escalating real estate development. Both areas have developed into increasingly exclusivist spaces and as such show that intermediate cities and urbanizing regions can no longer escape the spatial segregation, gentrification and inequality that used to be associated almost solely with metropolitan centers.