Urban heritage, gentrification, and tourism in Riverwest and El Abasto

Heritage has played a pivotal role in configuring the sustainable economies of many communities. However, if the process is not duly planned, serious problems may surface. Although the adoption of a new heritage and heritage tourism has been broadly examined by tourism-related scholars, less attention has been given to the notion of gentrification as formulated in social geography. What would be interesting to debate here, beyond the Marxist logic, is to what extent heritage is not only an invented construction, but also how it regulates conflicts or subordinates other more reactionary social movements as art. Comparing two neighbourhoods, Riverwest and Abasto, shows two alternative effects of heritage construction. One refers to the fact that art does not always preserve the structure of economic forces; the other conceptualizes patrimony and heritage as justifying material asymmetries.