Gentrification as a Night Crime

Mouraria is one of our case-study districts, a working-class and deprived area where the state-led promotion of art and culture is changing its landscape every day…and every night. As David Ley has stressed in “Artists, Aestheticisation and the Field of Gentrification”, urban commodification and capital reinvestment in some particular areas are often accompanied by the “artistization” of the district.

In the following chronicle about Mouraria’s night by the Spanish public television is possible to identify all the elements: the bohemian taste for “danger” and “authenticity”, the well-meaning and naive artists with their “political” and “rooted” projects, and the local inhabitants looking distrustful to these developments which are largely unconnected with their real lives. This perfectly mixed night-time cocktail is causing the desired outcome: the attraction of visitors, the rise of rental prices, the eviction of local inhabitants. Therefore, Mouraria becomes the perfect example of how gentrification could act as a tasteful and delicate “night crime”.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Daniel Malet Calvo (April 27, 2015). Gentrification as a Night Crime. LXNIGHTS. Retrieved July 15, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/r3u1


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About Daniel Malet Calvo

I have a PhD in Urban Anthropology (2011) from University of Barcelona where I also have graduated with a BA in Social and Cultural Anthropology (2005), and a BA in History (2011). My thesis work puts forward a historical and ethnographic research focused on the most emblematic space in Lisbon's downtown: Praça do Rossio. I have been trained through many investigation projects, research grants and ethnographic works on Lisbon and Barcelona during my thesis, mainly focused on anthropology of urban space, city policies, collective action and olisipography. I'm also did research on Santiago island (Cape Verde archipelago), where I acquired experience on mobility conceptions, risk practices and urban renewal projects. Currently, as a post-doctoral researcher in the CIES-IUL (Centro de Investigação e Estudos de Sociologia – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa) I'm investigating ERASMUS students as a short-term migration actors involved on heritagization processes, space production and transnational dynamics. Besides this, I'm an active member of the Grup de Recerca sobre Exclusió i Control Socials (GRECS) in the Anthropology Department of the Universitat de Barcelona, and of the Institut Català d'Antropologia (ICA)

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