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Urban Studies budget accommodation rome Research Volume 2011 (2011), Article ID 989676, 13 pages doi:10.1155/2011/989676 Research budget accommodation rome Article Producing a Successful City : Neoliberal Urbanism and Gentrification in the Tourist City The Case of Palma (Majorca) S nia Vives Mir
Copyright © 2011 S nia Vives Mir . This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract
Since the 1990s, the intensification of capital accumulation, budget accommodation rome especially in its financial dimension, has been one of the keystones for the triumph of neoliberalism. Spanish neoliberal policies have focused on the flexibilization of the real estate sector, leading budget accommodation rome to the specialization in the secondary circuit of accumulation. This has generated a third real estate boom which has been accompanied with an outstanding housing budget accommodation rome bubble. The Balearic Islands are a paradigmatic case within these logics, tourist specialization being the main trigger of the process. In Palma, the region's capital, neoliberal urban planning policies have been implemented in order to convert budget accommodation rome it into a successful city within the global urban network competition. These policies budget accommodation rome have led to Palma's uneven geographical development through processes like gentrification, as is the case of the Gerreria, a neighborhood of Palma's city center. budget accommodation rome 1. Introduction
Fern dez Dur n [ 1 ] has defined the Spanish physical and social landscape budget accommodation rome transformation as an urban-development tsunami. The specialization of the Spanish capitalism in the secondary circuit of accumulation has been understood as the spatiotemporal solution to the crisis of the nineties [ 2 ]. (Harvey [ 3 ] introduced Marxist analysis in order to explain budget accommodation rome the capitalist urban process. According to Harvey [ 3 ], the secondary circuit of accumulation is based on two parts: the formation of fixed capital and the consumption fund. On the one hand, fixed capital consists in the physical framework which aids the production process, used over a long-time period. It is the machines and the factories, but also public works. On the second hand, the consumption fund comprises commodities that aid the production process, items enclosed within the consumption process, and others acting as physical framework for consumption. budget accommodation rome It is consumer durables and the built environment for consumption such as housing). The production of new space is subordinated to the logics of the regime of flexible accumulation through financialization, flexibility, and privatization.
Since the nineties, the expansion of neoliberalism has involved the entrepreneurial turn of local governments, by playing a new role in the urban governance. Local governments, in conjunction with private agents and urban elites, have turned into promoters developers, producing the city based on competitive logics, in order to scale positions in the global urban hierarchy. In this sense, gentrification policies have been one of the main urban strategies that have driven budget accommodation rome cities towards success in the global market.
With the integration of the Balearic Islands into the global capitalist economy, budget accommodation rome Palma the archipelago s capital has become one of the main tourist cities of the Mediterranean and a European semiperiphery of pleasure . Thus, its urban and political transformation has been subordinated to the logics of capital which have been manifested under the neoliberal hegemony.
The aim of this paper is not so much to develop a theoretical discussion about the concepts used, but to analyze the power relationships that have been articulated in the process of implementation of neoliberal policies in Palma. 2. Urbanization under Neoliberalism
Since the seventies, neoliberal thinking has become dominant in many parts of the world. Neoliberalism is a political ideology that advocates private property, the privatization of social resources, the flexibilization of regulatory frameworks that might hinder free market values, and the supposed withdrawal of State intervention. The new neoliberal paradigm has influenced fields ranging from philosophy, spatial issues and society to everyday life, together with interrelations among all the latter [ 4 ]. The spread of neoliberalism has been linked to the financialization of the capitalist economy [ 5 ]. Capitalist policies have been historically based on the need to find profitable targets for the absorption of surplus capital. In the neoliberal phase, finance budget accommodation rome has become the key variable in expansion; meanwhile, the gap between the real economy and the financial budget accommodation rome one has grown [ 6 ]. 2.1. Urbanization as a Solution of Surplus Financial Capital
Financial capital has generated several crises around the globe, and urbanization has become budget accommodation rome an important economic stabilizer at the global scale. In recent years, budget accommodation rome real estate development and urbanization have come to play a very prominent role in the expansion budget accommodation rome of capital [ 7 ]. This process has been sustained by opening up access to credit which has led mass numbers of people into debt, especially the working class [ 2 ].
The logic of building cities according with the dynamics of global financial capitalism has given rise to what is known as neoliberal urbanism : a form of urbanism subordinated to the dictates of capital, where urban powers attempt to position their cities in higher positions of the hierarchical global urban network in which competitiveness is the key. Cities positioned at the top-global cities are the focus of most financial flows, being the most powerful in the world arena [ 8 ]. Besides, these urban spaces are specialized in the FIRE sector (Financial, Insurance, and Real Estate), which is also extremely connected to the touristization of that spaces [ 9 ].
The production of the city as a one of the most relevant driving forces behind capital accumulation, within the framework of neoliberal urbanism, has contributed to the generation of new spatial, social, and power relations. These relations have been materialized through processes like urban entrepreneurialism budget accommodation rome or gentrification. This process of transformation has accelerated an uneven pattern of geographic development, in turn sparking off the organization of protests against this model of capital accumulation budget accommodation rome [ 10 14 ].
Lefebvre stated that all societies and thus each mode of production produce a certain space, their own space. Hence the question to be done is what is the relationship between the capitalist mode of production and the production of space? According to Harvey [ 15 ], Lefebvre was believed to have found the key when he uttered his famous phrase that capitalism survives budget accommodation rome through the creation of space, although he was not correct in his explanation of the manner in which it would be carried out. And, as Smith [ 10 , 11 ] notes, Lefebvre focused less on the production process and more on the reproduction of the social relations of production, which constitutes the driving force behind the capitalist society budget accommodation rome in a process that is inherently budget accommodation rome spatial.
Thus, capital accumulation dynamics produces space through the reinvestment of the surpluses generated. When the logic of accumulation grinds to a halt, new spaces must be found for the profitable production of capital and the absorption of surpluses. This is defined by Harvey [ 16 ] as a spaciotemporal fix . Harvey [ 16 , page 115] states that a certain portion of the total capital is literally fixed in and on the land in some physical form for a relatively long period of time (depending on its economic and physical lifetime). Some social expenditure budget accommodation rome (such as public education or a health-care system) budget accommodation rome also become territorialized and rendered budget accommodation rome geographically immobile through state commitments. The spatio-temporal fix , on the other hand, is a metaphor for a particular kind of solution to capitalist crises through temporal deferral budget accommodation rome and geographical expansion".
Urbanization offers a way of solving the problem of surplus capital. Harvey [ 15 ] argues that, in the last thirty years, a huge amount of surplus capital has been absorbed through urbanization, specifically by restructuring, urban expansion, and speculation. To contextualize this idea, Harvey [ 15 ] explains that urbanization budget accommodation rome has historically been proposed budget accommodation rome as a solution to the issue of surplus capital, outlining the cases of the urbanization of Paris by Haussmann and New York by Robert Moses. The production of the city and the real estate market has been some of the main engines of capital budget accommodation rome accumulation of urban capitalist budget accommodation rome economies [ 17 ]. The production of the city has turned into a main solution for the spatial capitalist crisis, which is eminently financial at present times. 2.2. New Urban Governance and the Entrepreneurial City
Within the described framework, it should budget accommodation rome be highlighted that urban space has been linked to a new form of urban government. The neoliberalization budget accommodation rome of the space has been accentuated budget accommodation rome in the Spanish state, playing the Spanish economy a key role in the global secondary circuit of accumulation. The new urban governance is grounded on efficacy and efficiency budget accommodation rome criteria from an economic point of view. Cities are classified budget accommodation rome according the role they play in the global urban hierarchy which is defined by economic competitiveness. This new type of urban governance can be understood as a symptom of a wider process of Western governments budget accommodation rome neoliberalization since the capitalist crisis of the 1970s [ 18 ].
During the past three decades, the forms of neoliberalization have changed. In a first wave, during the Thatcher and Reagan governments, the role of the state was reduced and some of the social victories of the working class were dismantled. M