Rehabilitation or Retail Gentrification? Discourse and Practices Associated with the Transformation of Traditional Retail Markets in Portugal

Abstract

After a long period of disinvestment and decline, recent years have seen a growing interest in the rehabilitation of municipal markets in European and South American countries, often culminating in the gentrification of those commercial facilities. Our working hypothesis is that some agents in the search for good urban planning practices use as a reference some markets that, through the molds used for rehabilitation, promote gentrification processes. Faced with an apparent contradiction between academic studies that confirm the gentrification of rehabilitated municipal markets and the practice of political agents who see the current rehabilitation model as good urban planning practice, we aim to analyze and discuss the current rehabilitation process of municipal markets in Portugal. In methodological terms, this work is supported by a qualitative approach, based on theoretical analysis on the subject in question and on interviews carried out with managers of three Portuguese Municipal Councils, as well as two interviews with consulting companies involved in the process. Using the conceptual framework of gentrification to help interpret the results, we conclude that the motivation for the rehabilitation of markets is based on a reading of declining markets and that the current intervention models are due to benchmarking strategies and the transfer of models understood as being good practices, also highlighting the role of consulting firms in its dissemination.