My Puerto Vallarta: The City That Forgot Who It Was
I remember this beautiful port from almost twelve years ago. The city was very different from what we see today: in the markets, vendors would ask about your family, offer samples of mango with chili, and tell stories of the old Puerto Vallarta, when it was just a fishing port with a single church and a few streets.
The first changes were subtle. Signs in English began to appear where before there was only Spanish. Neighbors started talking about “gringos”; not as temporary visitors, but as new owners. The sound of the city changed. The constant murmur of conversations in Spanish blended with accents from Minnesota, Calgary, and Vancouver. The mariachis still played on the malecón (boardwalk), but now for groups of tourists who recorded them with their iPhones instead of singing along. First, it was the house on the corner on Lazaro Cardenas Street, a humble construction with purple bougainvilleas. It was sold to a real estate developer. Demolished in a week. Within six months there stood a four-story condominium with an ocean view. The rent on the block doubled. My neighbors began to disappear. Doña Lupita, who sold tamales on Sundays, had to move to Las Juntas because she could no longer afford the rent. Don Raúl, the fisherman who told whale shark stories, sold his family home because the offer was “too good to refuse.” The most painful thing was seeing how the connection with the sea was lost. Before, people lived in relation to the ocean. They knew the tides, recognized the color changes that announced storms, and knew the names of local species.
Today, the malecón is a stage. The sea is a backdrop for selfies. The fishermen who were once the heart of this community are now quaint characters in the tourist narrative. Their boats share space with luxury yachts and party catamarans. There are still places that resist—a small lunch counter, or a net repair workshop near Mismaloya, where the old fishermen still gather to tell stories or a municipal market, though smaller and surrounded by design boutiques. But these places feel like islands in a sea of change. They are increasingly difficult to find, more hidden, as if the new city were ashamed of the old one. What hurts is not just the physical transformation, but the loss of that feeling of belonging. Puerto Vallarta no longer feels like a place that grows with its inhabitants, but like a product sold to the highest bidder. Conversations at bus stops are no longer about family or work, but about who sold their house and for how much, about which street will be the next to be “modernized,” about how much the rent has gone up this year.
Today, when I walk through the hotel zone, I feel like a tourist in my own city. The signs welcome me in English first. Restaurant prices remind me that this space is no longer designed for my local budget. Security guards at the new developments look at me with suspicion when I get too close. The most ironic thing is that, in the search for authenticity promoted by tourist brochures, Puerto Vallarta has lost precisely that: its authenticity.
Puerto Vallarta is still beautiful. The sunsets over the bay still take your breath away. The green mountains surrounding the city remain imposing. But between the natural beauty and the luxurious developments, the soul of the place has been lost. I miss the Puerto Vallarta where you knew the shopkeeper, where children played in the streets until dark, where life unfolded to the rhythm of the waves and not to the rhythm of tourist seasons. I miss the feeling of community that once made this place not a destination, but a home.
This painful personal experience is not an isolated case. It is the concrete manifestation of a global economic process that has a name: gentrification. And to understand why Doña Lupita had to leave, we need to look beyond the anecdote.
What Is Gentrification?
You might think gentrification is just a fancy word for neighborhoods getting a facelift: new coffee shops, farmers’ markets, and lots of people wearing skinny jeans. That’s part of it. But it’s actually something much bigger and more systemic.
The term was coined back in 1964 by sociologist Ruth Glass. She was watching middle-class folks move into London’s working-class areas, bringing their lifestyles (and higher rents) with them. That was the classic version.
But today, as geographer Neil Smith argued, gentrification has morphed into something much more profound – not just a neighborhood trend; but a built-in engine of modern urban capitalism. Housing, instead of being treated as a basic right, gets repackaged as a pure commodity, an asset. Smith put it bluntly: “Gentrification is the spearhead of a new urban frontier, where capital rediscovers the central city after decades of abandonment.”
Think of it like this: after years of disinvestment, global capital suddenly “rediscovers” urban centers and treats them like a new gold rush. This rush comes in different forms, all too familiar today:
Touristification: That historic neighborhood you love is slowly turning into an open-air theme park for visitors, pushing out the people who actually lived there.
Green Gentrification: A new park or bike lane is great, right? But often, these much-needed “sustainability” projects end up making the area more desirable, which contributes to higher rents, which in turn ends up pushing out the very communities they were supposed to help.
Digital Nomad Takeover: Remote workers earning salaries from New York or Berlin can afford to pay double the local rent without blinking. This doesn’t just price out locals; it warps the entire housing market.
Who Really Raises the Rent? Beyond the Local Landlord The rise in rents isn’t just about individual landlords. Behind it lies a global mechanism. Let’s imagine the world economy divided into zones: financial cores (New York, London), semi-peripheries, and peripheries.
Capital from these cores scouts the world for the next “trendy” neighborhood and treats it like a mine. This gentrification operates with two logics:
- Capital as a Pipeline:Investment funds and large corporations buy entire buildings in cities with potential (like Lisbon, where foreign funds acquired >30% of the historic center in 2022), driving prices beyond local reach.
- Urban Extractivism: The charm, culture, and neighborhood life are extracted and sold as an “experience” for tourists and new elites. The profit flows to distant investors, not the community. It’s a form of urban colonialism: the local soul is packaged for export.
Is it the same everywhere? No. Gentrification has two faces:
- In the Global “Core” (New York, London): It’s pure financialization. Funds see homes as assets on a spreadsheet, erasing their social function.
- In the Global “Periphery” (Mexico City, São Paulo, Puerto Vallarta): It’s structural dependence. It’s fueled by: external demand (tourists, digital nomads), foreign investment, and local governments that facilitate the process with incentives. The city changes its vocation: it stops being for its inhabitants and starts serving a transient global clientele.
Is There an Alternative? Yes: Spatial Justice
Facing this, geographer Edward Soja proposes spatial justice: the right for resources, opportunities, and, above all, the power to decide about our surroundings to be distributed fairly. It is also a symbolic justice: who names places, who tells their story. Fighting for permanence means honoring the traces of lived lives (that mural, that family shop) as the soul of the city.
Spatial justice is a concrete demand built with concrete tools. And most importantly, cities and movements already exist that have put them into practice with tangible results, as detailed below:
1. Truly affordable housing: Rent control & massive investment in public and cooperative housing
Berlin demonstrates that rent regulation is viable: the 2020 Mietendeckel froze 1.5 million leases. Although the Constitutional Court struck it down, its enforcement proved that public intervention is possible.
Vienna is the paradigm of massive public investment: 220,000 municipal housing units and 200,000 cooperatives. 60% of the population lives in subsidized housing, with rents between €6.50–8/m². They invest €570 million annually, funded partly by a 1% payroll tax. They hold a reserve of 3.2 million m² of land and require that two-thirds of every new development be affordable housing. The 2024+ Offensive has 22,200 units underway.
2. Participation with real power: Participatory budgets & binding neighborhood veto over projects
Berlin has the Milieuschutz (social environment protection), a legal mechanism that allows districts to deny permits if a project would raise neighborhood costs and displace residents. Neighbors can submit displacement reports; the district has a legal obligation to evaluate them.
Medellín incorporated community participation into its Integral Urban Projects. The metrocables, outdoor escalators, and library-parks responded to neighborhood demands. Public land control and subsidies prevented displacement after revaluation.
3. Tourism regulated with justice: Caps on short-term rentals & taxes that fund social housing
Barcelona approved the PEUAT (2017/2021), which banned new tourist licenses in Ciutat Vella and other areas. Inspections uncovered thousands of illegal flats, with fines up to €600,000. Result: over 10,000 homes recovered for residents. The lesson: regulating tourism is inspection and enforcement, not a slogan.
4. The power of the collective: Tenant unions and neighborhood networks as the essential first line of defense
Catalonia (Sindicat de Llogateres): Rent strike against La Caixa, with 50 new households joining in 2025. Unprecedented collective bargaining with the regional government to define contracts, eliminating abusive clauses. Over 5,880 members and 80 buildings in struggle.
Zaragoza (Tenants’ Union): On July 7, 2025, neighborhood mobilization halted two evictions in the Gancho neighborhood: that of Samanta Aragonés (nursing assistant, two children, €18,000 debt) and that of Manuel Hernández and Libertad Jiménez (four children, 23 years in their home). Both were postponed.
Madrid (Tenants’ Union): In May 2025 residents of Tribulete 7 filed the first collective criminal complaint for harassment in Spain against the investment fund Elix Rental Housing. Admitted for processing in December, with senior executives charged. Hearings set for February 19, 2026.
Argentina (MOI): The Movimiento de Ocupantes e Inquilinos has been part of the CTA trade union federation since 1995. It promoted Law 341 for socially managed habitat production and manages cooperatives such as El Molino and La Fábrica. Since 1994, it has run a holiday camp for 1,500 children.
Conclusion: Imagining Cities for Life, Not for Profit
Gentrification is not a force of nature. It is the result of political and economic choices. Different choices can be made. This struggle is about more than keeping a roof over one’s head; it’s about defending the right to a diverse, unpredictable, and truly lived-in city.
As Geographer David Harvey powerfully reminds us, “the freedom to make and remake our cities is one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.” I believe we must read and write our urban futures from an ethic of care, shared memory, and narrative justice. Every block has a story, and it is our collective duty to ensure that story is not erased by the monotone hum of capital.
Ultimately, I see the city not as a growth machine, but as a space where each generation inscribes its mark, its memory, its way of being. Defending our neighborhoods is an act of cultural preservation and ethical resistance. It is refusing to let the profit motive have the final edit on the biography of our places.
The cases of resistance mentioned remind us that the proof is there: when communities reclaim their voice and their power, a different kind of urbanism becomes possible. It’s an urbanism that asks not “How much is it worth?” but “For whom is it? Who lives here? What stories does it hold?”
The just city will not be the sleekest or most efficient. It will be the most hospitable. Not the most profitable, but the most faithful to that most fundamental human need: the right to belong.
Now, when I look south from the malecón and see the skyscrapers that have replaced the palm trees, I wonder if the next generation of Vallartenses will have the chance to create their own memories here, or if they will become spectators of a city that no longer belongs to them.
Lucero Morales is a doctoral researcher in Sciences for Development, Sustainability, and Tourism at the University of Guadalajara, with international research stays in Switzerland, Japan, Italy and Spain. Lucero’s work focuses on sustainable tourism and comparative policy analysis, combining qualitative methodologies with applied research for evidence-based decision-making.
Lucero Morales on ResearchGate
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Bibliography:
Glass, R. (1964). London: Aspects of Change. London: MacGibbon & Kee.
Harvey, D. (2008). The right to the city. New Left Review, (53), 23-39.
Smith, N. (1996). The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. London: Routledge.
Soja, E. W. (2010). Seeking Spatial Justice. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Other References Mentioned (policies, movements, and cases):
Barcelona City Council. (2017, 2021). Pla Especial Urbanístic d’Allotjaments Turístics (PEUAT) [Special Urban Plan for Tourist Accommodation]. Barcelona.
Catalunya Tenants’ Union (Sindicat de Llogateres de Catalunya). (2025). Tenant struggles and achievements. Barcelona.
Madrid Tenants’ Union. (2025). Collective criminal complaint for real estate harassment against Elix Rental Housing (Tribulete 7). Madrid.
Zaragoza Tenants’ Union. (2025). Halting of evictions in the Gancho neighborhood. Zaragoza.
Movimiento de Ocupantes e Inquilinos (MOI) – CTA [Occupants and Tenants Movement]. (1995-2025). Law 341 for Socially Managed Habitat Production. Argentina.
Berlin Senate. (2020). Mietendeckel (Rent Freeze Act). Berlin.
Vienna City Administration. (2024). Municipal and cooperative housing: Offensive 2024. Vienna.
Medellín Mayor’s Office. (2010-2020). Integral Urban Projects (PUI) and community participation mechanisms. Medellín.
Pictures:
Gentrification : Adobe Stock
Downtown, Puerto Vallarta: Pexels.com
Puerto Vallarta by night: Wikimedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Puerto_Vallarta,_Mexico_(February_2024)_-_568.jpg
The views expressed remain the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editorial team or the institution hosting THoR. Our blog provides space for diverse voices and ongoing debates within the humanities.
