Displacement and Transport-induced Gentrification: What about informal settlements benefiting from accessibility improvements?

Transport-induced gentrification has been increasingly studied. Residential displacement is the primary concern underlying this. More recently, scholars have begun to explore this debate in informal settlements, as they have long been a housing solution for working-class people in the Global South. This paper further advances this debate by addressing a twofold objective. First, we wonder if gentrification can unfold in Latin American slums through the entry of slightly more affluent households. Second, we investigate whether the relocation of long-term residents can be considered market-driven displacements. To this end, we undertook a two-step approach that combined the comparison of Google Street View (GSV) images from different dates with a participatory workshop in a community impacted by a Light Rail Transit system (Fortaleza, Brazil). Our findings reinforce scholarly arguments that gentrification and displacement are two different and independent phenomena. This is because, despite finding no evidence of market-driven displacement, we find a few cases of low-income gentrifiers. For the Latin American theorization, this challenges the framing of gentrification as a conflict between antagonistic classes over space. Another contribution of our study concerns the spatial extent of transport-induced gentrification, as changes within the community were closely linked to regional restructuring processes.