ABSTRACT
The chapter argues that a focus on the migration of relatively privileged groups, often for reasons of place consumption in cities like Cuenca, Ecuador, is an important part of contemporary processes of urbanization. Urban theory has increasingly theorized urban transformation as a transnational, multiscalar project, yet the mobilities of higher-income people operating in transnational fields have been under-theorized as a key component of urban processes linking new apartment and condo construction to the preservation of built heritage in historic urban centers. Cuenca, one of the most popular destinations for North American retirees, offers an example of a new form of transnational urban process. This process is discussed in this chapter in relation to global regimes of mobility, which promote the mobility of higher-income groups and the corresponding dispossession of urban spaces that have recently been occupied by lower-income groups in lower-income cities.
