Is the ‘Laptop Class’ Really the Leading Cause of Global Gentrification?
Recently, a piece on gentrification and digital nomadism in Mexico City was published in Compact Magazine by Germán Saucedo, which has been gaining a fair amount of traffic internationally., I found the text interesting, mainly because it was an attempt to grapple with questions of gentrification and digital nomadism from a Right-leaning perspective, which I have seen very little of until now. Likewise, while there are obvious points of ideological disagreement between the author’s perspective and mine, there are some interesting points raised here. Firstly, the author effectively calls into question the cognitive dissonance between nomads’ own ostensibly progressive politics and their willful participation in gentrification processes both at home and abroad. He also highlights the linkages between increases in the cost of living in the urban spaces of the Global North and the popularization of digital nomadism, and interrogates the hidden costs of the lifestyle desired by many of the digital nomads. Yet, I come away from reading this piece with a feeling that the author misses the forest for the trees.
A crucial detail that the piece misses is that the digital nomads, or ‘laptop class’ are not the sole driver of gentrification in Southern cities. They are often more of a symptom of the culmination of processes of real-estate financialization and state-led gentrification which has reshaped the character of Latin American urban centers into what Saskia Sassen calls global cities: spaces of luxury consumption made palatable to global tourists and investors. Before the nomads came to Mexico City, local governments spent decades reshaping the city through permissive real-estate development policies in central neighborhoods, openness to speculators, public-private renovations of central neighborhoods, and aggressive marketing campaigns. It was the latter that cemented Mexico City as a global brand through aggressive rebranding. Throughout the 2010s, there was a wave of pieces in global media and social media content highlighting Mexico City as a new hub for a global creative class, and as a trendy destination in the vein of Berlin.
Likewise, the digital nomad phenomenon has been aided and abetted by local officials every step of the way. The presence of Airbnb, long considered by urbanists and urban scholars to be a facilitator of urban gentrification, is largely unregulated in Mexico City. Current Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Airbnb to encourage this practice. At the same time, Cuauhtémoc borough mayor Sandra Cuevas has established policies aimed at creating a non-threatening expat-friendly environment devoid of the signifiers often characteristic of working-class Mexico City culture. Yet, these two examples are only the most recent in a city that has been redeveloping its urban center in the interests of capital for over twenty years.
While I agree that the phenomenon is largely confined to certain areas of the city, I also find the claims that the working classes are largely not affected by these processes to be dubious. As the local middle classes are displaced from the trendier central neighborhoods, many are moving to less expensive neighboring areas, fueling real estate speculation in places where there previously was very little. The areas in question are traditionally working-class neighborhoods such as Santa María la Ribera, San Rafael, or Doctores, which are now at greater risk of gentrification and becoming flashpoints for debates around housing and the right to the city. Likewise, Juárez and Roma Sur both were home to a substantial working class population which faced displacement both as a result of gentrification and the 2017 earthquake. Similarly, I would also be cautious to assert that the arrival of expats and gentrification of central Mexico City has been a boon for local small businesses. As the result of these processes, many historic small businesses have been forced to close or have been priced out. Two key examples of this are the café Trevi, a 60 year old eatery in the city center forced to shutter in 2020 to be replaced by a nomad-friendly coworking space, and Tortas Colima, a famous torta shop in Roma Norte, which was displaced last year by real estate interests. Not to mention, these processes have resulted in the displacement of informal commerce, which is a key source of income for much of the city’s population.
Likewise, the argument that it is progressive housing policies in US cities which have caused the cost of living crisis, presented, may I add, with no citation or evidence to back it up, is flimsy. In reality, despite the existence of programs like rent stabilization in New York City, the trends in the real estate market overall have been towards deregulation, not increased regulation. For instance, the author fails to mention the degree to which Limited Liability Corporations control much of the urban housing market in the United States, how real estate properties have been treated as financial instruments by speculators, or how tax abatements and similar policies have incentivized luxury development. While the question of limited supply raising costs is a valid point, the author fails to mention that it is restrictive zoning policies in suburban areas and a hyper-focus on single family homes, something actually opposed by most Progressives, which often contributes to the lack of housing stock in urban areas. Not to mention, the real estate industry often engages in the practice of warehousing, where affordable housing is kept off the market in an attempt to inflate supply. Similarly, assuming that these problems can all be traced to latte-sipping Millennials is equally reductive. Financialization in the urban context and the current affordability crisis in the Global North has been a problem decades in the making. Geographer David Harvey documented these issues of urban displacement as far back as the 1980s, coining the term accumulation by dispossession in relation to them.
At the same time, despite my numerous critiques of digital nomadism and the rise of an expat gentrifier class, the author sets them up as the sole double cause of gentrification in the North and South, without considering that, in many cases, a large of this so-called laptop class also downwardly mobile and live lived a precarious life in US and European cities prior to moving to Mexico. Many are working as freelancers in fields such as journalism and the nonprofit sector, in jobs that more often than not, provide little benefits, offer no health insurance, and pay less than 30,000 dollars a year, which result in rent burden and barely scraping by paycheck-to-paycheck. These population are often themselves gentrifiers but are also at risk of being priced out due to ongoing gentrification. They are pushed further and further into the urban periphery due to increased unaffordability, while displacing others at the same time. This precariousness is precisely what makes the “Mexico is so Cheap” fantasy so seductive and marketable.
Ultimately Saucedo’s piece is thought provoking and brings about interesting questions to a forum where discussions of gentrification and housing might be less common. As such, it is a successful contribution to this ongoing debate. Unfortunately, the text has many shortcomings which are evidenced by a lack of engagement with questions of urban financialization and other broader phenomena which are animating the transformations we are examining in many urban spaces.
