Havana's Transnational Gentrification: Highest and Best Use from Elsewhere

Abstract

This article addresses the two processes of market making and transnationalization in Havana through the lens of gentrification theory. Using a case study situated between Global South and East, this article looks more closely at transnational families and migrants as agents of gentrification in Havana, analysing how they create and exploit the rent‐gap. Returning to the central ideas of ‘highest and best use’ and ‘circulations’ in N. Smith's rent‐gap theory, I analyse how increased transnational mobility has affected the commodification and potential use of housing in Havana. Based on interviews with transnational owners who purchased housing to upgrade and convert into an Airbnb, this article shows how the “highest and best use” of a property is evaluated from elsewhere. It also demonstrates the complexities of transnational gentrification in a southern socialist city and insists on the need to understand more broadly the gentrification–migration nexus.

Tourism‐Led Rentier Capitalism: Extracting Rent and Value from Tourism Property Investment

“…These players have a mutual interest in booming tourism, capitalising value, and extracting tourism rent. We have defined the latter as a form of rent combining elements of differential, monopoly, and potentially also absolute rent, but also adding a new twist as rent gaps are not only shaped at the local but also at the global level (Jolivet 2023;Wijburg 2023).…”

“…The gradually increasingly entrepreneurial role of governments in tourism property investment also comprises various fiscal policies such as tax reduction schemes, fiscal incentives and new forms of citizenships (e.g. Golden Visas in Portugal, Spain, and elsewhere) to attract real estate and commercial investors as well as remittance investors (Jolivet 2023;Krijnen et al 2017;Wijburg et al 2021) and transnational wealth elites, including expats, digital workers, high-income social groups such as affluent retirees, and very-high-net-wealth households who keep properties in strategic locations (Fernandez et al 2016). Due to these new dynamics, not only private middle-class investors but also listed and non-listed property firms, like real estate investment trusts (REITs) and private equity firms, have entered the market for tourism property (Yrigoy 2016).…”

Bridging the Rent Gap: New Theoretical and Empirical Narratives

“…Focusing on short‐term rentals, the study of Violaine Jolivet (2023) in Havana reveals that state‐induced rent gaps coexist with transnational gentrification. This phenomenon results in rent gaps that private investors exploit through platformisation (the dominance of digital platform companies, infrastructures and logics), a trend attributed to the recent re‐opening of the Cuban real estate market for transnational capital.…”