Negotiating the Metropolitan Frontier: Gentrification, Internal Migration, and the Social Production of Territorio in the Eastern Valleys of Quito, Ecuador

This thesis examines the socio-spatial transformation of Quito’s eastern valleys: Cumbayá, Tumbaco, and Yaruquí, from the early 2000s to the present days. As Quito’s urban core has reached saturation, these formerly peripheral, semi-rural parishes have become the primary frontier of metropolitan expansion. The research asks how this transformation has reshaped the physical and social landscape, and how it is experienced by long-term residents and internal migrant households. The study combines QGIS-based analysis of historical satellite imagery, tracing two decades of densification and infrastructure growth, with six semi-structured interviews conducted across the three parishes, offering a lived-experience perspective on urban change. Rather than treating migration and gentrification as separate or sequential, the thesis argues they form a self-reinforcing cycle: (i) migrants socially produce territory through decades of labor and community-building, (iii) infrastructure investment then converts that territory into a speculative asset, and (iii) weak land-use governance allows this conversion to proceed unattended, displacing the very residents who produced the territory’s value, and pushing them toward the next frontier. The findings show displacement operating as a spectrum rather than a single event. The study identifies “exclusionary displacement” and “anticipatory displacement”, where residents experience a gradual loss of place identity and a “silent” exclusion from the decision-making processes that shape their communities. Participants consistently recognize the material benefits of modernization but criticize an institutional “governance gap” that prioritizes private capital over social belonging. The thesis closes with policy proposals for quantitative land classification, institutionalized public participation, and land value capture.