Cuenca en el siglo XXI, ciudad de ocio global: De la ilusión patrimonial al rentismo cultural

The purpose of this article is to unveil the space strategy masking the global capitalism urbanization process extended through the construction of a cultural-heritage brand. This has led Cuenca (Ecuador) to specialize in the unproductive consumption of space as a centrality of leisure, ignoring devices for extracting real estate surplus mediated by the tourism industry and the foreign invocation of a retirement life dream. A multivariate space-time analysis of the real-estate stock of the city is then carried out in three moments (2006, 2010 and 2016); as well as the revision of public planning and private sector behavior that link together the urban revaluation component with a symbolic race promoted by the local bourgeoisie since the 1980s, through the rapid specialization of the retirement offer for foreigners, and which brought Cuenca on the podium of world-wide cultural rentism.