Forme dell'abitare transnazionale. Il caso di Vilcabamba, Ecuador

This essay investigates how different forms of ‘residential tourism’ or ‘lifestyle migration’, produced by populations coming from cities and territories of the so-called ‘Global North’, have triggered complex dynamics of social and spatial modification in the landscapes and rural environments of Vilcabamba, Ecuador, a small Andean town of approximately 5000 inhabitants. To analyze such processes, the concepts of ‘extractive zone’ and ‘remittance urbanism’, as defined respectively by Macarena Gomez-Barris and Sarah Lynn Lopez, become operative tools for spatial research practices. The result is a spatial representation of the ways in which some specific practices of residential tourism are territorialized, modifying the meaning and functioning of rural spaces in Vilcabamba.