Territorial curation – Extracting value from the rent gap

This article builds on and expands existing work on rent gaps and territorial stigmatization, introducing the concept territorial curation to facilitate understanding of the unfolding and closing of rent gaps. Territorial curation occurs when public and private actors collaborate to overcome the barriers posed by territorial stigma to induce gentrification and extract land value. We argue that territorial curation is a form of stigma governance that reconfigures stigma rather than eliminating it, shifting it from the territory to specific people, delimited spaces, practices, and aesthetics. Based on original empirical research in Gamlestaden, Gothenburg, the location of Sweden’s first official BID-inspired model, we show how real estate owners and municipal actors work in concert to curate the neighbourhood’s image, commercial landscape, and historical narrative. Through interviews, planning documents, and field observations, we demonstrate how curated authenticity and aesthetic regulation are deployed to attract investors and middle-class consumers while marginalizing immigrant-owned businesses and their customers. In conclusion, we argue that territorial curation operates as a slow, cyclical process and functions as a form of risk management that bridges the reputational gap between a neighbourhood’s present and its imagined future.