Storie di una rua tra alluvione, riqualificazione e gentrificazione. Il caso della zona velha di Funchal

This paper discusses the process of transformation of Santa Maria Maior neighbourhood in Funchal (Madeira). The purpose is to analyze the connections between reconstruction in post-disasters, regeneration, and tourist gentrification. The post-disaster creates usually ideal conditions to promote speculative economic processes with consequences on local people. Thus, the authors have realized a biography of one of the main streets in the neighbourhood, rua Santa Maria, collecting storytellings of its inhabitants. The street has been object of an art-led gentrification by 2010. We have realized 47 semi-structured interviews to different local stakeholders, and we have realized a photo-telling of them that was presented in an exhibition entitled ‘The faces of the regeneration’ in 2018. We have also realized a map of the commercial transformation in the street. This has let us to understand the impact of the process of touristicization in the area and how the flood of 2010 has contributed to the process. What we observed is that the regeneration has been guided by external forces, top-down and bottom-up, that considered the area as degraded, lacking to understand the real life there and activating a process of neighbourhood-grabbing for tourism.