Class Conflict and Spatial Domination in the Neoliberal City.

This article examines spatial domination in middle-classed spaces—defined as urban areas catering to the dispositions, status, and lifestyle ideals of middle-class groups—within the neoliberal city, focusing on a case study of Jardim Europa, an upscale neighborhood bordering a slum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. It introduces a typology of middle-classed spaces based on the social construction of "value in social mix" and the "logic of urban development," identifying four spatial practices—takeover, repression, makeover, and concession—through which dominant upper-middle-class residents, developers, and state agents control and transform space to enhance its status and market value while excluding poorer residents. The study reveals how these practices reproduce historical patterns of social exclusion by materializing symbolic violence and extending private spatial control into public areas, with the state actively supporting market-driven exclusion under neoliberal urban governance. This framework contributes to research on status consumption, spatiality, and the role of the state by highlighting the interplay of symbolic and material struggles over space and the continuation of colonial legacies in contemporary urban development.