Urban Transformation of San Salvador: Contemporary Placemaking in Central America
Aerial view showing the Jardín Centroamerica in the foreground and the architectural lighting of the buildings around Plaza Gerardo Barrios. Image © PresidenciaSV via Wikipedia under license CC0
Historic center renewal has become a recurring strategy in Central American cities seeking to reassert the symbolic, economic, and functional relevance of their traditional cores. These processes often combine physical rehabilitation, institutional investment, and stricter control over public space. San Salvador offers a recent and instructive case, which allows for understanding of how interventions in inherited civic spaces balance infrastructure improvement with heritage conservation and social regulation. It also enables the assessment of how these choices resonate within broader debates on urban transformation in the region.
