Rethinking rent gaps from the Amazon: urban contestation and extractive frontiers in Ecuador

Contemporary postcolonial urban geographies aim to challenge dominant knowledge production by providing a more in-depth understanding of the frontiers of capital reproduction. This article explores extractive frontiers in the Amazon through the lens of Rent Gap Theory, introducing the concept of the Amazonian Periurban Rent Gap (APRG) as a means of integrating political economy with postcolonial thought. The APRG is empirically developed using a comparative framework across three cases of extended urbanization in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Each case is shaped by distinct trajectories of extractive economies, contestations over urbanization, and the formation of indigenous subjects. Employing spatial-historical and ethnographic methods, the research examines how rent gaps are produced and resisted- at the edges of capital expansion. In doing so, it challenges dominant urban theories through postcolonial critique and broadens the conceptual vocabulary of urban frontiers and extended urbanization by incorporating discourses on indigenous urban territorialization.