This paper presents an approximation, the state of the art, about the process of gentrification considering in detail the role played by culture in its development since culture acts as a generator of the mechanisms that brings about this process. Herein, I examine the role of culture in urban heritage management and the development of arts and its agents. In addition, the infrastructure and equipment that culture generates as spaces of consumption and leisure. The exploration of this phenomenon brings to light its variability, flexibility and mutability in its global character. In doing so, it also reveals the inevitability of the process of the urban development nowadays. The convergence of both concepts is utilized to explicate many gentrification processes in the contemporary Mexican cities.