Gentrification and Touristification in the Central Urban Areas of Seville and Cádiz

Abstract

Intensive tourism in historic city centers is causing socio-spatial effects that are already visible to society. This has led politicians and academics to focus on the issue, creating a debate about gentrification in certain central urban areas which overlaps with studies on touristification, understood by some authors as tourism gentrification. This article aims to identify whether socio-demographic changes identifiable as touristification have occurred in the historic centers of two Andalusian cities, Seville and Cádiz, and which we interpret as the replacement of residents with visitors. The work is based primarily on the exploratory analysis of socio-demographic data from the Population Register and data on housing and rentals provided by different sources. The work shows strong indications of a relationship between the increase of tourist apartments and losses of residents in both historic centers. The paper concludes by pointing to the need for further research on this relationship in public statistics that can guide future policy action.

European historic cities and overtourism – conflicts and development paths in the light of systematic literature review

“…For example, in Krakow, it dropped from over 49,000 in 2004 to 29,000 in 2020 (https://krakow.stat.gov.pl/en/information-about-voivodship/capital-of-voivodship-381/population-436/) and in Prague from 10,500 in 2001 to 6,500 in 2021 (www.czso.cz/csu/xa/ casove_rady_lide__time_series_people). Similar changes observed in Seville were less sharpthe number of residents of the historic center dropped by 7% between 2013 and 2021 (Parralejo & Dı ´az-Parra, 2021). Presenting a more long-term view, Bertocchi & Visentin (2019) state that the number of permanent residents of the historic center of Venezia has dropped by 70% since the 1950s.…”

Comprehensive Evaluation of the Provincial Sustainable Tourismization Level in China and Its Temporal and Spatial Differences

“…These relationships are mainly reflected by the two-way flow of tourists and residents in geographical space and the various changes and relationships caused by this mobility. For instance, regional tourismization leads to changes in social demographics and residential space [11,15]. Tourism activities require a good living environment, ecological environment, infrastructure, and service facilities.…”

“…The CSI index was used to measure the sustainable tourismization level in China (Table 3). We considered index systems and indicators used in previous research, such as tourismization indicators [11,15,53,56], tourism sustainability indicators [60][61][62][63], and sustainable urban development indicators [64,65]. A total of 17 representative indicators were selected, including socio-cultural, economic, environmental indicators and tourism-related indicators.…”

“…Some were selected from the tourism sustainability index and tourism-urbanization-ecological environment system. The tourism reception scale reflects the number of tourists relative to the number of permanent residents, which also reflects the transnationalization level of central areas [15]. It is also an important manifestation of the local cultural carrying capacity and has direct or indirect impacts on various local reception facilities.…”

“…Social alerts due to tourist saturation have occurred particularly in historical central areas. It should be pointed out that the concept of tourismization is also considered by scholars to be associated with tourism-phobia and gentrification [11,14,15]. It can also change the nature of an area's heritage [16].…”