Gentrification, transnational gentrification and touristification in Seville, Spain

Abstract

Increased international tourism in large European cities has been a growing social and political issue over the last few years. As the number of urban tourists has rapidly grown, studies have often focused on its socio-spatial consequences, commonly referred to as touristification, and have linked this to gentrification. This connection makes sense within the framework of planetary gentrification theories because the social injustices it generates in cities have a global pattern. However, gentrification is a complex process that must be analytically differentiated from tourism strategies and their effects. Whereas gentrification means a lower income population replaced by one of a higher status, touristification consists of an increase in tourist activity that generally implies the loss of residents. Strategies to appropriate and marketise culture to sustain tourism-led economies can also shape more attractive places for foreign wealthy newcomers, whose arrival has been theorised as transnational gentrification. Discussions on the relationship between gentrification, transnational gentrification and touristification are essential, especially regarding how they work in transforming an urban area’s social fabric, for which Seville, Spain’s fourth largest city with an economy specialised in cultural tourism, provides a starting point. The focus is set on the processes’ timelines and similar patterns, which are tested on three consecutive scales of analysis: the city, the historic district and the Alameda neighbourhood. Through the examination of these transformations, the article concludes that transnational gentrification and touristification are new urban strategies and practices to revalorise real estate and appropriate urban surplus in unique urban areas.

Overtourism and online short-term rental platforms in Italian cities

“…Accommodation platforms such as Airbnb produce two primary effects. First, platform-mediated touristification radically changes the most affected neighbourhoods, producing more direct and immediate effects compared to a generic process of gentrification (Jover & D ıaz-Parra, 2019;Sequera & Nofre, 2018) or of touristification in general. As mentioned in Section 2, gentrification causes resident displacement mainly indirectly, by driving up rents and prices.…”

“…Moreover, the diffusion of short-term rentals may have a much more direct effect on the socio-spatial ecology of city centres than a "standard" gentrification process (Jover & D ıaz-Parra, 2019;Sequera & Nofre, 2018) and even than touristification in general, whose effects are mainly indirect. By allowing the conversion of thousands of residential apartments into tourist lodgings, short-term rentals immediately cause a substantial decrease in the housing stock available for long-term residents and contribute directly to the depopulation of city centres, as we will show.…”

Urban tourism and population change: Gentrification in the age of mobilities

“…Despite the different forms, geographies and temporalities of the process, gentrification is by definition a process of population restructuring characterised by the displacement of existing populations and the arrival of newcomers with higher socio-economic status (Smith, 2002). In this sense, other authors note that the recent dynamics of tourist cities can hardly be framed as gentrification and suggest using the term touristification as a more accurate characterisation (Jover & Díaz-Parra, 2019;.…”

The Identification of Values in Business Models of Tourism Enterprises in the Context of the Phenomenon of Overtourism

“…The literature mentions other issues that are related or similar to overtourism. An example is the publication by Torres Outón [19], Jover, and Diaz-Parra [20], which refers to gentrification and touristification. For the sake of completeness, it is worth adding that the phenomenon of touristification includes processes caused by excessive tourist traffic that contribute to the destruction of the socio-cultural tissue of the city: they break down social networks and neighborhoods and erode local identities that are supplanted by marketing activities targeted at tourists [21].…”