Venice Reshaped? Tourist Gentrification and Sense of Place

Abstract

This paper is aimed to explore the role of tourism in reshaping historical cities, particularly into forms of cosmopolitan consumption. New mobility paradigms seem to merge production and consumption patterns of tourists and residents, all influenced by similar gazing and performing places. The iconic case of Venice shows patterns of staged authenticity, reconstructed ethnicity, and economy of subordination. Drivers to visit Venice include experiences in a setting that is densely characterized by cultural heritage; however, the tourist monoculture and cosmopolitan consumption have depleted the original elements of this attraction: traditional places, residents, livelihoods, material and immaterial cultures. Culture markets and international events, architectural and environmental restoration, together with private forms of transport in the fragile lagoon ecosystem, have transformed the historical city and its unique lifestyle into a place for cosmopolitan consumption, involving tourists together with new residents, sometimes integrating wealthy long-term residents in this overall tourism gentrification. Deprived of great part of what is considered to be the old and conservative block of residents, the gentrified residents acquire spaces for their cultural activities and political acts in their 'saving Venice' projects. Two gentrifying groups are described in this paper: super rich with their philanthropic associations, and intellectuals. Despite clear differences in their causes and agency, both share common visions over leisurely uses of the lagoon city, artistic production and consumption of its heritage. Sustainability questions could instead propose to start from local memories to reconstruct Venice as a complex urban space with more inclusive sense of place.

Cruisers in the City of Helsinki: staging the mobility of cruise passengers

“…Like other studies have shown (e.g. Doxey, 1975;Minoia, 2017), growing tourism, and particularly fast tourism can produce deeper residential issues and conflicts, even starting by occasional disturbances on specific walkways. No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.…”

Reasons and Consequences of Overtourism in Contemporary Cities—Knowledge Gaps and Future Research

“…These are often small cities that became economically dependent on tourism traffic. Examples of Dubrovnik [32] and Venice [6,27,99] presented here, and also places such as Palma de Majorca [100], prove that the situation of those destinations is extremely complicated. In big cities that are not dependent on tourism, it is possible to keep only the supportive function of tourism in economic development while limitations for tourists, which may make them less attractive for them in favor of citizens' quality of life, can be introduced.…”

“The Overwhelmed City”: Physical and Social Over-Capacities of Global Tourism in Venice

“…Instead of involving citizens and policymakers and looking at collaboration between various social groups, the possible (and desirable) dialogue about tourism management is moving towards an almost critical position rather than towards a shared field. In such a field, proposals that engage marginalized groups in a participatory and ethical production of solutions and in sharing benefits can improve the situation [35][36][37][38][39]. The debate about the tangible and intangible impacts of tourism on the city's social spaces is also associated with increasing frictions between inhabitants and tourists, as highlighted by the emergence of urban social movements, organizations, and associations in many European destinations [6,26].…”