Against the backdrop of contemporary challenges in facilitating sustainable urban (tourism) futures, the session "How Tourism is Transforming the Urban Fabric" invites cutting-edge research that explores facets of the multifaceted relationship between tourism and urban development.
Moving beyond well-established narratives of touristification and tourism gentrification, it is particularly interested in perspectives that illuminate less explored aspects of tourism's role in shaping urban environments and/or reflect upon novel solutions for creating more liveable, equitable, and sustainable cities in the face of evolving tourism dynamics. We invite submissions from diverse fields, including tourism studies and management, urban planning/studies, geography, sociology, and anthropology that present original empirical findings, propose innovative theoretical frameworks, introduce novel methodological approaches, or elaborate upon creative policy interventions, with potential areas of interest including but not limited to:
- Manifestations of urban tourism dynamics beyond conventional tourist zones or established “off the beaten path” destinations
- Emerging tourism mobilities and their interactions with urban spaces and places
- The role of tourism in shaping urban identities, imaginaries, and cultural landscapes
- The impact of technological advances, e.g. in social media, AI as well as virtual and augmented reality technologies, on urban tourism experiences, dynamics, and management
- Novel approaches to “measuring“, analysing and evaluating tourism's multi-faceted effects on cities and their communities
- Fresh theoretical or empirical insights into the governance and politics of urban tourism and destination management
- Emerging forms of tourism-driven social innovation, community empowerment, and “regenerative” place-making
- Innovative strategies for leveraging tourism's potential to enhance urban environmental sustainability, e.g. city-wide circular economy initiatives.
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„City of the cruise ships“. Monfalcone and its shipyard – approaching the interrelations between labour, cultural heritage and (memory) politics
Janine Kristina Schemmer
University of Vienna, Austria
Monfalcone, a city located close to the Italian-Slovenian border, can look back on a long shipbuilding tradition. “It is known as the ‘City of the cruise ships’ due to the important presence of Fincantieri.”, reads the description on the website of the city administration.[1] The shipyard shapes the identity of the town, located close to Trieste and the Slovenian border, since its opening in 1908, and affects everyday life until today. When the crisis hit the European shipbuilding sector from the 1970s onwards, shipyard work experienced a transformation, and went along with the increase in labour migration. Today, migrants make up about 30 per cent of the total population of about 30,000. Many of them are from Bangladesh. Their strong presence in the shipyard and its city led to an “ethnic coding of everyday life” (Amin & Thrift 2002: 292), especially since 2016 when the right-wing populist party Lega took lead of the local government of the traditionally left city, making use of the presence of foreigners for its own political purposes. Such development has led to a renegotiation of the identity of the town alongside that of shipyard work. One central issue in the context of this urban rearrangement is the question of what defines good work and who is granted to perform it.
In my talk, I would like to explore the dynamics behind this urban polarization (Waquant 2021), focusing on labour migration and its effects, through a closer look at the representations of labour in the local shipyard museum (MUCA), populist identity politics, as well as the practices of different actors that form a network of mutual support involving citizens, trade unions and the workers themselves.
The perspectives presented emerge from ethnographic research, drawing on participant observation in the town and the MUCA.
[1] Comune di Monfalcone: Monfalcone e il suo territorio, https://www.comune.monfalcone.go.it/it/ambiente-e-territorio-18542/territorio-18543 (access-date: 28.03.2025).
Ansätze zur kollektiven Wahrnehmung im historischen Zentrum von Madrid und Lissabon. Eine interdisziplinäre Erasmus-Erfahrung.
Waltraud SEICHTER
Uned, Spain
Über ihre unmittelbare Nutzung hinaus sind Gebäude und Stätten des Kulturerbes Objekte und Schauplätze, die dazu beitragen, das Handeln der Gemeinschaft zu lenken. Sie sind Schlüsselkomponenten bei der Organisation von Informationen, die die Handlungen lokaler Gemeinschaften direkt beeinflussen. Kognitive Wahrnehmungssysteme interagieren direkt mit der gebauten Umwelt durch Handlungen und erzeugen Erfahrungen, die für nachfolgende Handlungen genutzt werden.
Dies erfordert eine Neuausrichtung auf phänomenologische Perspektiven, die die begriffliche Grenze zwischen Geist und Material, Kognition und Handlung in Frage stellen. Gebäude und Kulturerbestätten sind Teil von eng miteinander verbundenen räumlichen und zeitlichen Netzwerken. Sie sind soziale Räume, in denen sich Raum und Zeit vermischen.
Fünf Universitäten aus drei Ländern (Portugal, Italien und Spanien) kamen im Juli 2023 y 2024 im Rahmen einer Erasmus+ BIP-Erfahrung zusammen, die für die Wohnviertel La Latina, Madrid (ESP) und La Mouraría, Lissabon (PT) im historischen Zentrum entwickelt wurde. Das Projekt wurde von Lehrkräften verschiedener Fachrichtungen (Anthropologie, Architektur, Urbanismus, Geografie, Geschichte und Archäologie) geleitet, im Sinne eines interdisziplinären Fokus auf den Problempunkt: „Massenturismus versus Lebensqualität von Anrainern“. Neu an dieser Erfahrung im Vergleich zu bestehenden Master- und PhD-Studiengängen in Europa war der intensive Kontakt der Studenten mit dem Thema anhand einer zweiwöchigien Feldforschung, welche einer einwöchigen methodischen Einführung on-line folgten. Dies ermöglichte es, Lernergebnisse wie Konvergenzen in Raum/Zeit, die Geschwindigkeiten und Zeitlichkeiten der Stadt, Beständigkeit versus Neuerfindung und die Erzählungen und symbolischen Werte, die den Identitäten des Viertels zugrunde liegen, zu gewährleisten.
Die Studierenden reflektierten, lernten und machten Vorschläge zur Rolle des kulturellen Erbes und der sanften Stadterneuerung durch eine Reihe von methodischen Ansätzen, darunter Ethnografie, Freihandzeichnungen und Kartierungen sowie städtebauliche, historische und archäologische Analysen. Ziel war es, die Bedeutung der verschiedenen Disziplinen für die Planung einer Zukunft hervorzuheben, die sozioökonomische und ökologische Nachhaltigkeit, Lebensqualität und das Recht der Bewohner auf eine emotionale Bindung an ihr Stadtviertel beinhaltet.
Between Urban Transformation and City Tourism: Managing Public Space in Vienna
Markus Reiter1, Martina Jauschneg2, Lou Frisch1
1Bezirksvorstehung Neubau, Austria; 2Büro Jauschneg
Urban transformation is crucial for ensuring livable cities. The Development Plan for Public Space in Vienna-Neubau and Vienna-Josefstadt aims to create climate-resilient and socially just urban spaces, balancing the needs of residents and visitors alike.
City tourism plays a key role in this transformation. In Vienna-Neubau, guest overnight stays doubled between 2007 and 2019, accompanied by a sharp rise in AirBnB rentals. This impacts public space through increased commercial activities, such as outdoor seating areas and kiosks, as well as a shift in ground-floor usage towards gastronomy. These developments often lead to conflicts with local residents, who experience noise pollution and a loss of non-commercial public spaces.
A critical issue is the displacement of accessible, consumption-free urban spaces. Marginalized groups, including homeless individuals, face increasing exclusion as public spaces become more commercialized. Simultaneously, the expansion of AirBnB reduces available housing, pushing local residents out of the district.
In response, the key question is how to develop tourism that is compatible with urban life. The development plan identifies Vienna’s Gebrauchsabgabengesetz as a crucial governance tool for regulating public space access and use. Through strategic policies, the city aims to balance tourism-driven transformations with the rights and needs of its residents.
Next stop Venice!
laura fregolent
Università Iuav di Venezia, Italy
The paper aims to highlight, also through the results of some ongoing research, the progressive transformation – social and physical – of the city of Venice. The demographic decline and the exponential growth of tourism exposes Venice to a radical change in terms of use of public and commercial spaces, and of the increasingly expensive housing offer for a resident. Living is modified following very intense dynamics and linked to tourist flows that contribute to altering the living conditions of residents and the city as a whole.
The analysis of some urban regeneration projects in the historic city, and also of some intervention in the mainland city highlight the dynamics in progress.
Multiple externalities connected to the intensification of the tourist phenomenon are recognized: overcrowding and the related implications on urban mobility and on the functioning of the local public transport system, the disturbance caused to residents in their daily practices, the deterioration of public spaces, the modification of the commercial offering and public services. The result is a progressive impact on housing system with the consequent increase in rents and prices of apartments and houses, the disappearance of long-term rentals and the expulsion of low- and medium-income groups of the population.
The constant growth of tourist flows has become particularly evident in recent years, the conflicts that highlight the problems connected to the massive expansion of the tourism industry. Committees, associations and informal groups of citizens involved in various forms of territorial mobilization have multiplied, thus contributing to the emergence of a civic network strongly committed to making known, denouncing the processes of touristification in progress.
The perspectives put in place are often proposed as a radical alternative to the current situation with respect to which a progressive debasement of the general and collective interest and of the urban quality of the city is denounced. Observing these conflicts therefore allows us to understand the main public issues involved as: the regulation of urban quality and urban space, the protection of the right to housing and to the civic uses of under-utilized or abandoned building heritage.
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