Gentrification and touristification in urban heritage preservation: threats and opportunities

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses several processes of the “Society of Culture”, with a specific focus on recent urban development, and including dynamics of gentrification, touristification, segregation and their implications for the preservation of urban heritage. While cultural values exist on multiple levels – intrinsically artistic, social, and economic – it is the economic ones that have become dominant and predatory in recent decades. Through the analysis of international data on urbanism and tourism, we explore the role and value of urban heritage in European cities. Drawing from a literature review of the different thematic areas, taking into account relevant references from each one of them to establish an interrelated analysis, we try to argue why considering heritage-led tourist gentrification is urgent, what do we know so far, and some possible future lines of research that could contribute to a better understanding of these processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban heritage
• European cities
• gentrification
• touristification

Acknowledgements

We thank all the Uncharted team colleagues for their comments and insights.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://urban.jrc.ec.europa.eu/thefutureofcities/social-segregation#the-chapter.

2 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title = Urban_Europe_%E2%80%94_statistics_on_cities,_towns_and_suburbs_%E2%80%94_tourism_and_culture_in_cities.

3 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Tourism_industries_-_economic_analysis.

4 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title = Tourism_statistics.

Additional information

Funding

This work has been developed within the framework of the project Uncharted. Understanding, Capturing and Fostering the Societal Value of Culture funded by the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme [grant agreement No 870793] (University of Barcelona – Project Coordinator).