The touristification of nightlife: some theoretical notes

ABSTRACT

Agrowing number of authors have recently suggested a clear interaction between tourist gentrification and commercial gentrification. However, little scholarly attention has been paid to the growing interrelation between the nighttime leisure economy and urban tourism, along with all its complex forms of simultaneous interaction as fundamental driving forces of the current processes transforming the social, economic and cultural fabric of the central areas of many European cities. This short paper will argue that much more academic attention should be paid to how the touristification of nightlife is emerging as one of the most aggressive forms of material, symbolic and heritage dispossession of local communities within the central historic neighborhoods of many European cities.

KEYWORDS:

• Nightlife
• touristification
• dispossession
• urban change

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to express their special gratitude to all informants who agreed to participate in our research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In fact, there were many movidas across 1980s Spain, especially in small cities and towns of the country such as in Vigo, Gijón, Bilbao, Iruña, Zaragoza, among many others.

2. One example of this is the historical neighborhood of Alfama, in Lisbon city center (Sequera & Nofre, 2020).

3. With the aim of avoiding excessive self-citation, please see author’s academic profiles (i.e. Academia and ResearchGate).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science & Technology (CEECIND/01171/2017 & PTDC/ART-PER/32417/2017) and the Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Sciences at the NOVA University of Lisbon. This work was also supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science & Technology within the scope of the project “UIDB/04647/2020” under CICS.NOVA – the Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Sciences of Universidade Nova de Lisboa.