Whose is that square? Cruise tourists’ mobilities and negotiation for public space in Barcelona

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates how different human mobilities negotiate public space and with which results. The case in point is that of cruise tourism in Barcelona, a city where the relentless growth of visitors and the expansion of accessibility gateways like the cruise port may well be behind the rise of “anti-tourism”™ voices in social and political circles. Our work focuses on the transits of cruise passenger groups in two exemplary public spaces of the city, analysing how they come to fence off, engage with- or feed the mobility of other collectives. This research provides fresh insights on the processes that may generate disaffection among different “place users”™, eliciting a revision of the expectations on the quality of public space. On a more technical level, this paper introduces a complex but cost-effective methodology, involving a mix of geo-analytic and qualitative methods, which manages to track the “mobility clash”™ in public space and make sense of the response tactics.

KEYWORDS:

• Mobilities
• cruise tourism
• urban space
• negotiation
• relational analysis
• video-tracking

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The research of this paper is financed by the SpanishMinistry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (POLITUR project. CSO2017-82156-R) and AEI/FEDER,UE and by the Department of Researchand Universities of the Catalan Government (2017SGR22).