Rome’s Contemporary Past - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 176

Residential, industrial, and commercial property continues to be converted
into various types of tourist accommodations. according to some statistics, Rome
now hosts thirty million visitors per annum (berdini 2010, 318). while public au-
thorities (and doubtless tourists themselves) like to think that tourism benefits
local people, the evidence is far less clear cut. Research into tourist-historic cities
shows that aside from the loss of homes and breakup of communities and social
support systems that this entails,5 local businesses which might provide genuine
career opportunities for young people get forced out in favor of tourist-oriented
activities with a fast turnover that can pay higher rates. often, local products
are a casualty of this, as multinational chains move in and price them out of the
market (timothy 2011, 166). tourist-historic cities lose their distinctiveness and
part of their local identity as they acquire the veneer of a global city of culture.
economically, the jobs created in tourist areas are overwhelmingly in the poorly
paid service sector and offer little in the way of a career structure. The low wages
make it unlikely that those employed will be able to live in the areas they work in.
some have likened this type of exploitation to a twenty-first-century version of
imperialism (smith 2009, 61).
There are also real questions concerning the sustainability of the monu-
ments that this tourism depends on. The palace of the emperor Nero (Domus
aurea) in the center of Rome is closed indefinitely because of fears that it is now
structurally unsafe.
several sections of the towering walls that surrounded the Roman city have
collapsed in recent years. Concerns have been expressed for the stability of the
Colosseum and restoration work becomes ever more urgent, just as finding the
money for it becomes ever more difficult. for an idea of what the future might
bring if there is not a steep change in attitudes to ongoing conservation, we need
look no further than a few hundred kilometers south to pompeii. here the over-
night collapse of buildings due to a chronic lack of maintenance resulted in the
resignation of a government minister and an emergency rescue fund of one hun-
dred million euros from the european union to prevent the situation becoming
catastrophic (Richeldi 2011). however, the funds that would be needed to carry
out such interventions in Rome would be of an order of magnitude many times
greater. pompeii was a small town with mostly domestic buildings and provin-
cial-sized public buildings. Rome was the capital of the empire and its monu-
ments were built to impress. environmental degradation is just as threatening
to tourism as building dilapidation is. tourist-historic cities rely on their narrow
streets, enchanting piazzas, and atmosphere of timeless charm to attract visitors.
such settings have a limited carrying capacity and are particularly vulnerable to
overexploitation (montanari and staniscia 2010, 309).
The great winner from the last fifty years of heritage protection appears to
be the international tourist, largely at the expense of the local resident. Rome's
visitors are now no longer primarily the glitterati of the dolce vita era, but they