Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
commercial gentrifi cation than on residential (Sandford, 1987) in a piece on Harlem 'between
negative sightseeing and gentrifi cation'. Huning and Novy (2006) also focus on Harlem,
taking Kreuzberg in Berlin as a comparative case.
In another European case study, building on the work of Neil Smith, García Herrera
et al.
(2007) looked at gentr ifi cation, displacement and tourism in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, focusing
on the long endeavour of local government to foster neighbourhood change in coalition with
tourism and commercial development planning. They underline the strong connection
between gentrifi cation and displacement in their case study and analyse urban policy transi-
tions fusing gentrifi cation with tourism strategies, considering the consequent displacement
effects. There is also an emerging interest in this topic in Latin American cities, with promi-
nent case studies of the Boca and San Telmo neighbourhoods in Buenos Aires (Gómez
Schettini, 2009; Herzer, 2008).
In a different vein, but still largely based on Latin American and South African case
studies, the spectacularisation of very low-income neighbourhoods for tourism consumption
can be seen at its most extreme as slum tourism (favelas, townships, for example) and 'poorism'
(see S.R. Butler, 2010; Freire-Medeiros, 2011; Rolfes, 2009; slumtourism.net, n.d.), which is
arguably a radical extension of the shift towards neighbourhood-based tourism in cities. For
example, Broudehoux (2001) studied the aesthetisation of social inequality via urban revitali-
sation and tourism efforts in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She focused on mechanisms of urban
image construction and the relationship between space, power and social justice in the prac-
tice of selling places in a developing economy.
Beyond these cases, there has been a secondary focus on gentrifi cation in research on the
role of artists and artistic communities in neighbourhood-based urban tourism (Ley, 2003;
Miles, 2007; Tallon
et al.
, 2006) and the creative industries and tourism and neighbourhood
change (Wilson,
Chapter 16
in this volume; Richards and Wilson, 2007a).
A pertinent area for future research would be to start to look at the characteristics of
gentrifi ers when acting as tourists in other places, to understand whether there is any depth
in 'urban seekers' looking to reproduce their lifestyle experiences at home when travelling by
seeking out comparable neighbourhood-based experiences. The suggestion is that these
groups would constitute the main market contingents for this kind of tourism - urban seekers
on the move - but as yet this has not been researched in detail.
Evaluating the state of research on the built dimension and production side of tourism
gentrifi cation, it is evident that not much attention has been paid to upscale hotel develop-
ments in terms of their infl uence on property prices in city neighbourhoods (although see
McNeill, 2008). A good example is Barcelona's recent Barceló Raval; a contemporary yet
luxury hotel sandwiched into a dense multi-ethnic residential area, bringing issues of appro-
priateness of scale and likely impacts on residents into question. Another dimension is the
development of offi cial and non-offi cial tourist apartments in cities. Novy (interviewed in
Braun, 2011, online) notes that at least 10,000 of Berlin's apartments were offi cially given
over to tourism uses (at a time when there was an oversupply of residential housing stock).
Similarly, in Barcelona, the city government has had to crack down heavily on illegal tourist
apartments in residential areas, with 730 such apartments recently closed down in the old city
(Ciutat Vella) (El Periodico, 2010). The spatial implications of the development of 'home
exchanges' and 'couchsurfi ng' stays are a further extension of these post-tourism tendencies
and are clearly worthy of further investigation.
As with research on tourism and gentrifi cation as a whole, there has not been much focus
on the institutional and regulatory context of urban regeneration, gentrifi cation and urban
tourism specifi cally (Ashworth and Page, 2011). Huning and Novy (2006) touch on the
