Speaker
Description
The competing interests of various actors around attractive urban heritage sites present ongoing and complex challenges, particularly in the context of increasingly intensifying tourism flows. These issues become even more relevant when viewed from the perspective of residents who are the most immediate preservers of local urban culture. While historic heritage areas of high symbolic value are often prioritized by competitiveness-oriented urban policies, the continuity of local urban cultures in these areas depends primarily on the daily rhythms of residents' lives. The presentation aims to offer a nuanced approach to understand the significance of local time-space specificities to be considered in building an understanding of contemporary touristification and its impact on local communities and urban cultures in gentrified heritage areas.
Drawing on findings from a mixed method study of Tallinn Old Town (UNESCO listed since 1997) residents in 2021, the presentation discusses residents’ – the owners of heritage property – economic and socio-spatial practices to maintain and advance the liveability of the Old Town in the post-gentrification area. Quite contrary to the UNESCO claims to preserve the human environment and it’s social and functional diversity, the neoliberal laissez-faire attitude towards tourism management paves way towards mono-functionality of historical sites which tend to be consumed rather than inhabited (Minguez et al., 2019; also Tena et al., 2025). These developments might reduce the attractiveness of a destination as it loses its authentic character where history meets the modern everydayness. Our research indicates that residents' "small-scale acts of resistance" (cf. Rozena & Lees, 2021) to daily nuisances caused by excessive tourism may be insufficient to counteract place-based negative dynamics (cf. Cocola-Gant, 2018) as touristification becomes disruptive even for those residents who appreciate the vibrancy of a lively Old Town. This highlights the necessity for institutionalized measures and a public strategy that explicitly recognizes local residents (cf. Ferro et al., 2024; Ruis-Ulldemolins & Klein, 2022; Sgambati, 2024) as central actors in sustaining the heritage areas.
References
Cocola-Gant, A., 2018. 17. Tourism gentrification. L. Lees, & M. Philips, M.(Eds.), Handbook of gentrification studies, pp.281-293.
Ferro, L., György, E., Oláh, G., Teixeira Lopes, J., Sonkoly, G., Apolinário, S., Azevedo, N. and Ricardo, J., 2024. Gentrification and touristification in urban heritage preservation: threats and opportunities. Cultural Trends, pp.1-16.
Mínguez, Carmen, María José Piñeira, and Alfonso Fernández-Tabales. "Social vulnerability and touristification of historic centers." Sustainability 11, no. 16 (2019): 4478.
Rozena, Sharda, and Loretta Lees. "The everyday lived experiences of Airbnbification in London." Social & Cultural Geography 24, no. 2 (2023): 253-273.
Rius-Ulldemolins, Joaquim, and Ricardo Klein. "From a Barrio Chino urban stigma to the Raval cultural brand: Urban memory and cultural policies in the renewal of Central Barcelona." Journal of Urban History 48, no. 6 (2022): 1407-1423.
Sgambati, S., 2024. Are cities losing their competitive edge due to overtourism and touristification? The case of Naples’ historic centre. In City Innovation In A Time Of Crisis (pp. 189-205). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Tena, P.A., Sánchez, X.G., Vicente, V.A.Q. and García-Esparza, J.A., 2025. Unpacking World Heritage cultural clusters through the interplay of urban tourism and gentrification. Cities, 158, p.105634.
| Keywords | heritage; urban cultures; gentrification; touristification |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
