Conflicting Perceptions of Urban Landscapes: The Case of Tourism and Housing in Barcelona

Keywords: Barcelona, tourism, urban landscape, housing, temporary subletting, sustainability
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Monday
Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 39

Abstract

The ever-changing dynamics of cities challenge their capacities for resilience and the accommodation of new uses, experiences, and relationships. In many cities shared by collectives with divergent interests, perceptions of the urban landscape have become increasingly complicated. Shifting notions of the use of public space and housing have led to strong debates surrounding gentrification, the “right to the city”, and the “right to housing”. As a result, in many urban areas, housing has ceased to be a human right and has become a battlefield.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Barcelona’s housing affordability and sense of community were threatened by the emergence of short-term subletting platforms, whose profitability led to the massive use of private rentals as temporary tourist accommodations. Tensions arose as residents blamed tourism for the lack of affordable rental housing. This, coupled with overcrowding in public spaces, led to a negative perception of tourism and its effects on the landscape. However, the pandemic presents a window of opportunity for Barcelona to reinvent its relationship with tourism, privileging greater sustainability and the alignment of residents’ and tourists’ interests.

This paper examines the conflicting perceptions tourism has generated in Barcelona’s urban landscape, presenting several policy considerations for fostering a more comprehensive sustainability in the tourism and housing sectors. It employs a mixed-methods approach, featuring qualitative analysis of existing government and tourism documents and quantitative analysis of both statistical data on tourism and the local economy and surveys carried out with residents and tourists under the EU-H2020 SPOT project.