Sustainable tourism and other mobilities: changing the narrative
Sustainable tourism is a multifaceted concept – sustainability is not equivalent to eco-friendliness and it is not related solely to responsible behaviours on the part of visitors and their hosts. Any evaluation of sustainability must consider whether the lifestyles and livelihoods of the destinations’ residents can be sustained. This is exactly what the EU-funded SMARTDEST project has done. It analysed how the development of cities as hubs of tourism and other mobilities, such as expat workers, lifestyle nomads and students, affects the lives of resident communities.
Pan-European trends challenging urban social cohesion and reproduction
“SMARTDEST explored and addressed this phenomenon through the co-design of solutions via CityLab case studies in six EU cities and Jerusalem, Israel. The project identified five critical trends across Europe,” explains project coordinator Antonio Paolo Russo of Rovira i Virgili University. A real estate market increasingly catering to short-term use has created a lack of affordable housing and led to a relentless erosion of local structures. This decreases residents’ access to services and networks that guarantee social cohesion and social reproduction. An overreliance on the visitor’s economy and consumer services is simultaneously reducing opportunities for the highly skilled while significantly increasing positions for poorly paid and precarious work. It is also spurring decreasing protection of citizens’ rights to health and rest in an increasingly 24/7 environment. Finally, the rise of smart cities is widening social divides and further empowering the most skilled city users. “To complicate matters further, mobile short-term dwellers generally have greater financial means and influence than the most vulnerable and less adaptive strata of local populations. This puts them at an advantage in negotiating for space, services and infrastructure. Urban policy often favours or accommodates this, rather than striving to maintain social cohesion and restructuring the governance of tourism development to consider the needs of affected communities,” adds Russo.
Working together to address over-tourism and vulnerability
The SMARTDEST Social Innovation Kit, a web-based platform, empowers users to chart the trends analysed in the EU and in case study cities, map various interdependent indicators, learn about the work conducted in CityLabs, and engage with researchers. Future versions will enable other cities and stakeholders to upload their data, expanding the evidence base and enabling them to benchmark trends and challenges against those of the CityLabs. SMARTDEST produced open access databases at the EU and case-study level, algorithms, case study reports, thematic policy briefs and more than 20 high-impact journal papers, mostly in open-access format. This will help policy makers, citizens and cities facing similar challenges evaluate trends and make appropriate decisions.
A tale of two cities
“Possibly the most outstanding result is that tourism workers increasingly can’t afford to live in the cities to whose global success they contribute. They are condemned to exclusionary commuting lives. At the same time, quite unexpectedly and despite the evidence, some governments and industry stakeholders still think that tourism can continue to grow and benefit local communities and are ready to invest large amounts of public money to sustain such growth,” explains Russo. SMARTDEST has provided a wealth of data and evidence to support the counter-narrative, enabling vulnerable groups and their advocates to proactively petition for change through direct engagement or the democratic process.
Keywords
SMARTDEST, cities, tourism, social cohesion, sustainability, urban, affordable housing, overtourism, social exclusion, social reproduction