Abstract
ABSTRACTThe heightening scale of urban tourism and the fast-growing number of “floating” city users raise new challenges to understand contemporary urban change – namely for internationally open, heritage-rich medium-sized cities. Discussing the case of Porto at a time when the contested notion of gentrification infuses local politics, we highlight the transnational drivers of this process in Portugal´s second city. While acknowledging perils and benefits, we argue that more than simply leaving a footprint to be solved with taxation, internationally-driven gentrification may endanger city diversity and identity, raising implications for urban policy and for our understanding of local development as a whole.
Highlights
To be sure, gentrification as a process of urban change and displacement driven by international elites is far from new in Porto and has been occurring for many centuries, in a somehow cyclical fashion
The citys current physical and social composition may be seen as the result of several waves of foreign-led gentrification – notably driven by British families linked to port wine trading during the late 18th and 19th centuries (Oliveira, 1973). Those new higher-income, longterm settlers occupied former industrial class and fishermans neighbourhoods in search of what we would refer today as “amenities” – e.g. proximity to the sea, urban parks and even premises for religious profession (Pinto, Alves, Barbosa, & Lima, 2017) – bringing novel cosmopolitan atmospheres while triggering new living, consumption and leisure preferences that would endure over time (Fernandes, 1985). Already during this period, international tourists visiting the city described processes of displacement and incongruence as they saw “new trendy boulevards [in places] previously occupied by fishermen (. . .) where the British built beautiful cottages surrounded by symmetrical gardens (. . .)” (Rattazzi, 1880, p. 313), some locating “just beyond the hovel where the beggars sit at home, [originating] an assemblage of incongruities” (Jackson, 1874, p. 303)
A number of surveys carried out in Portos city centre every six months during 2012–2017 (Chamusca & Fernandes, 2016) show major changes within an area where spatially and temporallyspecialized streets and new elitist spaces became coexistent with popular stores that resist, void spaces that persist, hybrid situations and recent neo-traditional or “pseudotypical” establishments specially targeting temporary city users rather than residents
Summary
Gentrification as a process of urban change and displacement driven by international elites is far from new in Porto and has been occurring for many centuries, in a somehow cyclical fashion. These features of permanence, participation and local embeddedness are in sharp contrast with the speed, volatility and rotation in Portos early 21st century “floating” and “transnational” gentrifiers (Sigler & Wachsmuth, 2015) – namely the growing and unprecedent number of international tourists, exchange students and other short-term visitors in the city.
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