Tourism and the critical cosmopolitanism imagination: ‘The Worst Tours’ in a European World Heritage city

Abstract

With its old core classified as a World Heritage Site since 1996, Porto has recently been experiencing a tourism boom. Voted ‘Best European Destination’ of the year three times since 2012, this mid-size city core area is experiencing an economic renewal after decades of neglect. Many of the new ventures are tourism-orientated: restaurants, bars, hostels, short stay apartments and specialised crafts shops are populating previously derelict eighteenth and nineteenth century buildings, bringing new life to previously depopulated streets. Most of these ventures are fronted by middle class individuals who saw their traditional economic outlets wither during the Portuguese economic crisis and consequent international bailout in 2011. This paper analyses a particular tourism venture: a walking tour of the city called ‘The Worst Tours’. The offspring of three architects, these tours differentiate themselves by not aligning within a hegemonic model of tourism that focuses on the built heritage of the UNESCO classification and its historical discourse on the city, offering instead a more politically engaged discourse in which the urban and social impacts provoked by Portugal’s economic downturn and the touristification of the city’s economy are highlighted and discussed with the tour participants. I will approach the tour through the lens of critical cosmopolitanism and the idea of a cosmopolitan imagination producing new relations between self, other and the world in moments of openness.