Touristification and displacement. The long-standing production of Venice as a tourist attraction

Abstract

Gentrification processes in the Italian context are frequently connected to the rise of the tourist industry, which has led several cities with a rich architectural and cultural tradition (such as Venice, Florence or Rome) to experience rapid demographic change and displacement. The combined effects of modern industrialization and suburbanization processes and a conservationist approach to urban heritage have left the physical fabric of some historical cities mostly intact, but have deeply transformed their social fabric, progressively dismantling their traditional mixture of social classes. Through the emblematic case of Venice, this paper aims to retrace the choices that have contributed to the rise of the city-as-an-attraction, starting from Venice’s early economic specialization in the tourist industry at the end of the eighteenth century and following its development through the last two hundred years. From the construction of the mainland new towns of Mestre and Marghera to the ongoing touristic saturation of the historical city, Venetian gentrification and touristification processes can be interpreted as a peculiar expression of an implosion/explosion urban dynamic, which laid the ground for the rise of the current tourist monoculture.