This section looks into the way touristification and associated phenomena cause a sense of existential and cultural displacement.
Social production of space refers to the material creation of space which combines social, economic, ideological and technological factors. These are some of the processes of social production of space perceived by our stakeholders to have a negative effect on the city: theming, standardized offers engulfing the particularity of local business (e.g. the proliferation of the so called Nutella shops), the development of more tourist accommodation facilities and the booming of Airbnb, the construction of a cruise terminal, the selling off of historic buildings owned by the city government to private owners.
After the March 1st political debate where AiP evaluated parties’ manifestos on their city-tourism agenda, we had the precious opportunity to have a lively and frank conversation with one of its leaders, Stephen Hodes, over drinks. One of our team members purposely asked the rather candid question, at that point in the research, when similar questions had already been asked in more formal meetings, of how he personally lived the touristification of Amsterdam and why he started taking action. The verbal answer was preceded by very expressive body language while he looked for the right words: he interlaced his hands and then jerked them apart while saying the phrase “I became disconnected”, to then specify, “from my surroundings”. An idea he further elaborated by referring to the loss of control over the transformations he witnessed. He then told us he had sold his city centre flat and moved to a new building far from the centre.
It is this sentiment and experience that we have envisioned as existential or cultural displacement: a rupture of the mutually reinforcing bonds between self/identity and place, provoked by the latter losing some features and gaining others until what one constructs as the place’s character disappears.
The above observation pertains to the social construction of space: the symbolic appropriation of space and transformation of it into place, and ultimately into locality (a place to which one belongs). It is performed through social exchanges, memories, images and daily use; that is, by how the space is lived, performed, inhabited. Unlike just space, places are “politicized, culturally relative historically specific, local and multiple [often competing] constructions” (Low and Lawrence-Zúñiga, 2012, p.15) and people’s relationship with them are “reciprocal and mutually constituting, one in which identity is negotiated through interactions with the environment.” (Low and Lawrence-Zúñiga, 2012, p. 14).
In the act of dwelling, people develop a sense of belonging and of being at home through memories and the embodied experience of place for which the familiarity of the ‘sensescape’ is crucial: the familiarity of the visual aesthetics of the built environment, of smells, sounds and the rhythms of public life, including recognizable flows of people. (Pinkster and Boterman, 2017, pp. 459-460). Equally important is the stability of a local facility structure that enables known ways of "doing neighbourhood" (Pinkster and Boterman, 2017, p. 460)…or city: shops, cafes, resting spots, routes to perambulate. Substantial changes in the sensory-experiential geography of place including a reshaping of its temporality with the introduction of consumption-geared spaces and events can trigger feelings of estrangement and disconnection.
This is often studied in the context of gentrification of working class neighbourhoods upon urban regeneration initiatives that attract middle-class residents with different place-making practices. Yet, the same phenomenon is perceived when places inhabited by long term middle-class residents are materially and symbolically rebranded to cater for tourists. This touristification process does not limit itself to changes in the visual aesthetics of the place or on the functionality of its infrastructure -the sheer swelling of the number of tourists suffices to create a collision between two very different ways of occupying and practicing space: on the one hand dwelling; and on the other, visiting, with its ephemeral, condensed, intensive consumption of space, scripted behaviours, and the othering gaze of the visitor: “the transformation of (…) destinations into consumable places for tourists may simultaneously render them “non-places” for local populations, causing (...) disorientation, displacement and disruption” (Leite and Graburn, 2009, p. 47).