The following is an excerpt adapted from Defying Displacement: Urban Recomposition and Social War (IAS/AK Press, 2024).
Holiday in the sun
The politics of place and displacement follow gentrifiers on holiday. Depending on the balance of class interests and power, the unique character of a place can attract gentrification as much as it can be wielded as a weapon against it. Charming Barcelona’s tourist-centered redevelopment started in earnest during preparation for the 1992 Olympics and intensified when the Convergència I Unió party rezoned swathes of the city to attract international capital in the depths of the Great Recession. Today, Barcelona has reached an “acute” state of gentrification thanks to the appeal of its “historical heritage, cultural dynamism, business economy,” and beaches. “The neighbors are disappearing,” reported one resident, saying rents had increased 200 Euros in recent years. “They are leaving.” But tourism is now a “fundamental industry,” per the managing partner of a hospitality consulting firm. “Many directly or indirectly connected industries would suffer greatly without it.”
With Airbnb, landlords around the world can easily replace tenants with tourists, multiplying the amount of money they receive each month. A San Francisco landlord evicted a tenant paying $1,840 a month to charge tourists twice as much. Airbnb rentals are estimated to have raised average rents in New York City by $400 a year. The platform has faced pushback in cities from Amsterdam to Venice as housing units are reserved for globe-trotting tourists.
The international vacation destination ought to be foreign and exceptional — nothing less justifies the airfare. But it must also make sense to the vacationer. There must be appealing hotels easily booked, attractions advertised in an understandable way, staff who speak their language, restaurants with menus that fit their tastes. As Guy Debord pointed out, tourism is “the opportunity to go and see what has been banalized,” commodified, made legible and essentially equivalent to any other vacation destination one might choose.
This tourism gentrification, which carves up working-class neighborhoods to attract vacationers’ dollars with hotels, resorts, restaurants, and shopping districts, is less frequently discussed in the United States, perhaps because the nation’s intellectuals and academics find themselves partaking in the practice on holiday. This is unfortunate, since tourism gentrification has come home to roost in devastating ways. The 1996 Olympics provided Atlanta elites with the opportunity to clear poor people from central areas, decimate public housing, and brand the city for global consumption, paving the way for today’s rampant gentrification. The 2028 Games in Los Angeles are already creating a “housing disaster” years in advance. The
