Vacation Rentals, Tourism, and International Migration

Author(s):  
Josefina Domínguez-Mujica ◽  
Juan Manuel Parreño-Castellano ◽  
Claudio Moreno-Medina

The growing presence of vacation rentals and international residential migrations are two phenomena determining the recent dynamics and urban structure of most Spanish Mediterranean and island cities. Tourists and migrants tend to be interested in the same urban spaces, and this tends to trigger gentrification, either by changes in the uses of real estate, or driven by the prospects perceived by owners of earning money. This chapter analyses these new mobility flows and urban dynamics in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, a city with enormous tourism potential located in the outermost regions of European. The chapter analyses the development of tourism in the city and recent transformations in tourism amenities available, including holiday lets. The chapter studies the changes in the resident population paying special attention to foreigners and finally, to reveal the peculiarities and emerging conflicts inherent to tourism gentrification.

Author(s):  
Juan Manuel Parreño Castellano ◽  
Josefina Domínguez-Mujica ◽  
Claudio Moreno-Medina

The legal proceedings of real estate dispossession are essential elements in understanding the impact of the economic crisis on Spanish cities. Those that took place between 2009 and 2017 in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, their quantitative dimension and their intra-urban distribution are analysed in this study. This perspective allows an appreciation of their relationship with the unequal distribution of income and alien status, factors leading the investigations on the loss of property. In order to achieve this objective, the records of the Common Service of Notifications and Seizures have been used together with data of the Inland Revenue Ministry and Municipal Register, combining statistical and cartographical analysis with the purpose of finding associations and predictive factors. The study reveals that there is a great concentration of real estate deprivation in the central areas of the city and that the standards of distribution of dispossession are inversely related to the level of income of the urban districts and directly related to the foreign population. This tends to confirm that dispossession must be interpreted as the result of mechanisms of capitalist accumulation, which reinforce socio-urban inequalities.


Author(s):  
Iva Hradilová

Although the issue of urban waterfront is not entirely new, it still represents a very vivid topic. Urban waterfronts have for long been standing in the forefront of many architects and organizations, who are aware of their value and the potential a watercourse carries within the urban interior. A watercourse is an interconnecting element between the urban development and the surrounding countryside and urban waterfronts are the intermediaries of communication. It is exactly in their area where the city - a purely human product with an inner structure and order defined by humans - meets the element of water, which is a purely natural component.What influences the urban structure most is, however, the presence of water in its very basic form i.e. in the form of a river. Its significance and effect on the public space and the inner relations within the body of the settlement vary with the size and the width of the flow, character of the waterfront, architectural layout of the riverbanks and its current utilization. Urban river works as a communication element which meets with the natural features. It seems to be unnatural to define a waterfront space like mono-functional site. This space denies the very essence of the waterfront and the city’s inhabitants appear as unattractive. In this case the very attractive element of water is unable to urban residents to attract together. In general, the quality of the public space is determined by the degree of its utilization by a wider group of inhabitants. It is the inhabitants themselves who imprints the concept of a public space to empty urban spaces.The present form of urban waterfronts is a result of the historical development, attitude and mental state of the society. The architectural appearance of not only the waterfront but also all public spaces is a reflection of the current social values. It gives evidence about the character of the society, the present economic system, the state and thinking of the contemporary era.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-310
Author(s):  
Mira Kfoury

Abstract This research looks at an abandoned beer brewery that is set for a new real-estate-led redevelopment project in Beirut between past, present and future. While the building proudly represented a moment of Lebanese modernity and identity formed around industry, it also speaks of the eventual failure of the promise of modernity associated with Lebanon's first republic. The building's story is also closely woven with Mar Mikhail and the history and geography of drinking-culture and leisure-spaces in Beirut. In one sense, Mar Mikhail represents, through its recent street-based, informal re-claiming of public-space, lower prices, minimal overhaul of built infrastructure and attachment to an 'authentic' traditional working-class neighbourhood, a resistance to exclusive urban spaces of neo-liberal consumption. The enquiry highlights neo-liberal capital's tendency to exploit vulnerabilities ‐ for example, that of urban and architectural decay, wherein the re-discovery of 'heritage' makes it appear as revolutionary but in reality it is further incorporation into the capitalist system. The research also reveals the nexus of these shifts with gentrification and social, economic and cultural stratifications of the city. I, thus, analyse the new architectural vision for the brewery site and how it re-inscribes capitalism's hegemony over architecture in advancing gentrification processes in cities: commodification of heritage blatantly visible in architectural terms.


Author(s):  
Olena Oliynyk

The article considers the problem of open public spaces preserving – such as streets, squares, parks and other elements of the urban structure. The Council of Europe and UNESCO view urban spaces as a part of the city’s cultural landscape, as bearers of its identity and cultural memory, and their preservation as the key to the sustainable development of historic cities and the foundation of democracy. Therefore, the system of open spaces of the city should, according to the recommendations of UNESCO, be considered as a cultural heritage site, an integral part of the cultural landscape of the city. We can talk about the preservation of public urban spaces only when they are part of the network of pedestrian spaces of the city and have the appropriate function. However, defining the boundaries of the historical spatial planning system and the principles of its formation is also a problem. Steady fragments of the spatial planning system of the city, which have certain historical characteristics, are not always preserved as a whole urban development and in some places have the form of individual fragments. Methods of spatial analysis and environmental zoning are used to determine the compositional basis and degree of preservation of the spatial fabric of the city. The method of spatial analysis allows to formalize a complex multilevel pattern of urban fabric of the city, highlighting only the compositional-spatial aspects of perception; to identify the compositional structure of urban spaces. The method of environmental zoning is based on the identification of the most established links in its urban structure, namely - systems of open pedestrian urban spaces, of which the transit spaces (streets) determine the compositional structure and historical "ornament" of the street network, and spaces of stay (squares, intra-quarter spaces) - their social role and content, identity of the city.


Author(s):  
Paul Niell

The Baroque in Ibero-American Architecture and Urbanism, in parts of the Americas formerly comprising the Spanish and Portuguese empires, has been traditionally studied as a question of adherence to or deviation from a Counter-Reformation style promoted primarily by ecclesiastical institutions. This article expands upon what is meant by “Baroque” in the architecture and urbanism of the Iberian empires in the Americas. Through the analysis of urban plans, images of the city, architectural interiors and exteriors, physical urban spaces, and other forms of material culture, this article argues that Ibero-American architecture and urbanism in the age of the Baroque belonged to a phenomenon of ordering and thereby creating the “New World” as ideologically constituted colonial spaces that reified social and political norms. Furthermore, human subjects actively negotiated the spaces created by architecture and the city, making the American Baroque also part of a process of negotiating order and thereby producing American spaces.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 101
Author(s):  
Francisco Maturana ◽  
Mauricio Morales ◽  
Fernando Peña-Cortés ◽  
Marco A. Peña ◽  
Carlos Vielma

Urbanization is spreading across the world and beyond metropolitan areas. Medium-sized cities have also undergone processes of accelerated urban expansion, especially in Latin America, thanks to scant regulation or a complete lack thereof. Thus, understanding urban growth in the past and simulating it in the future has become a tool to raise its visibility and challenge territorial planners. In this work, we use Markov chains, cellular automata, multi-criteria multi-objective evaluation, and the determination of land use/land cover (LULC) to model the urban growth of the city of Temuco, Chile, a paradigmatic case because it has experienced powerful growth, where real estate development pressures coexist with a high natural value and the presence of indigenous communities. The urban scenario is determined for the years 2033 and 2049 based on the spatial patterns between 1985 and 2017, where the model shows the trend of expansion toward the northeast and significant development in the western sector of the city, making them two potential centers of expansion and conflict in the future given the heavy pressure on lands that are indigenous property and have a high natural value, aspects that need to be incorporated into future territorial planning instruments.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7533
Author(s):  
Jakub Bil ◽  
Bartłomiej Buława ◽  
Jakub Świerzawski

The article describes the risks for the mental health and wellbeing of urban-dwellers in relation to changes in the spatial structure of a city that could be caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. A year of lockdown has changed the way of life in the city and negated its principal function as a place of various meetings and social interactions. The danger of long-term isolation and being cut-off from an urban lifestyle is not only a challenge facing individuals, but it also creates threats on various collective levels. Hindered interpersonal relations, stress, and the fear of another person lower the quality of life and may contribute to the development of mental diseases. Out of fear against coronavirus, part of the society has sought safety by moving out of the densely populated city centres. The dangerous results of these phenomena are shown by research based on the newest literature regarding the influence of COVID-19 and the lockdown on mental health, urban planning, and the long-term spatial effects of the pandemic such as the urban sprawl. The breakdown of the spatial structure, the loosening of the urban tissue, and urban sprawl are going to increase anthropopressure, inhibit access to mental health treatment, and will even further contribute to the isolation of part of the society. In addition, research has shown that urban structure loosening as a kind of distancing is not an effective method in the fight against the SARS-COV pandemic. Creating dense and effective cities through the appropriate management of development during and after the pandemic may be a key element that will facilitate the prevention of mental health deterioration and wellbeing. It is also the only possibility to achieve the selected Sustainable Development Goals, which as of today are under threat.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 2323
Author(s):  
Constantin Nistor ◽  
Marina Vîrghileanu ◽  
Irina Cârlan ◽  
Bogdan-Andrei Mihai ◽  
Liviu Toma ◽  
...  

The paper investigates the urban landscape changes for the last 50 years in Bucharest, the capital city of Romania. Bucharest shows a complex structural transformation driven by the socialist urban policy, followed by an intensive real-estate market development. Our analysis is based on a diachronic set of high-resolution satellite imagery: declassified CORONA KH-4B from 1968, SPOT-1 from 1989, and multisensor stacked layers from Sentinel-1 SAR together with Sentinel-2MSI from 2018. Three different datasets of land cover/use are extracted for the reference years. Each dataset reveals its own urban structure pattern. The first one illustrates a radiography of the city in the second part of the 20th century, where rural patterns meet the modern ones, while the second one reveals the frame of a city in a full process of transformation with multiple constructions sites, based on the socialist model. The third one presents an image of a cosmopolitan city during an expansion process, with a high degree of landscape heterogeneity. All the datasets are included in a built-up change analysis in order to map and assess the spatial transformations of the city pattern over 5 decades. In order to quantify and map the changes, the Built-up Change Index (BCI) is introduced. The results highlight a particular situation linked to the policy development visions for each decade, with major changes of about 50% for different built-up classes. The GIS analysis illustrates two major landscape transformations: from the old semirural structures with houses surrounded by gardens from 1968, to a compact pattern with large districts of blocks of flats in 1989, and a contemporary city defined by an uncontrolled urban sprawl process in 2018.


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