Contribution short abstract

Tourism megaprojects are reshaping Barcelona socio-ecology. Through interviews and system dynamics, this study reveals hidden infrastructural territorialization strategies analyzing how over-tourism, digital nomadism and innovation strategies drive housing pressures and reinforce urban extractivism

Contribution long abstract

Tourism-oriented megaprojects and mega-events are increasingly central to urban strategies of competitiveness, yet they intensify socio-ecological conflicts and deepen uneven territorial transformations. This contribution examines how Barcelona’s infrastructure agenda—starting from The Nineties Olumpic Game till the recent the expansion of the El Prat Airport, the America’s Cup (Copa América) or the innovation district 22@—reshapes urban space through processes of infrastructural territorialization, amplifying pressures related to over-tourism, digital nomadism, and housing financialisation. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders involved in both projects - public authorities, neighbourhood associations, environmental organisations, and sectoral actors - the study analyses the competing narratives that justify growth-oriented interventions while foregrounding the lived experiences of those who bear the socio-environmental costs. Methodologically, the research adopts an inductive mixed-method design, combining Gioia coding with housing price data and causal loop diagramming. This system dynamics approach reveals reinforcing feedback loops between tourism expansion, short-term rental markets, speculative expectations, infrastructural investment, and the displacement of local residents. Preliminary findings indicate that, once negative externalities and extracted value are considered, the claimed spillovers of tourism megaprojects become net negative for many communities and ecosystems. By centring political ecology and local struggles, the contribution interrogates who benefits from tourism-driven infrastructural futures, who absorbs the risks, and how alternative, community-rooted imaginaries may open pathways toward post-growth, just, and ecologically grounded urban transitions.