Paper short abstract:

This paper is about preserved Habsburg coffeehouses in Vienna, Budapest and Trieste. It discusses how these historical places have been restored to become tourist hotspots often exasperating local customers who feel as they are losing key socialising spaces in the city.

Paper long abstract:

This paper offers a comparative analysis of the preservation, marketization, and everyday usages of Habsburg coffeehouses in Vienna, Budapest, and Trieste. Mobilizing post-colonial, de-colonial, and critical sociological theories, I engage with the 'imperial café' as a key site of urban socialization but also a privileged space to promote heritage tourism. This is also because, since 2011, Viennese coffee culture has been added to the UNESCO Intangible Heritage List boosting tourism not only in Vienna, the former Imperial capital, but also in other cities where the imperial tradition of the coffeehouse has been preserved. This paper focuses on the workings of affect as a site of political intervention and it explores how imperial atmospheres, and affective attachments to them, are re-created, inhabited, and embodied in the coffeehouse as a unique residue of imperial legacies. In so doing, the paper explores how heritage preservation becomes a matter of re-creating atmospheres that could be apprehended and consumed by tourists whilst, at the same time, they create contested feelings among the local population that often feel excluded from spaces in the city, such as the coffeehouses, which have been key to urban socializing.

Paper short abstract:

Findlay Market, established in 1852, has evolved from a locus for provisioning to a mecca for gastrotourists while maintaining a balance between attracting tourists and selling products that remain true to its heritage as a place for neighborhood residents to satisfy their food shopping needs.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, we explore how producers, vendors, and consumers construct cultural meaning at Findlay Market in Cincinnati, OH. This market, established in 1852 as a place for local producers to sell their wares, has evolved from exclusively a locus for provisioning to a site with a robust tourist trade. As this urban market evolved, management had to maintain a balance between features that will attract tourists while also selling products that remain true to this historic landmark's heritage as a place for neighborhood residents to interact with producers and satisfy their food shopping needs. Additionally, we explore the perspective of the vendors who, by selling in these spaces, add a perception of added value to their wares. Consumers often feel a connection to the producers in these spaces and feel that they are creating a long-term buyer/seller relationship by purchasing from particular sellers. From the Durkheimian perspective, the public market circumvents the fear of not knowing the producer. From a Marxist perspective, the public market circumvents the idea of the alienation of the producer and the goods produced. These spaces accomplish this in two ways, either by providing a location where producers and consumers may interact or by creating the perception that the vendors have a connection to the production in some way. We are going beyond these symbolic and materialist perspectives to look at the agency model of production, exchange, and consumption.

Paper short abstract:

This articles offers a comparative analysis of street music making in the industrial city of León and the touristic city of Guanajuato, both in Central Mexico. It debates two different models of urban experience and citizenship as informed by the appropriation of public space by music making.

Paper long abstract:

This article compares the practice of street music making in León and Guanajuato, two neighboring cities in the State of Guanajuato in the Bajío Region of Central Mexico. Since this cultural area has shown a recent and successful record of economic growth, its latest demographic transformations have impacted the local economies of creativity. Based on ethnographic research, non-participant observations and sensorial methodologies that explore into the urban experience as informed by the practice of street music making, I debate how the presence of foreigners acts as a catalyst of cultural change. I differentially assess the presence of foreigners due to the expansion of the car industry in León, and the impact of international tourism in the case of Guanajuato. I conclude that while the agency and creativity of musicians in the city of Guanajuato are limited by well-established dynamics of commodification of immaterial heritage addressing their practice to the "tourist gaze" (Urry 2002); the musicians of León are taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the new ethnoscape brought on by the global growth of the car industry. Ultimately, the comparison allows to observe two contrasting models to exercise citizenship through musical appropriation of the public space given the two different inherited legacies associated to each city (Lorentzen 2009).

Paper short abstract:

The objective of this paper is to approach the relations between street performers and other economic agents in the urban economy of Chiado. The fieldwork we have conducted includes field surveys, interviews, and a geoethnography of the urban rhythms of Chiado.

Paper long abstract:

Alongside the increase of tourism in Lisbon, the economic activities of the city centre have changed profoundly. Within this scenario, we witness an increasing presence of street performers in the most affluent streets. In street performing, or busking, artists perform their acts on the street, receiving donations from passersby who stop to contemplate the performance. Albeit informal, street performing is an organized activity in affluent sites where artists have to compete for space and time on the street.

Street performers contribute toward the economy of attention in city centres. It has been argued that, in a context of the experience economy, the captivation of the consumer's attention has become the main focus of firms who intend to provide meaningful experiences to consumers. Street performances play an important role in captivating the attention of tourists, thus contributing to the urban economy. At same time, street performers must negotiate space and time with formal activities that take place in city centres such as high street retail. On one hand, the artistic practices of street performers have certain necessities in terms of space and materialities. On the other hand, formal agents may wish to attract or repel street performers as they perceive their activities are beneficial or prejudicial for their business. In this paper, we will approach these issues through an exploration of street performance in Chiado, a neighbourhood in the city centre of Lisbon with a high density of retail and cultural facilities aimed for tourism and consumption.

Paper short abstract:

The mass tourism in Barcelona has created a tension between tourists and local inhabitants. This paper explores this tension looking at graffiti as a material object across processes of political participation and urban transformation in Vallcarca.

Paper long abstract:

The urban transformation of the Vallcarca neighbourhood in Barcelona and how it has become an arena for the empowerment and creativity of its inhabitants, constitutes the general framework of this paper. Following Ranciere's concept of the 'distribution of the sensible', I argue that experimenting with social and material relations produce 'communities of sense' (Sansi: 2015: 83), in which people become political actors engaging in new ways doing, being heard and being visible. In Vallcarca, a fundamental aspect of these 'communities of sense' is based on the interpenetration between human activities and the material elements of the present landscape. How do changes in the urban landscape shape the participation in politics of its inhabitants? And how do the properties of materials and local activism meet in the present and future of the Valcarca's landscape? According to Ingold (2013), the properties of materials are not attributes but histories on their ways to becoming something else. I am using the material surfaces of Vallcarca as a means to think about graffiti and the stories that they produce. For instance, the graffiti 'Tourist go home' or 'Good for the tourist, bad for the neighbours' keep appearing on the walls of Vallcarca. In this paper, I am going to explore how graffiti activate the urban landscape fostering encounters between different realities that don't normally meet. These encounters form part of an entanglement of social and material relations in which local political activism, mass tourism and the future of the Vallcarca landscape are at play.

Paper short abstract:

The paper analyses contrasting perspectives on the use of historical designs in creating a new townscape aimed at effecting a sense of pastness for the benefit of the local population, business and tourism. The new historical town centre will reframe the towns image and its inhabitant's identity.

Paper long abstract:

Selfoss, a small municipality in southern Iceland, is introducing a plan for a new "historical" town centre. The proposed plan includes a cluster of 31 building, all recreations of older wooden structures in Iceland, recognised as significant for the country's architectural history. All of the buildings, which were originally located in various parts of Iceland, have at some stage been destroyed, either by fire or demolition.

The paper introduces a case study based on in-depth interviews. The research interrogates different perspectives voiced by stakeholders and locals focusing on conceptualizations of cultural heritage, authenticity, and how historical design is used to create a new townscape aimed at effecting a sense of pastness for the benefit of the local population, business and tourism. Drawing on Holtorf (2013) the paper discusses if and how a sense of pastness can be created with replicas of historic structures, i.e. where the age of the structures is not the focus point but rather the age-value and the quality of being (of the) past. One of the key factors in creating a sense of pastness is the audience's perception of the past. The interviews indicate the importance of the planned reconstruction to be consistent with the audience's imagination of the past in order to be rendered believable, i.e. to be in line with common history knowledge and in accordance with the stereotypical image of the past. Consequently, creating a sense of pastness fails if these requirements are not met.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will analise the processes, actors, discourses and local dynamics of the cultural and creative economy involved in the recent regeneration of Marvila, emphasizing the strategic use of the past and the creation of new urban geographies in this fractured, post-industrial territory.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years the literature on the instrumental use of the cultural dimension in urban regeneration has grown considerably, analysing the impact of the creation of artistic districts and general cultural agglomeration in the political agenda for local development and international competition. Lisbon represents a rich but underrepresented case study in the targeted way the Municipality envisioned culture, in the middle of a hard-hitting economic crisis, as a major catalyst and engine of regeneration. In the past 2 years, a new area of intervention was brought to the fore: the semi-peripheral, post-industrial, socially and economically fractured Marvila, where major development plans, fully embodying the master narrative of the cultural and creative industries, are bound to significantly change the territory. Based on research undertaken since 2017 under the Horizon 2020 project ROCK, this paper will analise a) the expectations of local residents, economic agents and the creative class regarding change; b) the new urban geographies - public and private - that are being created; c) the strategic use of local culture and heritage, namely a romanticized image of the neighbourhood during the industrial zenith; d) the processes, actors, discourses and local dynamics of cultural policy and creative economy involved in these recent transformations.

Paper short abstract:

Taking as case study the medina of Fez, I explore the built, the sensitive and the social dimensions of the ambiance in this World Heritage site and tourist destination. This insight questions the "inventiveness of traditions" and the creation of a specific a-historic ambiance.

Paper long abstract:

In this presentation, I give interest to three main dimensions of an urban ambiance, that is to say its built, sensitive/affective, and social dimensions. From an ethnographic stance, I take as case study the Fez medina, a World Heritage site since 1981 and a city open to tourism development since the early 2000s.

I more particularly elaborate on two specific urban places involving heritage and tourism: public squares and guest-houses. I describe their main built features and their changes through time, I investigate the sensitive and affective relations that actors - mainly tourists, foreign residents and Moroccan inhabitants - develop with these urban environments, and I present the social features of these actors. It comes out that Moroccan inhabitants fully take part to the medina ambiance while they sometimes feel disposed in benefit of tourists, and that foreigners appreciate the medieval ambiance of the medina.

This ethnographic insight allows me to investigate, on the one hand the impact of urban policies and international development projects on the ambiance of urban squares, and on the other the impression of a traditional settings in guest-houses. Rather than to a feeling of loosing authenticity and the development of "invented traditions", it appears that these two places are subjected to the "inventiveness of traditions" and to the creation of a specific a-historic ambiance in which heritage and tourism play an important role.

Paper short abstract:

This work aims to analyse the transformations that occurred in the Alfama District, Lisbon, following the development of tourism. Some effects of tourism development in local ambiances, and in particular, the role of heritage and marketing for the perpetuation of local imaginaries, will be analysed.

Paper long abstract:

This work aims to examine how tourism contributes to the processes of transformation and co-production of places. It will highlight the effects of tourism in the city of Lisbon, particularly, in the Alfama district.

Today tourism industry contributes to changes in urban spaces, with new elements of urban regeneration emerging, with emphasis on the role of local communities. In recent years, the Bairro de Alfama has lost residents in favor of tourism and, consequently, and in the face of several factors, has gained 'new residents', the tourists, seeking local experiences.

Based on ethnographic research, this work has as main goal to address some effects of tourism development in local ambiances, and in particular, the role of heritage and marketing for the perpetuation of local imaginaries, will be analysed. It will be studied the processes of construction of narratives and tourist discourses, as well as the role of heritage in its relation with urban regeneration. The main actors in the (re) construction of imaginary processes will be taken into consideration.