The current economic system has been shaping urban transformations for decades, and with the growing population in cities, it is a challenge to guarantee a decent living for everyone. Uneven urban development has been one of the hot issues, since the increasing pressure on land in cities has led to economic and social tensions, especially in the housing market.
The aim of this thesis was to determine whether the district of Sants-Montjuïc was undergoing a process of gentrification and in what way tourism was influencing it. The review of different literature gives a glance of this modern phenomenon, but there is not a consensus on which are the causes of such. Despite the different currents, most academic dissertations on the economics of urbanisation show Marxist trends, or are, at least, critical with neoliberalism.
The result of said academic line is that, besides the specifics of each case, the basis for gentrification is the production of space. Land goes from site of production to product, and everything on it becomes a commodity. The implications of cities and neighbourhoods being a commodity are that they become a key piece of capital accumulation (the secondary circuit of capital) and lose their use value for the predominance of their exchange value.
After carrying out the quantitative study and analysing the results, we can conclude that gentrification is indeed what some neighbourhoods of Sants-Montjuïc are enduring. Poble Sec and Hostafrancs, where Parc de Montjuïc and Plaça d’Espanya are located, are not only the district’s gentrification leaders but also on the top 5 most gentrified neighbourhoods in Barcelona. Sants does not lag far behind in gentrification terms, and Sants-Badal, Bordeta and la Font de la Guatlla are somewhat gentrified. At the end of the line, there is la Marina de Port and Marina del Prat Vermell, which are experiencing similar socioeconomic transformations as the other neighbourhoods but not intensively enough to be considered gentrification (less than 0,25 on the index).
One additional major line of study has been touristification. A city which receives over 9 million tourists yearly and where the sector represents over 10% of the GDP, it is expected that tourism influences its urbanisation. The addition of a touristification parameter to López-Gay et al.’s index –along with the substitution of two parameters measuring
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education level for two measuring rent and income changes- has proven an effect:
gentrified neighbourhoods got an even higher result in the index when tourism was taken into account.
Sants-Montjuïc is not in the city centre, the typically tourism-gentrified zone according to literature, so why is it undergoing such a process? The findings of the analysis tell us it is probably the railway station. The number of hotels, inns, pensions, and other tourist accommodations have grown at the same pace as the number of national and international visitors arriving at the city by train for the past years. Even more, almost 30% of all the hotels of the district are in the immediate surroundings of the station.
Furthermore, the numerous train connections in the district make it really easy and fast to get to the other neighbourhoods of the city, including the old town Ciutat Vella. Great commuting without massive crowds makes up for the lack of emblematic attractions and highlights Sants-Montjuïc as a great place to stay in Barcelona.
An important part of the analysis of touristification is shared with gentrification:
population substitution. The spread of housing for tourist use and tourist apartments has meant the switch from traditional, residential rentals to holiday rentals for many landlords. In Sants-Montjuïc, at the beginning of the decade the ratio between the two types of rentals was around 8% of tourist apartments per residential households.
Currently, it is around 16%.
Since over half of the apartment listings for Barcelona on the Airbnb platform have hosts with more than one listing, it is likely that they are running a business. Moreover, the data presented regarding high availability and the characteristics of the listings help reinforce this theory.
The statistics dismantle the sharing economy business model, since it is hardly impossible for the owner to co-live with the tourists and rent their house partly to gain extra income.
If the owner is not present, has more than one apartment, and all of them are highly available all year round, it is likely that the owner is not a person but a company. This has bad connotations for the housing market, since some of them are illegal22 and, most importantly, are displacing residents and transforming the urban landscape.
22 Info from: Barcelona City Council. https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/turisme/es/noticia/llamamiento-a-la-colaboracion-ciudadana-para-combatir-las-viviendas-turisticas-ilegales_368904
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The Airbnb business model is also relevant for gentrification literature discussions, including this thesis. If tourism has an important weight in gentrification and behind most holiday rentals there are companies looking for profit, this gives credit to Smith’s (1979) approach. By switching from traditional rentals to apartments for tourist use, landlords are trying to capitalise their potential ground rent, that is, get the maximum surplus. In doing so, they are closing the rent gap by means of touristification. Such choices do not come from the tourist or the neighbour, but from the capital owner: supply-side induced gentrification.
Local authorities are not blind to the problem of gentrification, but the policies implemented up until now have not been enough to put a halt on neighbour displacement.
Barcelona’s City Council has a team of inspectors whose job is to find and denounce illegal HUTs. Since 2016, over 6.000 tourist apartments without license have been detected and almost 5.000 of them have been closed down23.
Some authors highlight the importance of the tourist fee in addressing mass touristification (Navarro, 2016). In Barcelona, the “taxa turística” (tourist tax or fee) is set between 0,65 and 2,25 euros per night. Compared to other cities on a global scale, it is quite low. The case of New York, for instance, is that visitors pay a 7% of their hotel bill to the local council. Furthermore, Barcelona’s tourist fee is shared with the Catalan government and it is compulsory that the tax revenue is invested in tourism promotion.
That way, it is the city council who ends up subsidising tourists, instead of them being the ones who contribute to the citizens’ wellbeing.
Overall, Barcelona’s attempt at regulating tourism accommodation is reduced to the PEUAT, the implications of which still need to be discussed. Those areas qualified as Zone 3, according to the plan, will see an increase of tourism promotion in their neighbourhoods and the opening of new accommodations. Who can promise that this is not sentencing them to a future of gentrification? It may be especially concerning for the northern districts, which have the highest rates of poverty and lowest rates of income and rent prices.
One more latent issue is the remodelling of the Barcelona-Sants railway station and its surroundings. The project is still at a premature stage, but the negotiations between the City Council and ADIF, the public railway administration company, are advancing at a
23 Data from Betevé. https://beteve.cat/economia/pisos-turistics-illegals-tancats-pla-xoc/
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good pace. The most recent draft includes an enlargement of the main hall by 40 metres, doubling space for shops inside the station, the design of new green spaces, the burying of the surrounding roads and parking lots, and moving the bus station to Plaça d’Espanya.
While it may seem attractive at first, the consequences of such remodelling need to be carefully considered. A bigger station will probably entail more international passenger traffic and increase tourism, green spaces will possibly “beautify” the area and appreciate land value and price, and doubling the space dedicated to shops (all of them big multinational companies) will most likely harm small businesses and local retail companies.
These last items are too recent for this thesis, but would most certainly be adequate for future lines of study and further discussions regarding the paper of the Administration and public policies. As per now, while politics take time, social movements organised by people continue to fill the spot and try to build a city for everyone.
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