Tourism Can Disrupt Entire Urban Landscapes

The Street That Couldn’t Stay Quiet

On San Luis Street in Seville, something strange was happening to the old man who sold oranges. He had been there for decades, a fixture in a neighborhood that tourists never visited. Then the apartments above his stall became holiday rentals. The corner bar became a souvenir shop. The man who repaired shoes closed. The orange seller did not leave. But the street no longer belonged to him.

This is not a story about overtourism. It is a story about how tourism rewires a city at the level of bricks, bodies, and belonging. Jaime Jover Báez and María Barrero-Rescalvo, two geographers at the University of Seville, spent years watching this happen on one axis in Seville’s historic district. Their 2023 paper, published in the Journal of Urban Affairs, introduces a concept they call the “landscapes of touristification” (Jover Báez & Barrero-Rescalvo, 2023). It is not a pretty picture.

Touristification, they argue, is not just an economic shift. It is a physical, social, symbolic, and emotional transformation of urban space. It changes what a street looks like, who walks on it, what sounds fill the air, and how longtime residents feel in their own homes. The paper focuses on San Luis Street, a corridor connecting two traditionally non tourist neighborhoods in Seville’s historic center, before the pandemic brought global mobility to a halt. What they found is that tourism can disrupt entire urban landscapes, not just the famous squares and cathedral plazas. It creeps down side streets, into residential buildings, and into the quiet rhythms of daily life.

The authors define touristification as “an intense tourism expansion and appropriation in a specific area due to the activity’s rapid growth in a short period of time” (Jover Báez & Barrero-Rescalvo, 2023). That rapid growth is what makes it disruptive. When tourism grows slowly, a city can adapt. When it explodes, the landscape fractures.

Why a Street in Seville?

The researchers chose San Luis Street for a specific reason. It is not the tourist epicenter of Seville. It does not contain the Alcázar palace or the Giralda tower. It is a working axis that connects two neighborhoods, San Gil and San Julián, that were historically residential and commercial, not designed for visitors. By studying a street that was becoming touristified, rather than one already saturated, the authors could watch the process unfold in real time.

They conducted qualitative analysis between 2016 and 2019, before COVID-19 temporarily paused global tourism. This meant walking the street, photographing changes, interviewing residents and business owners, and tracking the conversion of housing into tourist accommodations. They also analyzed planning documents and local media coverage. The goal was not to count tourists. It was to understand how tourism reshapes the physical environment, the social fabric, the symbolic meaning of the street, and the emotional experience of living there.

Jover Báez and Barrero-Rescalvo built their framework on earlier studies of gentrification landscapes, particularly the work of geographers who examined how neighborhood change becomes visible in storefronts, building facades, and public spaces. But they argue that touristification is different from gentrification. Gentrification typically involves an influx of wealthier residents who displace poorer ones. Touristification involves an influx of temporary visitors who displace everyday life.

The Physical Landscape: What Gets Built and What Gets Erased

The most visible changes on San Luis Street were physical. The authors documented a wave of building renovations that transformed the street’s material character. Older apartment buildings were gutted and converted into tourist apartments. Small grocery stores and hardware shops were replaced by souvenir stalls, ice cream parlors, and bars catering to visitors. The street’s architectural fabric remained, but its function shifted.

This is not neutral urban renewal. The authors found that the renovation process selectively preserved certain features while erasing others. Facades were cleaned and repainted, but the interior layouts that supported family life were demolished to create multiple small rental units. The physical landscape became a stage set for tourism, where the appearance of authenticity mattered more than the actual lived experience of residents (Jover Báez & Barrero-Rescalvo, 2023).

One striking detail: the researchers noted that the number of traditional ceramic tile signs, called azulejos, which marked old shops and businesses, declined sharply. These tiles were not just decoration. They were a form of neighborhood memory, a visual record of who had lived and worked there. As shops closed, the tiles were removed or covered over. The physical landscape lost its connection to the past.

The Social Landscape: Who Leaves and Who Stays

Physical changes are easy to photograph. Social changes are harder to measure, but the authors found clear evidence of displacement on San Luis Street. Longtime residents sold their apartments to investors or were pushed out by rising rents. The social networks that held the neighborhood together frayed.

The paper describes how the street’s social composition shifted. The population became more transient. Tourist apartments do not produce neighbors. They produce temporary occupants who have no stake in the community. The corner bar that had served as a meeting point for decades closed. The bakery that knew customers by name shut down. New businesses opened, but they were designed for visitors, not residents. They sold sangria and paella, not daily bread.

The authors emphasize that this social disruption is not accidental. It is the direct result of tourism-driven investment that prioritizes short-term profits over long-term community stability. They write that touristification “intertwines with other urban processes, such as built environment renovation or people and retail gentrification” (Jover Báez & Barrero-Rescalvo, 2023). The social landscape is not just changing. It is being actively remade for a different audience.

The Symbolic Landscape: What a Street Means Changes

This is where the paper gets most interesting. The authors argue that touristification does not just change what a street looks like or who lives there. It changes what the street means.

For decades, San Luis Street was a symbol of working-class Seville, a place where families lived, worked, and celebrated festivals. The street had its own identity, its own stories, its own reputation. As tourism expanded, that symbolic meaning was overwritten. The street became a “destination,” a place to be consumed rather than inhabited.

The authors describe how local festivals and traditions were repackaged for tourists. Holy Week processions that had been intimate neighborhood events became photo opportunities. The street’s history was simplified and commercialized. Old buildings were given plaques explaining their significance to visitors, but the explanations often erased the complex social history of the people who had lived there. The symbolic landscape became a tourist brochure.

This matters because symbols shape behavior. When a street is seen as a tourist space, residents start to feel like outsiders in their own neighborhood. The authors found that longtime residents on San Luis Street reported feeling “invisible” or like “strangers” in familiar places. The street no longer belonged to them, even if they still lived there.

The Emotional Landscape: The Quiet Cost of Touristification

The emotional impact is the hardest to quantify, but the paper captures it through interviews and observation. Residents described feelings of loss, anger, and resignation. They watched their neighborhood become something they did not recognize. The sounds of the street changed. The rhythm of the day shifted. The places that held memories disappeared.

One resident told the researchers that the street no longer felt like home. Another said that the constant flow of tourists made her feel like she was living in a museum exhibit. These emotional responses are not just sentimental. They have real consequences. Residents who feel disconnected from their neighborhood are less likely to participate in community life, less likely to maintain public spaces, and more likely to leave.

The authors argue that the emotional landscape is an essential part of understanding touristification. It is not enough to count apartments or track rent increases. You have to understand how people feel about the place they live. When that feeling turns from belonging to alienation, the landscape has been disrupted at its deepest level.

What COVID-19 Revealed

The pandemic provided a natural experiment. When global travel stopped in 2020, touristification paused. The authors note that COVID-19 “meant a halt to touristification disruption of urban life” (Jover Báez & Barrero-Rescalvo, 2023). On San Luis Street, the tourist apartments emptied. The souvenir shops closed. The street returned, briefly, to its residents.

This temporary reversal revealed how much the landscape had been reshaped. Without tourists, the street was quieter, but it was also emptier. Many of the businesses that had replaced local shops could not survive without visitors. The street’s economy had become dependent on a flow of people who did not live there. When the flow stopped, the street faltered.

The authors do not romanticize the pandemic. They acknowledge that it caused enormous suffering and economic damage. But they argue that it exposed the fragility of touristified landscapes. A city that has been remade for tourism cannot easily return to its previous form. The physical, social, symbolic, and emotional changes are not easily reversed.

What the Research Does Not Prove

This is a qualitative study of one street in one city. The authors are careful not to overclaim. They do not argue that all touristification looks like San Luis Street. They do not claim that every historic district will follow the same path. They do not provide a single number or statistic that proves touristification is universally destructive.

What they offer is a framework. The concept of “landscapes of touristification” is a way of seeing. It asks researchers and policymakers to look at the whole picture: physical changes, social shifts, symbolic meanings, and emotional experiences. It suggests that touristification is not just a housing problem or a business problem. It is a landscape problem.

The paper also does not answer the question of what to do about it. The authors describe the disruption, but they do not offer a policy prescription. That is not a weakness. It is an invitation for further research. The open question is whether cities can manage tourism growth without destroying the landscapes that made them worth visiting in the first place.

What This Actually Means

• ▸Touristification is not just about housing. It reshapes streets, storefronts, social networks, and emotional attachments. Policy responses that only address short-term rentals miss the broader transformation.
• ▸The symbolic meaning of a neighborhood can be stolen. When local history is repackaged for tourists, residents lose their sense of ownership over their own place. This is a real cost, even if it does not appear on a balance sheet.
• ▸Residents’ emotional responses are data. If longtime residents feel like strangers in their own neighborhood, that is a measurable sign of disruption. City planners should treat it as seriously as rent increases.
• ▸COVID-19 showed that touristified landscapes are fragile. Dependence on tourism creates economic vulnerability. Cities that diversify their economies and protect residential neighborhoods are more resilient.
• ▸The landscape framework is a diagnostic tool. Before approving a new tourist development, cities should ask: How will this change the physical, social, symbolic, and emotional landscape? If the answer is “we do not know,” that is a problem.