This summer, I have been living in Embajadores, a neighborhood bordering the districts of Centro and Arganzuela. Centro is the city’s commercial center where many Madrileños work and many tourists spend their vacations. Meanwhile, Arganzuela is more traditional, residential district home to working class and upper-middle income families. In Arganzuela, reisdents enjoy tapas at neighborhood Cervecerias or convene on sidwalks and in uncrowded public spaces. On hot summer days, people take picnics to Madrid Río, a family-oriented park with bathing fountains, that stretches along the river.
More recently, Arganzuela has undergone changes as there are efforts to introduce new creative and cultural capital to the area, and to attract tourists and visitors from other parts of city. One example is El Matadero, a slaughterhouse turned Cultural Arts Center hosting art exhibitions, documentaries, and workshops. The space is publicly funded yet its offerings appeal to a select audience. They are geared toward the creative class and college-educated young people. Restaurants appealing to a similar crowd have opened nearby. There seems to be both public and private interests involved in the district’s transformation—a vision that could potentially disrupt local culture and alienate some community members.
This past year, Paisaje Transversal produced diagnostics for Arganzuela, assessing its vulnerabilities and laying out strategies for potential improvements. One principle conclusion was that the Arganzuela could be better connected to Centro and its commercial and touristic activity. Paisaje called for more spaces like El Matadero, and the continued growth of the creative marketplace. They proposed generating more tourism around Madrid Río, and across the district at large. At the core of Paisaje’s methodologies for urban regeneration is their goal to facilitate neighborhood change from the bottom up. Through participatory regeneration strategies, they intend to contradict the gentrification process in which communities are physically or culturally displaced. Reading their diagnostics and plan for Arganzuela has caused me to think about tourism and its role in neighborhood transformation. I am quick to conclude that gentrification and tourism are closely connected. Where tourism seems to flourish, local culture and social cohesion may suffer. I am still thinking about this relationship between tourism and neighborhood change, and plan to write a follow-up post to address some of my questions. Is sustainable tourism possible and what would it look like? How can local and global interests be reconciled in a city? How can the needs of the Madrid’s citizenry be balanced with the city’s economic need to attract tourism and to be innovative on a global scale? How can urban innovation be redefined—from a bigger, faster, richer mentality to a more community-based one in which problem solving strategies are adapted at a local level?
*Does* the city economically need to attract tourists? Tourism is a really interesting phenomenon, as you note, because it is often the domain of a leisured and fairly affluent class (at least on an international scale) and is an engine of consumption. The idea, of course, is that the population of a city grows temporarily with the arrival of tourists and tourists spend money on museums, hotels, cars, restaurants, and trinkets. But does everyone benefit from this? Not really. Tourism/consumption replaces local production (most products consumed are not made by people in Madrid) and the number of people employed by hotels, restaurants, and museums is not huge. I think this is part of the argument of people like those Victoria is studying — that is, is there a way we can imagine a future for Madrid that does not wrap the city up in gold-leaf and present it to tourists and luxury developers, but rather benefits most Madrilenos? It’s idealistic, yes, but perhaps worth imagining, rather than assuming the inevitability of gentrification and the growth of tourism. What do you think?