Map making: what to include, what to leave out, and how to represent in 2D, places, pieces of information or feelings related to space? I found the task of bringing together aspects of my research this summer to make a map of Madrid more difficult than I expected. On reflection, I think the quantity of information and data at at my disposal added to my deliberations.
It took a few false starts, but I decided to focus on mapping what has been described to me as the ‘most urgent issue facing Madrid’: touristification. Even as recently as 5 years ago, tourism in Madrid was not regarded as a major issue. Madrid has historically missed out on most tourists who travel to Spain (largely regarded as a good thing by residents) in favor of holidays at the coasts, or cities such as Barcelona and Seville. Madrileños were left to enjoy their bars, parks and museums relatively undisturbed. A lot has changed in a very short time. In 2016, for the seventh year in a row Spain beat its own tourism record with 75.3 million foreign visitors, a rise of 9.9%. [1] Madrid received over 2 million tourists during June, July and August in 2016, a fraction of Spain’s total, but a huge increase on previous years. [2] Whilst tourists bring in money and some job opportunities, the benefits are not always spread evenly throughout city or the population. In addition, the influx of tourists in Madrid has had an acutely negative impact on those who live in the city center. Rents in Madrid rose by 14.6% last year and while the center of the city lost 10% of its population, tourist orientated accommodation grew by 50%. [3] Clearly, this is a very large and pressing issue for the city and its inhabitants. I have tried to represent some of the tensions that have arisen due to touristification in my map of Madrid. In parallel, I have included aspects of a contrary (and in some instances reactionary) trend towards greater social engagement and community activism (in a large part catalyzed by the 15-M movement in 2011) in Madrid. Below I explain my reasons behind the different elements of the map.
Neighborhoods:
I decided to focus on four neighbourhoods in Madrid:
- La Latina
- Embajadores
- Lavapiés
- Cortes
The reasons for these choices are that they are neighborhoods which are similarly experiencing (but not at the same rates) rapid gentrification and touristification. All the neighborhoods are centrally located in Madrid, and in close proximity to many of the main tourist sites. Cortes being the main exception in terms of the pace of change in gentrification and touristification, as it has always had hotels in the area and been reasonably well off. However, it has also seen huge increases in the number of Airbnbs in the last few years. I have also selected them for the nature and energy of community interventions in these areas. I have mapped some of these sites as ‘Community Landmarks’ (see below).
Finally, from a practical point of view, it was not going to be possible to discuss the effects of touristification in the whole of Madrid. For example, neighbourhoods like Malasaña and Chueca have felt its effects much longer. However, I did not want to focus on these neighbourhoods as I get a sense from walking round them and chatting to people who used to live there, that to a large extent touristification has already gone too far down the line. Lavapiés and Embajadores in contrast appear on the cusp of big changes, and the fight against these changes is current and important to many people that live in these areas.
Community Landmarks:
I have added some community points of interest to the map, to illustrate what is happening at a community level to resist the changes happening in these neighborhoods. Some are occupations, like La Ingobernable, whereas others like ¿Lavapiés donde vas?, are initiatives without a physical site, which I have mapped as best as I can (links to the organisations are in the map).
La Ingobernable: an occupation near the main art galleries in the city, mentioned many times in this blog. One point to note here is that part of what La Ingobernable is fighting against, explicitly, is the touristification of Madrid. The contested space is marked for a new museum, which would only increase the number of tourists visiting Madrid.
La Tabacalera CSA: an occupation which interestingly in the context of this post, shares its space with a contemporary art gallery. Both spaces inhabit an old Tobacco factory, although they are kept separate. The community organisation for La Tabacalera is a legalized occupation and negotiates its lease every 2 years with the ministery of culture. Both La Tabacalera’s contrbute to the cultural vitality of Lavapiés, but once again, they both increase interest in the area from both tourists and developers.
Esta es una plaza: an oasis of green space in Lavapiés. Once an illegal occupation, now legalized. You can see a video of the space and what people are creating here.
Campo de la Cebada: another legalized occupation, again written about a few times already. As with La Tabacalera, it is contributing to the cultural vitality of its neighborhood, hosting workshops and open air events in the centre of La Latina.
Lavapiés 15-M Assembly: The 15-M movement in Spain catalyzed many neighborhoods into creating their own neighborhood associations. Lavapiés has an assembly which is still very active in the area. It campaigns against gentrification and touristification in the area.
¿Lavapiés donde vas?: An organisation which is directly campaigning against the touristification of Lavapiés. It has held a protest against tourists in Lavapiés, where people dressed up as tourists and wheeled suitcases up and down (see image below). [6]
Image source: El Pais
Hotels & Hostels:
This is more of a disclaimer than an explanation. The hotel data was added through searching for hotels in Google. It is not fully representative of all of the hotels in the areas. However, I did my best to map as many as I could. The contrast with the Airbnb data is stark.
There is one hotel to note in particular, labeled NEW: Hotel Ibis Budget. It is the site of a hotel being constructed in the centre of Lavapiés. It has been a point of contention in the neighborhood – the site was empty for many years, and had previously been occupied. Many people have protested outside the building site and created a petition to stop the works. However, despite stalling it is now going ahead. You can view the change petition here, which carries more information about the argument against the hotel. Interestingly, Esta es una plaza is used as an example of what those protesting against the hotel would like to see in its place: a self-managed urban garden. Unfortunately, I cannot help thinking that those efforts to re-green Lavapiés, and create a safer, more community focused and liveable neighborhood has conversely contributed to its attractiveness to tourists and developers.
Airbnb Listings:
I have had a number of interesting conversations about Airbnb in Madrid since moving to the city. Most people that I have discussed ‘touristification’ of the city acknowledge that Airbnb has had a negative impact on the city, and others in Spain (in particular San Sebastian, Palma de Mallorca and Barcelona). However, they, like me, are also users and sometimes vendors in Airbnb regardless of their reservations of the company. There is a tricky duality with Airbnb and Millennials, which both has pros and cons. On the one hand, their core user and vendor base, have embraced the nature of the service, which has opened up places where hotels are too expensive, provided a more ‘authentic’ vacation experience, and has enabled people to earn a bit of extra cash to pay their rent. Whilst in the negatives, Airbnb has caused certain places to become touristy almost overnight (without needing to build new hotels or hostels), it has spread tourism out from the centre of cities to neighbourhoods which have never been considered touristy, for example, Embajadores and Lavapies, it has increased rents in these areas as people can earn more through posting tourist apartments on Airbnb than renting to long term tenants. These are a very broad summary of the pros and cons, but others have done much more in depth studies into the implications for cities like New York, and Spanish cities, like San Sebastian.
I found a site online where you can access open source AirBnb data from an organisation called ‘Inside Airbnb’. [4] It scrapes and organises data from AirBnb (publicly available on its site) to develop a case to show how Airbnb is affecting cities across the world. I used its data and uploaded the listings for the areas I am focusing on in Madrid. What is interesting about the data is I could organise it into room type – showing where properties offer the whole apartment and those which offer a room. Generally, those which offer a room within a shared apartment are people who are letting rooms due to financial issues or subletting. Many of the properties which offer ‘entire apartments’ are those owned by landlords who commercially let properties on AirBnb all year round, which has a a much greater impact on rents in the cities. You can see from the Madrid data that the vast majority of listings are for whole apartments. To do a full examination of the effects of Airbnb on Madrid would take much longer. A project has been conducted to assess the effect of Airbnb on San Sebastian, which is extremely detailed in its approach (and also uses Inside Airbnb data). [5] I think that adding the listings to my basic map of Madrid still tells a story, even if it is that the proliferation of Airbnb in the city, and its relation to increasing rental and house prices, should not be ignored by its city council.
Their mission statement is:
Airbnb claims to be part of the “sharing economy” and disrupting the hotel industry. However, data shows that the majority of Airbnb listings in most cities are entire homes, many of which are rented all year round – disrupting housing and communities.
Inside Airbnb aims to answer certain questions regarding occupancy, to determine to what extent listings in a place are homeowners renting out a spare room occasionally, or commercial, unlicensed vendors using Airbnb as a way to rent out multiple homes, year round (which have a much greater impact on people living in those cities). For example, Inside Airbnb gives data points relating to:
- how many nights a dwelling is rented per year
- minimum nights stay
- whether the host is present
The idea is to build up a case, as people have done in San Sebastian, to show the negative impacts of Airbnb, and the ease with which a case can be made for more stringent regulation.
Use of Google Maps:
It may not look pretty, but my use of Google Maps was a decision made two fold:
- The first reason is stylistic – it is probably the map most used by tourists planning to explore a new city when going on a holiday. Key sights are already marked for tourists not sure where to go, and therefore I thought it would best describe the ‘touristification’ of Madrid.
- The second is its familiarity and ease of navigation – I felt that for a map with a lot of content and data behind it, it would facilitate easy navigation for the viewer.
References:
[1] ‘75 million and counting: Spain shattered its own tourism record in 2016’, El Pais: https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/01/12/inenglish/1484227097_393882.html?rel=mas?rel=mas
[2] ‘Record number of visitors came to the city of Madrid this summer’, Madrid Convention Bureau: https://www.esmadrid.com/mcb/en/news/record-number-visitors-came-city-madrid-summer/
[3] ‘Is Madrid headed for the same tourism trap as Barcelona?’, El Pais:
https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/04/03/inenglish/1491205767_176177.html?rel=mas?rel=mas
[4] Inside AirBnb, open source data: http://insideairbnb.com/madrid/
[5] Project examining effect of Airbnb in San Sebastian: https://lab.montera34.com/airbnb/donostia/
[6] Turistas contra turistas en Lavapiés, El Pais: https://elpais.com/ccaa/2017/04/06/madrid/1491465919_482325.html
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