🎬 Opening Scene
In the historic center, the last baker opens her shop before dawn. Her lifelong customers are gone; the neighbors left when rents soared, and their homes became tourist accommodations.
Now, those who buy her bread arrive with suitcases and cameras around their necks, seeking more of a "local experience" than the familiar taste. Everyday life has been turned into a postcard, and what once sustained the community is now sold as part of a tourist package.
🏛️ Origin
From quiet streets to crowded avenues
The monoculture of tourism, how did it take root in our cities? It all began when, faced with the decline of local economies, urban centers looked for new sources of income. The arrival of mass tourism and investment in visitor services completely transformed neighborhoods.
The phenomenon first took hold in Venice, where the decline of traditional industries pushed the city to rely heavily on tourists. Narrow streets, canals, and historic squares began to cater almost entirely to visitors, while locals saw their neighborhoods transformed. Seeing Venice’s economic revival, other cities began to imitate this model, hoping to attract similar flows of tourists.
The success in generating revenue, even at the cost of altering daily life, made the tourism-focused approach appear as a solution for struggling urban economies, laying the groundwork for this cycle to spread to other urban centers around the world.
🔬The Phenomenon
The tourism monoculture isn't an isolated problem, it's a phenomenon where certain cities have transformed their economies, urban life, and neighborhoods to depend almost entirely on visitors. What happens when a city stops being for its people and starts living for its guests?
Amsterdam: The city's cultural and leisure tourism is so concentrated that it's altering local shops and services. Temporary rentals are displacing residents and disrupting daily life.
Kyoto: Its rich cultural heritage attracts so many international visitors that local traditions and activities are being adapted to meet tourist demands. Doesn't this make you wonder about the authenticity of those traditions?
Barcelona: After the 1992 Olympic Games, the city's urban transformation and international promotion led to its historic neighborhoods becoming overwhelmed with tourists. This shifted the entire local economy to serve them.
In each of these places, tourism creates a cycle of dependency: every urban or commercial change made for visitors reinforces the need to attract more tourists, solidifying the monoculture and making the visitor the center of urban life.
🌍 What This Says About the World
Streets, squares, and markets that once breathed with a daily rhythm now seem to pulse only to the tempo of visitors. Have you ever noticed how every corner seems designed for the newcomer? The city moves to their beat: cafés adjust their schedules, shops change their products, and even local festivals adapt to the gaze of foreign eyes.
Residents watch all this happen with mixed feelings. Some find a certain vitality in the constant flow of tourists, enjoying the diversity and new opportunities it brings. But for others, it feels like their local life is being completely reorganized around the needs of visitors, leaving less and less room for the everyday.
This phenomenon isn't limited to a single neighborhood or even one city; it’s a story repeating itself all over the world. The constant presence of visitors redefines how streets are inhabited, how urban life is organized, and how a city's very identity is perceived. It makes you wonder, doesn't it? How does this dependence on tourism silently but firmly dictate the daily pulse of the people who actually call the city home?
⚠️ The Dark Side
When a city revolves around tourists, don't residents feel like they're losing control of their own space? Neighborhoods that were once peaceful homes get filled with shops, cafés, and temporary apartments. Rents go up, and everyday life, little by little, gets displaced.
"We used to be able to walk through the neighborhood without bumping into a group of tourists every five meters; now it's like living in a theme park," a resident from Amsterdam comments. What happens when cultural identity only adapts to what tourists want to see? This saturation creates tensions: neighbors stop running into each other, and local markets start to disappear.
The tourism monoculture reveals an invisible price: the city becomes a stage, and each visitor takes on a role that once belonged to those who live there.
What if what is an experience for some is a transformation and a loss of what's most valuable for others?
📌 Curiosities
Some neighborhoods in Barcelona have more short-term rental apartments than permanent residents, creating "ghost neighborhoods."
In Kyoto, some temples change their lighting and decor to make tourist photos more attractive.
Amsterdam has streets where locals can't legally buy coffee because the shops specialize in tourism.
Dubrovnik limits the entry of cruise ships to avoid extreme saturation in its historic center; the measure came after neighborhood protests.
Some cities have conducted crowd control drills to prepare streets and squares for extreme tourist seasons.
Empty streets. Silent squares. Cafes that no longer exist for those who used to frequent them.
At the end of the season, when the visitors leave, you have to wonder:
How much of the city still belongs to those who live in it? And, above all, what price does the community pay for depending on those who are only passing through?