Luxury Venice: the spread of touristification processes towards the Venetian lagoon and the mainland

Keywords: alpha-territories, touristification, grass root urban practices
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 65

Abstract

In Venice, North-Eastern Italy, peculiar forms of alpha-territorialisation are mainly triggered by touris-tification and “tourism-led gentrification” processes. Such dynamics, increasingly supported by real estate financialisation, are currently spreading from the historical city centre towards the minor islands of the Venetian lagoon, as well as towards the mainland (Basso, 2020; Mazzoleni, 2020). One the one hand, these processes change the traditional relationship between the historical city and its islands, which are progressively assimilated – especially the Lido – to the seaside luxury resorts of Northern Adriatic coast, according to a competitive logic; on the other hand, they include not only the city’s metropolitan area but also the dense network of cities of the Veneto Central Valley (Fregolent, Tedesco, 2016).
The main idea underlying this paper is that if one frames the above mentioned processes as forms of alpha-territorialisation, their spatial and environmental consequences in terms of diffusion of urban mega-projects as well as their socio-economic consequences in terms of housing affordability and marginalization have to be taken into account. Such drifts are somehow counteracted by social movements and grassroots cultural practices that often implement forms of actions towards the realization of an alternative idea of the city.