IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/socres/v21y2016i3p112-120.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Holiday Rentals: The New Gentrification Battlefront

Author

Listed:
  • Agustín Cócola Gant

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the impacts of holiday rentals in the historic centre of Barcelona. The intention is to contribute towards a conceptualisation of this unexplored phenomenon with the aim of better understanding why it represents the new gentrification battlefront in several tourist destinations. I suggest that the rhetoric of the sharing economy conceals the fact that holiday rentals are actually a new business opportunity for investors, tourist companies and individual landlords and, for this reason, long-term residents represent a barrier to capital accumulation. I show that there is an increasing conversion of housing into accommodation for visitors and that such conversion involves different forms of displacement. Importantly, when residents move out, the only buyers tend to be tourist investors. In such a context, I suggest that the growth of vacation flats produces conditions that solely enable the reproduction of further accommodation for visitors, rather than for long-term residential use. I call this process ‘collective displacement’, that is to say, a substitution of residential life by tourism. Ultimately, throughout this paper I suggest the importance of undertaking critical research relevant to those experiencing urban inequalities. Documenting and producing data about the way in which displacement takes place can be a crucial political tool for those who are fighting for staying put.

Suggested Citation

  • Agustín Cócola Gant, 2016. "Holiday Rentals: The New Gentrification Battlefront," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 21(3), pages 112-120, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:socres:v:21:y:2016:i:3:p:112-120
    DOI: 10.5153/sro.4071
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.5153/sro.4071
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.5153/sro.4071?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tim Butler, 2002. "Thinking Global but Acting Local: The Middle Classes in the City," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 7(3), pages 50-68, August.
    2. Ian Cole & Ryan Powell & Elizabeth Sanderson, 2016. "Putting the Squeeze on ‘Generation Rent’: Housing Benefit Claimants in the Private Rented Sector - Transitions, Marginality and Stigmatisation," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 21(2), pages 23-36, May.
    3. Oliver Kesar & Renata Dezeljin & Martina Bienenfeld, 2015. "Tourism Gentrification In The City Of Zagreb: Time For A Debate?," Interdisciplinary Management Research, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Faculty of Economics, Croatia, vol. 11, pages 657-668.
    4. Tom Slater, 2006. "The Eviction of Critical Perspectives from Gentrification Research," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(4), pages 737-757, December.
    5. John Bone, 2014. "Neoliberal Nomads: Housing Insecurity and the Revival of Private Renting in the UK," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 19(4), pages 1-14, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Emma Jackson & Tim Butler, 2015. "Revisiting ‘social tectonics’: The middle classes and social mix in gentrifying neighbourhoods," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 52(13), pages 2349-2365, October.
    2. George Mavrommatis, 2011. "Stories from Brixton: Gentrification and Different Differences," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 16(2), pages 29-38, June.
    3. Caroline Barratt & Gill Green, 2017. "Making a House in Multiple Occupation a Home: Using Visual Ethnography to Explore Issues of Identity and Well-Being in the Experience of Creating a Home Amongst HMO Tenants," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 22(1), pages 95-112, February.
    4. Tim Butler, 2007. "Re‐urbanizing London Docklands: Gentrification, Suburbanization or New Urbanism?," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(4), pages 759-781, December.
    5. Winifred Curran, 2018. "‘Mexicans love red’ and other gentrification myths: Displacements and contestations in the gentrification of Pilsen, Chicago, USA," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(8), pages 1711-1728, June.
    6. Shenjing He, 2012. "Two Waves of Gentrification and Emerging Rights Issues in Guangzhou, China," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 44(12), pages 2817-2833, December.
    7. Ingmar Pastak & Eneli Kindsiko & Tiit Tammaru & Reinout Kleinhans & Maarten Van Ham, 2019. "Commercial Gentrification in Post‐Industrial Neighbourhoods: A Dynamic View From an Entrepreneur’s Perspective," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 110(5), pages 588-604, December.
    8. Seth Schindler & Jonathan Silver, 2019. "Florida in the Global South: How Eurocentrism Obscures Global Urban Challenges—and What We Can Do about It," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(4), pages 794-805, July.
    9. Gordon MacLeod, 2013. "New Urbanism/Smart Growth in the Scottish Highlands: Mobile Policies and Post-politics in Local Development Planning," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 50(11), pages 2196-2221, August.
    10. Belotti, Alice, 2016. "Estate regeneration and community impacts: challenges and lessons for social landlords, developers and local councils," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121480, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Renia Ehrenfeucht & Marla Nelson, 2013. "Young Professionals as Ambivalent Change Agents in New Orleans after the 2005 Hurricanes," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 50(4), pages 825-841, March.
    12. Kim Allen & Sumi Hollingworth, 2013. "‘Sticky Subjects’ or ‘Cosmopolitan Creatives’? Social Class, Place and Urban Young People’s Aspirations for Work in the Knowledge Economy," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 50(3), pages 499-517, February.
    13. Cardullo, Paolo, 2017. "Gentrification in the mesh? Ethnography of Open Wireless Network - Deptford," OSF Preprints jm68s, Center for Open Science.
    14. Vijayta Doshi, 2021. "Symbolic violence in embodying customer service work across the urban/rural divide," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 39-53, January.
    15. Mark Davidson, 2008. "Spoiled Mixture: Where Does State-led `Positive' Gentrification End?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 45(12), pages 2385-2405, November.
    16. Giada Casarin & Julie MacLeavy & David Manley, 2023. "Rethinking urban utopianism: The fallacy of social mix in the 15-minute city," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(16), pages 3167-3186, December.
    17. Paul Joseph Draus & Juliette Roddy & Anthony McDuffie, 2014. "‘We don’t have no neighbourhood’: Advanced marginality and urban agriculture in Detroit," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 51(12), pages 2523-2538, September.
    18. Mark Davidson, 2010. "Love Thy Neighbour? Social Mixing in London's Gentrification Frontiers," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 42(3), pages 524-544, March.
    19. Jon Reades & Pierre Desrochers & Heather Ford, 2013. "Review: Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places, the Urban Wisdom of Jane Jacobs, Code/Space: Software and Everyday Life," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 40(4), pages 755-760, August.
    20. Iago Lestegás & João Seixas & Rubén-Camilo Lois-González, 2019. "Commodifying Lisbon: A Study on the Spatial Concentration of Short-Term Rentals," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-15, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:socres:v:21:y:2016:i:3:p:112-120. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.