This paper discusses the legal dimension of public spaces in tourist cities, taking as a case the Basque city of Donostia-San Sebastián. Empirical evidence was gathered through qualitative methods, such as observation and analyses of newspaper reports, documents, and tourist materials. In Donostia some places are selected to become tourist attractions, whereas others are kept outside the tourist market. The process raises a duality between the tourist enclave and the rest of the city, resulting in two patterns of exclusion concerning public spaces. The first is metaphorically named “postcards of exclusion”. Within the tourist zone, non-profitable presences, actions, and discourses are subjected to a series of mechanisms of control in order to favour the ones encouraged by the tourism industry. The second is called “places off the map”. Not only private entrepreneurs, but also agencies of the state bureaucracy address relevant financial and non-financial resources to promote public uses in places situated within the tourist enclave, while other places remain neglected. As a closer analysis of some exemplary situations of conflict found in Donostia reveals, in order to understand how those patterns of exclusion successfully work in everyday life it is necessary to unpack the property arrangements governing public spaces.
Postcards of exclusion and places off the map : a socio-legal case study of urban spaces in Donostia-San Sebastián / L. PIZZOLATTO KONZEN. ((Intervento presentato al 17. convegno ISA World Congress of Sociology tenutosi a Gothenburg nel 2010.
Postcards of exclusion and places off the map : a socio-legal case study of urban spaces in Donostia-San Sebastián
L. PIZZOLATTO KONZENPrimo
2010
Abstract
This paper discusses the legal dimension of public spaces in tourist cities, taking as a case the Basque city of Donostia-San Sebastián. Empirical evidence was gathered through qualitative methods, such as observation and analyses of newspaper reports, documents, and tourist materials. In Donostia some places are selected to become tourist attractions, whereas others are kept outside the tourist market. The process raises a duality between the tourist enclave and the rest of the city, resulting in two patterns of exclusion concerning public spaces. The first is metaphorically named “postcards of exclusion”. Within the tourist zone, non-profitable presences, actions, and discourses are subjected to a series of mechanisms of control in order to favour the ones encouraged by the tourism industry. The second is called “places off the map”. Not only private entrepreneurs, but also agencies of the state bureaucracy address relevant financial and non-financial resources to promote public uses in places situated within the tourist enclave, while other places remain neglected. As a closer analysis of some exemplary situations of conflict found in Donostia reveals, in order to understand how those patterns of exclusion successfully work in everyday life it is necessary to unpack the property arrangements governing public spaces.Pubblicazioni consigliate
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