For these two decades many cities have succeeded in urban regeneration, based upon the simple concept that is to

make a city people-friendly and comfortable to live in. The emergence of "regenerated" cities has raised traditional

problematic issues: gentrification and neighborhood management. Tourism policy would boost those processes that

began to be identified in some regenerated cities like Torino and Barcelona in the late 1990s. The sustainable

management of areas where socially vulnerable people live seems to be included in regeneration process, which

would be described as "post-regeneration urbanism".Peer Reviewe

Abe, Daisuke

English

UPCommons

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Tourim, Gentrification and Neighborhood Management in 
Regenerated-Cites: Towards a “Post-regeneration urbanism” 
  
Daisuke Abe 
Ryukoku University, Faculty of Policy Science, 67 Tsukamotocho, Fukakusa, Fushimi, Kyoto, Japan 
e-mail: abe@policy.ryukoku.ac.jp 
 
 
 
 
Abstract 
For these two decades many cities have succeeded in urban regeneration, based upon the simple concept that is to 
make a city people-friendly and comfortable to live in. The emergence of ‘regenerated’ cities has raised traditional 
problematic issues: gentrification and neighborhood management. Tourism policy would boost those processes that 
began to be identified in some regenerated cities like Torino and Barcelona in the late 1990s. The sustainable 
management of areas where socially vulnerable people live seems to be included in regeneration process, which 
would be described as ‘post-regeneration urbanism’.  
 
 
Keywords: tourism, culture-led regeneration, gentrification, neighborhood management 
(three lines) 
 
 
1. Introduction 
(two lines) 
The main issues to be discussed in this article are to describe how the contemporary cities require 
tourism as a central strategy within regeneration policy, and to identify how the already “regenerated 
cities” such as Yokohama, Kyoto, Torino and Barcelona have been affected by a gentrification process on 
the one hand, and have approached to maintain social coherence in neighborhood level on the other.  
Japanese cities have been faced a necessity to promote tourism policy along regeneration projects and 
still have not been faced severe problems of immigrants, while Barcelona is well-known for its creative 
urban regeneration and tourism as well as gentrification and issues of immigrants. Reviewing these cities 
that might offer numerous suggestions for architect and planner, this article discusses in what ways social 
sustainability can be integrated into urban planning and neighborhood management in a “post-
regeneration urbanism” era. 
 
2. Urban scenery in ‘regeneration urbanism’ period 
(two lines) 
The 1990s and the first decade of twenty first century are a “regeneration urbanism” period in all 
countries. Its urbanism gives people many choices for living an urban lifestyle in sustainable, convenient 
and enjoyable places, and greatly advanced solving problems of urban decline mainly seen by 1970s in 
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depressed downtown and historic neighborhood, overdevelopment area in city’s periphery, decrepit 
housing estate, brown fields.  
In these two decades or more, apart from traditional approach like urban design, community 
development, and machizukuri which is used for long years in Japanese cities and can be literally 
translated as community building or empowerment, various urban strategy concepts that theoretically and 
politically support city’s regeneration such as “creative city”, “compact city”, “sustainable city”, “new 
urbanism” and “urban village” have been created one after another.  Although the names are different, it 
is easy to see that all these concepts suggest common key values that include historic continuity in build 
environment, pedestrians-oriented urban space, human-scale public space, mixed-use development, a 
sense of belonging and identity to community where we live, civic pride, and so on.  
Cities that are attempting to recover from industrial decline are also placing much emphasis on these 
main public spaces. These cities are regenerating their old public spaces and creating new ones to help 
them project a new image that can attract new investment through tourism. In recent years tourism policy 
has become one of the predominant elements for city’s regeneration. Tourism is often associated with 
culture. Culture often divides urban areas into gentrified parts, when applied in urban regeneration 
policies. To be ‘creative class-friendly city’ or ‘tourist-friendly city’ must be placed as high-priority needs 
for many cities. For city centers, image of cultural facilities like contemporary museums designed by star 
architects and the high quality public space where high-class residents enjoy everyday life in open 
cafeteria seems to be indispensable for future city promotion.  
As many cities not only in Europe but also in Asia have been confronted with heavy geo-economic 
competition with each other, they have also been encouraged to promote tourism and creative-city 
policies that can be a catalyst for urban redevelopment. Also in Japan, cities like Yokohama, Kanazawa 
and Kyoto has placed culture-led regeneration and tourism as a central strategy for future. On the other 
hand, promotion of tourism has aroused traditional but relatively new issues for social sustainability, 
which highlights the importance of social inclusion, coexistence with culturally different immigrants, 
gentrification, poverty, unemployment and the lack of power balance of capitalism-oriented posture or 
socialism-oriented one in regeneration projects in a limited area. There is a risk to ignore alarming issues 
like social and cultural inclusion for the socially vulnerable groups.  
 
3. Significance of gentrification in regenerated cities 
Learning from the urban strategies applied to contemporary cities all over the world, regeneration of 
impoverished built environment considerably overlaps the process of neighborhood revitalization utilizing 
power of culture and creativity.  
As urban redevelopment and regeneration projects fundamentally aim at the rise in land prices, those 
actions necessitate gentrification process. Not a few areas where lower income class and immigrants have 
lived for long years are forced to apparently transform their landscape, culture and its traditional social 
structure, due to the regeneration projects that promote settling of potential creative class such as middle 
class artists and high educated couples. In addition to the advent of a trendy neighborhood, the promotion 
of tourism policy has recently encouraged luring of more investment and tourist.  
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The “success” of urban regeneration often causes a rise of house rent so that relatively lower income 
group would be displaced from their neighborhood. The negative effect of the gentrification process has 
been pointed out from the mid 1960s (Atkinson et.al, 2008), a problem setting questioning the collapse of 
existing community due to the redevelopment has no longer been new. However, the following two 
aspects should be noted in recent regeneration trend;  
(1) Recent regeneration challenges do not require scrap and build redevelopment as Urban Renewal 
mainly done in United States so drastic change of neighborhood’s physical conditions would not be 
easy to figure out. Rather, rehabilitation-oriented policy instead of renovation makes situation much 
more difficult to be aware of the ongoing social structure changes in a neighborhood.  
(2) Potentially impacted resident becomes diversified. It is essential to understand the existence of 
economically poor immigrants coming from abroad, varying from a new comer to a second or third 
generation. Most of the immigrants are obliged to live in a area whose house rent is relatively cheap, 
due to the economic problem. These neighborhoods as represented by historic district and built-up 
areas in city’s periphery have been the target areas of regeneration policy for more than twenty years. 
Under the present situation, it is obvious that the most vulnerable residents by the gentrification 
process must be immigrants.  
In addition, social and cultural conflict between traditional residents and newly coming immigrants that 
have just started settle down in a margin of “hot spot” of regeneration area as a flagship pilot project. The 
clearest example of this is Barcelona. In Barcelona’s old city that is a well-known successful regeneration 
experience among European cities, diverse ethnic groups that makes a contribution to the multiplicity as a 
significant characteristic of the neighborhood, but the coexistence problem with Spanish inhabitants has 
become evident. This means that, in parallel with the progress of gentrification, multiculturalism with 
different places of origin is on the horizon as one of the new urban issues after experimenting urban 
regeneration.  
 
4. Challenges for a multicultural society 
Even in Japanese cities that have relatively few immigrants from abroad yet comparing with European 
countries, management of social sustainability would be an inescapable problem. Regeneration projects in 
European cities have drawn on the power of markets but have also given careful attentions to the 
vulnerable neighborhood so that residents in a target area would be displaced due to having in its project 
the best economic interests for developer.  
Typical example can be found in housing policy that the public sector constructs affordable housing 
and the socially vulnerable people would be given priority for entering. For the defined areas where 
public sector should provide social and economic support preferentially, affordable housing blocks are 
concentrated: in case of Paris, affordable housing managed by habitation à loyer modéré, and in case of 
Barcelona, those managed by INCASOL (Land Institute in Catalonia) from the Catalonia State. The 
existence of these houses rather visualizes the reality of social exclusion.  
In a “post regeneration urbanism” period, a whole concept of neighborhood management after 
achieving constant level of built environment should be called into question. In this regard, multiplicity of 
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neighborhood remains a continuing key strategy for future. In the following neighborhoods, such as 
Kreuzberg in Berlin known as “Little Istanbul”, Islamic neighborhood in Amsterdam, Affordable housing 
estate areas in Paris, El Raval and Santa Caterina in Barcelona’s old city center, Lavapiés in Madrid, 
Porta Palazzo and San Salvario districts in Torino, and Kazimierz in Krakow, many efforts are being 
made so that the socially vulnerable districts would not be isolated as immigrant concentration areas but 
would be a place to realize social inclusion with the adjacent community;  
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Fig.1 (left)   Islam town in Amsterdam. Islamic market in traditional landscape. 
Fig.2 (middle)   Kreuzberg (Berlin). Neighborhood management through Social City Program (Soziale Stadt). 
Fig.3 (right)   Lavapiés (Madrid). Wall art written in various languages. 
 
    
Fig.4 (left)   Santa Caterina (Barcelona). Public Space created in a densely populated and run-down area.  
Fig.5 (middle)   Porta Palazzo (Torino). Neighborhood management through market revitalization.  
Fig.6 (right)   San Salvario (Torino). Civic cultural center as a place for social inclusion.  
 
Under the clear need to achieve social sustainability, the public spaces are considered to be more 
important place to see more than ever, being perceived as landmark in European cities’ social life and 
cultural heritage.  
 
 
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5. Role of Public Spaces. Case of the District Law in Catalonia Region (Spain)  
In Catalonia Region, having Barcelona as a regional capital city, a new law dealing with neighborhood 
management in declining areas in June 2004; Law on the improvement of districts, urban areas and towns, 
which require special attention, normally known as District Law (Ley de Barrios).  
There has been a common perception for social dimension that Catalonia Region: inequality within a 
city or region. The revitalization process of a region, especially launched after the birth of democratic city 
hall in the late 1970s, means at the same time the process of social segregation. Particularly in Barcelona, 
where ‘successful’ regeneration policies known as ‘Barcelona Model’ have brought about entrepreneurial 
mentality and approach toward city’s development, there clearly exists the socially vulnerable 
neighborhoods that are generally situated in urban periphery. In those areas, the income level haves kept 
lower and the urban physical problem including the renovation of cheaply built houses and the adjustment 
of topographical barriers arose from marginal urbanization. In addition, recent property market-oriented 
and tourism promotion-oriented urban policies in city center have took place a rapid inflow of immigrants 
to city’s periphery.  
The District Law calls for applications for investment that help cities and town achieve the 
comprehensive interventions. During 2004-2008, the Generalitat de Catalunya (Parliament of Catalonia) 
has approved subsidies for 92 projects of comprehensive intervention not only for a big city like 
Barcelona but also for a medium-scale city like Tarragona and small villages. The District Law includes 
an improvement program for a neighborhood and urban areas with deficiency in planning, building 
maintenance social welfare (population issues, economic and social gaps in services, public spaces, 
facilities, accessibility, etc), especially in old city centers, housing estates built in 1960s and 1970s, and 
areas arising from the marginal urbanization.  
The District Law has unprecedented significance in terms of (1) an clear indication on the dramatic 
increase in immigrants and the gentrification in a regeneration process as recent urban problems that have 
to be tackled with, and (2) a provision of a series of intervention projects as a remedy for urban social 
problems. The following eight fields are defined in District Law as an object for investment.  
1. Improvement of public spaces and provision of green areas  
2. Maintenance of the common equipments of buildings (façades, drainage, escalator, roof, etc) 
3. Provision of public facilities (center for  
4. Installation of communication technologies (WiFi etc) 
5. Provision of energy and environmental infrastructures (residues collection, recycling equipments etc) 
6. Promotion of gender equality in the use of urban spaces and facilities (access of women’s associations, 
training activities, etc) 
7. Program for social and economic integration in a neighborhood (supporting programs for socially 
excluded people that include job training and commerce promotion) 
8. Improvement of accessibility and removal of architectural barriers (barrier free actions like widening 
of pavement, installation of escalator, etc) 
 
Among them, the biggest amount of investment during 2004-2008 is the improvement and provision of 
public space that is described in (1) of the above mentioned fields, which accounts about 46% of all 
investments (Generalitat de Catalunya, 2009).  
 
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Fig.7 (left)   Barceloneta (Barcelona). Accessibility improvement inside neighborhood.  
Fig.8 (mid1) Roquetes (Barcelona). Improvement of Public Space in urban periphery.  
Fig.9 (mid2)   Trinitat Vella. Improvement of existing public square.  
Fig.10 (right)   Trinitat Vella. Provision of open escalator that overcomes topographical barriers.  
   
Fig.11 (left)   Camp Clar (Tarragona). Creation of promenade as a central public space.  
Fig.12 (mid) Camp Clar (Tarragona). Employment measures (street sweeper) 
Fig.13 (right)   Camp Clar (Tarragona). Job supporting program for immigrants.  
 
6. Social Dimension of Sustainability for “Post Regeneration Urbanism” 
The initiatives of the District Law in Catalonia raises the traditional but important questions: the public 
spaces that had played fundamental role in “urban regeneration urbanism” period becomes increasingly 
significant in these latter days when the cultural conflict and coexistence between traditional inhabitants 
and the new-comer are put into question in various parts of city. In “post regenerated-urbanism” period, 
when large part of cites have achieved overall redevelopment of their city centers, the public spaces have 
to be a place where new urban values are developed overcoming the control of gentrification within urban 
policies and the social inclusion through neighborhood management  
 
References 
(1) Atkinson, R et al (ed) (2008). Gentrification in a Global Context. The new urban colonialism, Roultlege, 
New York 
(2) Generalitat de Catalunya (2009). La Llei de barris. Una aposta col·lectiva per la cohesió social, Generalitat 
de Catalunya, Barcelona, 2009 


Tourim, gentrification and neighborhood management in regenerated-cites: towards a “post-regeneration urbanism”

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Tourim, gentrification and neighborhood management in regenerated-cites: towards a “post-regeneration urbanism”

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