Overview
The Inclusive Urban Societies project will study how the process of touristification, as an urban transition, interacts with precariousness in housing and work. It will develop a single and innovative conceptual framework linking housing and labour precariousness to touristification, conduct a secondary survey for the whole NUTS-2 regions of the EU and field research in selected areas of Athens and Thessaloniki, and visualise the collected data through tables, maps and graphs in an inclusive Labour and Housing Observatory.
The project’s objectives:
- Enhance understanding of labor and housing precarity and their connection to touristification, through systematic literature review,
- Expand regional and local knowledge on labour and housing precarity in the context of touristification, (by using spatial analysis, composite indexes, and spatial correlation, as well as innovative analysis, including web scraping and fieldwork) and standardize reproducible methods, and
- contribute towards more inclusive urban societies through policymaking, based on a WebGIS-based Observatory for Data Visualization.
Its main goal is twofold:
To understand the factors behind urban economic reorientation towards precarity, in the context of tourism growth and broader crises, and
To produce an innovative methodology, for identifying and addressing labour and housing precarity produced by such urban transitions.
The Project will produce a series of outputs, including:
- An Online Observatory serving as an integrated data visualization and processing platform around the issues of gentrification, touristification and precarious labour, focusing on the two Greek cities of Athens and Thessaloniki and beyond.
- A theoretical report regarding gentrification and touristification in the context of Southern Europe
- An empirical report containing an analysis of gentrification and touristification at the regional level.
- An empirical report containing a mixed-methods analysis of gentrification, touristification and precarious labour for two Greek cities as case studies.
- Three respective presentations in international scientific conferences.
- Three respective academic papers corresponding to the reports, submitted to international scientific journals.
- One policy report on the compound effect of touristification on housing and labour.
- Organization of a mini conference on the threats caused by gentrification and touristification, including a round table on appropriate policy responses.
