Next week we will host our fourth open Seminar. On this occasion we will be hearing from Sara Larrabure who is an architect and urban planner and PhD student in Human Geography at the University of Lisbon. She is currently a visiting researcher at Intermaps project (https://www.upf.edu/web/intermaps) and will share part of her research in a presentation called "The Impact of Urban Tourism on Women Residents' Everyday Lives: Towards an Intersectional and Feminist Approach".

The presentation will take place on October 11, 2:30-3:30 pm, in Room 40.249 (Roger de Llúria building)

Abstract

In this presentation, Sara will present her PhD project that combines key feminist urbanism concepts to explore the impact of visitor mobility on the everyday life of local populations, particularly women. On the one hand, literature on urban tourism has identified that tourism growth in residential areas disrupts residents’ lives by driving several changes. Some of these changes include inflationary effects on house prices, causing the displacement of local residents and retail; the disappearance of proximity commerce in favour of businesses focused on tourists and the increase in the price of consumer goods; the loss of recreational areas caused by the privatization of public spaces; and the weakening of mutual support networks.  Gender and intersectionality studies, on the other hand, have shown that a person's perception and use of space are tied to their social identities, which produce various types of privilege and oppression. Through an intersectional study, Sara aims to understand the influence of tourism and leisure-led transformations on women's experiences of inhabiting Lisbon's city centre, an area where overtourism processes have been resounding for local communities. Her PhD hypothesis is that the marketing of the city as a tourist commodity linked to patriarchal structures can reinforce gender inequality and offer even more challenges to vulnerable groups.