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The article offers information on the challenges and implications of relying on Google Maps in urban environments, particularly outside Western contexts. Topics include the limitations of Google Maps in accurately reflecting local transit schedules and routes, the impact of Western-centric technological standards on global perceptions of urban efficiency, and the need for urban studies to embrace diverse perspectives to avoid reinforcing North-South academic divides.

Touristification refers to an intense tourism expansion and appropriation in a specific area due to the activity's rapid growth in a short period of time. COVID-19 meant a halt to touristification disruption of urban life—affecting housing markets, cultural expressions, public spaces, or the environment—that is growing again as global mobilities have recently resumed. In cities that have become important tourist destinations, touristification intertwines with other urban processes, such as built environment renovation or people and retail gentrification. We explore these processes linking them to the concept of landscape, understood as space socially produced, perceived, and shaped, looking into the transformations in the physical, social, symbolic, and emotional arenas inspired by previous studies on the landscapes of gentrification. Drawing on landscape, urban, and tourism theorizations, we come up with the landscapes of touristification as an integrative approach that enable us to comprehend a multi-faceted process of tourism-led urban transformation. Through qualitative analyses, we study San Luis Street, an axis that connects traditionally non-tourist neighborhoods in Seville's historic district in the years before the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Short‐term rentals (STRs) emerged as holiday accommodations, disrupting the hospitality industry in the decade before COVID‐19. Mainstream explanations for their growth revolved around digital tourism platforms like Airbnb as market disruptors and the sharing economy rationale. At the same time, critical scholars explored the capitalisation of greater rent gaps in urban central locations. However, these explanations are insufficient to explain the growth of STRs. We supplement them by building bridges between the urban political economy and the geographies of financialisation through the cases of Lisbon and Porto before the pandemic. The paper focuses on tourism‐induced housing investment, taking a closer look at the profile of investors in association with STR property managers in the context of the late‐entrepreneurial urban regime. We conclude that tourism development has allowed opportunities for housing financialisation through STR professionalisation, enhancing the allocation of interest‐bearing capital in tourism‐oriented real estate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seville, Spain's fourth largest city and the capital of Andalusia, is one of the most visited cities in the country and increasingly in Europe. Tourism has traditionally been an important sector for the urban economy, but after the 2008 financial crash it has become the city's main source of income. Tourist numbers have soared over the last decade and they are likely to keep growing now that the Lonely Planet has labelled Seville the best city to visit in 2018 and Airbnb has chosen Andalusia as one of the top destinations for 2019. There has also been an increase in the number of migrants from wealthy countries over the last few years. Not surprisingly, these migrants and tourists share spatial patterns: both generally concentrate on Seville's historic district and urban centre. We argue that the rapid increase of tourism and the settlement of lifestyle migrants in this part of the city have triggered spatial processes that have resulted in social injustice. Therefore, we explore whether the growth of visitor numbers has reached the extent of overtourism, because the tourist infrastructure and its activities may clash with those of local residents. We also study whether the socio-economic profile of many of these residents has changed due to migration, which could potentially mean the beginning of a transnational gentrification process. Seville's city centre is becoming a privileged place, where the average Sevillian cannot afford to live and increasingly feels out of place. Our argument is supported by a combination of quantitative data analysis (demographic, housing and tourism statistics) and qualitative research (interviews) analyses. Our case illustrates how tourism helps to reshape historic urban districts and becomes socially unsustainable, as it gradually excludes local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing international travel flows across the planet have drawn attention to socio-spatial justice concerning the impact of tourism and transnational gentrification in cities. We suggest that the growth of tourists and lifestyle migrants can potentially shrink or even deprive a social right to the city. The early work of philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre, particularly The Right to the City (1968), offer valuable elements to understand the potential alienation of local residents from the city centre in the context of a tourism-led urban economy. Several questions arise in this context that are explored here: What injustices arise through the socio-spatial processes and transformation of social spaces due to rapid tourism growth and overtourism? What contribution does Lefebvre's theoretical work make to current studies on overtourism overall? We examine these questions through a case study in Seville, Andalusia (Spain). It illustrates how its residents lose the right to everyday life in the historic centre and become alienated from their local spaces. Mechanisms of commodification and gentrification contribute to socio-spatial injustices and also make the city "inauthentic" for visitors and residents. In this sense, the right to live and enjoy the city are lost to both groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]