Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SMARTDEST (Cities as mobility hubs: tackling social exclusion through ‘smart’ citizen engagement)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2020-01-01 do 2020-12-31
In the last few years, the increasing penetration of tourism in the everyday life of cities has started to produce conflicts, tensions, and paradoxes, like the rising cost of living, housing shortages, the congestion of public services and spaces, the casualisation of work, the transformation of place identities ... What resident communities in the most visited cities in Europe once considered a welcome source of wealth and employment, has started to be perceived as a major factor of disruption of community life and a vector of polarization and exclusion. SMARTDEST’s ambition is to contribute to an urban policy agenda that takes tourism mobilities seriously, at all levels of government. It thus sets on to study how urban inequalities are produced, lived, and coped with; and to bring out the social innovation potential from citizen engagement and collaboration, reconnecting and rescaling it to the formal policy domain for more resilient cities. Our research proceeds from the European scale, seeking for patterns of places facing similar problems, to the finer scale of eight case study cities, where we engage with local communities as informants, as well as policy and industry stakeholders as participants in the co-design of smart solutions. The results are shared with – and expected to influence future actions of – European stakeholders and concern communities.
SMARTDEST started in January 2020. Only 2 months into the project, COVID-19 hit the world, with vast repercussions both for the research object and for the methods of work and organisation of the project. The consortium got faced with a new landscape which may well be a game-changer for its research objectives – the temporary ‘immobilisation’ of society. The conceptual approach of our project is arguably valid to factor in this new scenario, and integrate the societal issues raised by the global crisis and its aftermath. However, the revision of the research methodology has been ineffectively tackled, as noted in the stage of 1st period review. The lack of a contingency plan in the face of the uncertainty regarding the nature and duration of the crisis has especially affected the tasks in WorkPackage 3, based on engagement with stakeholders and informants among affected communities. While this had little consequences on the work planned to be carried out in the 1st review period (months 1-12), it affected the workflow into the second period. For this reason, in the stage of review, the panel of experts recommended to implement a comprehensive revision of the project approach in relation to the next tasks at case study level, which is now incorporated in the deliverables resubmitted after rejection.
The first four tasks of WP2 were completed as planned, as well as the two starting tasks of WP3. These tasks have yielded 4 research deliverables. D2.1 and D2.2 provide insights on territorial stratifications in relation to tourism mobilities as a potential transformative force, as well as major territorial and geographical trends regarding processes of social exclusion, and an extensive revision of aspects that are related to the uptake of innovation in the tourism value chain and at destinations which could be related to the mitigation or acceleration of exclusionary processes. D3.1 and 3.2 set out a first diagnostic of the eight case study cities, exploring the links between their specific patterns and contexts of development as hubs for tourism and related mobilities and the marginalisation and exclusion of specific sectors of the local community. Furthermore WP1 (Management) and WP6 (Ethics) have produced the first deliverables in the form of ‘planning documents’ which are needed to ensure the timeliness, quality, internal consistency and fair treatment of the results flowing in the course of the project. Besides, WP5 (Dissemination) has been operational since the start, including a number of early efforts to diffuse and gain visibility to the project and ensure the necessary complicity of societal and political stakeholders at local and European level. In any case, all the deliverables related to the 1st year have been resubmitted responding to the shortcomings noted by the reviewers, and introducing fundamental reorganisations of the research approach in the light of the above.
The first four tasks of WP2 were completed as planned, as well as the two starting tasks of WP3. These tasks have yielded 4 research deliverables. D2.1 and D2.2 provide insights on territorial stratifications in relation to tourism mobilities as a potential transformative force, as well as major territorial and geographical trends regarding processes of social exclusion, and an extensive revision of aspects that are related to the uptake of innovation in the tourism value chain and at destinations which could be related to the mitigation or acceleration of exclusionary processes. D3.1 and 3.2 set out a first diagnostic of the eight case study cities, exploring the links between their specific patterns and contexts of development as hubs for tourism and related mobilities and the marginalisation and exclusion of specific sectors of the local community. Furthermore WP1 (Management) and WP6 (Ethics) have produced the first deliverables in the form of ‘planning documents’ which are needed to ensure the timeliness, quality, internal consistency and fair treatment of the results flowing in the course of the project. Besides, WP5 (Dissemination) has been operational since the start, including a number of early efforts to diffuse and gain visibility to the project and ensure the necessary complicity of societal and political stakeholders at local and European level. In any case, all the deliverables related to the 1st year have been resubmitted responding to the shortcomings noted by the reviewers, and introducing fundamental reorganisations of the research approach in the light of the above.
SMARTDEST’s overarching research objective is to make a significant contribution in the analysis of the exclusionary effects of tourism mobilities and related place transformations. Although research on the impacts of tourism is abundant, our approach brings in a novel attention to the agency of mobilities and the heterogenous connections between different human and non-human mobilities, as well as the political dimensions which frame ‘negotiations’ for place assets.
At the end of Year 1, we have made progress in shaping this approach in an ambitious research program incorporating several epistemological and methodological dimensions, and we set out to measure and connect tourism and related mobilities, social trends, gateways and systems of anchoring of tourism to places (including ‘smart’ ones), both at a pan-European scale (looking at NUTS2 regions) and at the level of case study cities. The first full-fledged papers integrating these early results and developing nuanced analytics of such relationships are due to come around with the final deliverables from WPs 2 and 3. The wider societal implications are obvious: citizens, scientists, policymakers will dispose of a sound system of measurement and interpretation of the production of social exclusion in the tourist place and of planning concepts and tools that may inform future adaptations and changes in policy and governance. However, as noted by the reviewers, this approach needs to adapt to the new challenges presented by the ‘pandemic turn’ and even more fundamentally the societal concern for an inclusive post-pandemic recovery. These questions are expected to be tackled through the reorganisation of research tasks presented with the resubmission of all the deliverables.
The ‘constructive’ work of SMARTDEST towards solutions and mitigation to social exclusion is yet to be started – CityLabs will only be operational by the end of Year 2. Yet this starting period has allowed us not only to get a better knowledge of the challenges for case study cities and communities under the transformative drive of mobilities, but also to get in touch and be in conversations with the policy, social and business stakeholders that in WP3 will allow us to get a more nuanced understanding of the contexts and processes in which exclusion is produced, and in WP4 will be invited to play a central part in the elaboration and testing of innovative pathways for a post-pandemic recovery - following the reignition of the global system of mobilities – that is just and inclusive in the light of the pre-pandemic trends and the new social breaches that have been opened during the last year.
At the end of Year 1, we have made progress in shaping this approach in an ambitious research program incorporating several epistemological and methodological dimensions, and we set out to measure and connect tourism and related mobilities, social trends, gateways and systems of anchoring of tourism to places (including ‘smart’ ones), both at a pan-European scale (looking at NUTS2 regions) and at the level of case study cities. The first full-fledged papers integrating these early results and developing nuanced analytics of such relationships are due to come around with the final deliverables from WPs 2 and 3. The wider societal implications are obvious: citizens, scientists, policymakers will dispose of a sound system of measurement and interpretation of the production of social exclusion in the tourist place and of planning concepts and tools that may inform future adaptations and changes in policy and governance. However, as noted by the reviewers, this approach needs to adapt to the new challenges presented by the ‘pandemic turn’ and even more fundamentally the societal concern for an inclusive post-pandemic recovery. These questions are expected to be tackled through the reorganisation of research tasks presented with the resubmission of all the deliverables.
The ‘constructive’ work of SMARTDEST towards solutions and mitigation to social exclusion is yet to be started – CityLabs will only be operational by the end of Year 2. Yet this starting period has allowed us not only to get a better knowledge of the challenges for case study cities and communities under the transformative drive of mobilities, but also to get in touch and be in conversations with the policy, social and business stakeholders that in WP3 will allow us to get a more nuanced understanding of the contexts and processes in which exclusion is produced, and in WP4 will be invited to play a central part in the elaboration and testing of innovative pathways for a post-pandemic recovery - following the reignition of the global system of mobilities – that is just and inclusive in the light of the pre-pandemic trends and the new social breaches that have been opened during the last year.