Rethinking tourism-driven urban transformation and social tourism impact: A scenario from a CEE city

Even though research on tourism-oriented urban change is growing in number, little attention is paid to urban policy drivers of this transformation, especially in the context of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). There is also a lack of knowledge about how such changes are perceived by long-term residents who live in 'tourist neighborhoods'. For tourism-oriented urban change, urban regeneration and urban entrepreneurial policies have been of key importance. Furthermore, in CEE cities, tourism-driven urban change was strongly influenced by the character of the transformation of this region after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. In-depth interviews with long-term residents of the 'tourist neighborhood' (historic city center) of Kraków (Poland) have allowed to distinguish various types of tourism-related displacement in the context of a CEE tourism city. Their connections to depopulation, social changes to the neighborhood and tourism-driven financialization of historical housing have been subject to investigation. The analysis of displacement has been supplemented with the category of solastalgia, previously unused in urban studies.