Commodifying Lisbon: A Study on the Spatial Concentration of Short-Term Rentals

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between the spatial concentration of short-term rentals in Lisbon’s historic center and the phenomena of uneven development and tourism gentrification. By providing quantitative and qualitative evidence of the uneven geographic distribution of tourist apartments within the municipality of Lisbon, it contributes to the study of the new processes of neoliberal urbanization in the crisis-ridden countries of Southern Europe. It argues that the great share of whole-home rentals and the expansion of the short-term rental market over the housing stock are symptoms of the commodification of housing in the neoliberal city. Due to the loss of consumption capacity by the Portuguese society amid crisis and austerity, real estate developers target external markets and local households must compete for access to a limited housing stock with tourists and other temporary city users. The subsequent global rent gap stimulates the proliferation of vacation rentals at the expense of the supply of residential housing, fueling property prices and jeopardizing housing affordability. With Portugal being a peripheral member of the EU and the Eurozone, the vulnerability of local households to the impacts of tourism gentrification is aggravated by the remarkable income gap with their counterparts of the core.

The Association between Material Deprivation and Avoidable Mortality in Lisbon, Portugal

“…The improvements to the transportation network and increase in purchasing power during the 1970s and 1990s allowed many families to move to the surrounding municipalities, relegating the city centre to older citizens (24%) and immigrants (11%) [ 42 ]. Recently, tourism has changed this pattern, with many buildings being renovated and adapted for local touristic accommodation, resulting in displacement and gentrification in several historic neighborhoods [ 43 , 44 ].…”

Analyzing the influence of short-term rental platforms on housing affordability in global urban destination neighborhoods

“…Moreover, they found that Airbnb tourism listings were growing in areas with a higher proportion of privately-rented properties, turning an increasing percentage of the original housing supply into short-term rental supply. For Lestegás et al (2019), this rent gap, originated by the latest wave of tourism growth, takes place especially in big cities but is really a global issue: the loss of purchasing power in many countries after the financial crisis hit, and the subsequent austerity measures, forced many residents to compete for access to a limited housing stock controlled by real-estate developers targeting external markets, essentially international tourists and other temporary (mostly high-income and professionally-qualified) visitors (sometime described as "digital nomads"). Meanwhile, different authors have found that this rent gap is also rooted in the increasing commercial orientation of a large proportion of Airbnb's hosts.…”

Comparing spatial and content analysis of residents and tourists using Geotagged Social Media Data. The Historic Neighbourhood of Alfama (Lisbon), a case study

“…Indeed, the increasing relevance of tourism has had major impacts on the real estate market, the situation has led to an imbalance of the access to long-term rental, while competing in a market that favours short-term rental. The regulation of such a balance has become one of the greatest challenges for urban management (Lestegás, Seixas, & Lois-González, 2019;Malet Calvo et al, 2018).…”