engleski

Sociological importance of the inner and outer forces that make cities “to move”

Cities are usually conceptualized as agglomerations with different growing patterns depending on the economic, political and social contextual conditions. But, in the 20th and at the beginning of the 21st century, many other „forces‘ started more and more to influence the „movement of the cities‘. We might differentiate, for example, between „slow‘ (Oxford) and „fast‘ (New York), between „sleeping‘ (tourist cities) and „non sleeping‘ cities. In this paper the attention will be focused on the changes of the „city speed‘ influenced by mass tourism, using the example of two Croatian cities: Dubrovnik and Zagreb. During the tourist season the city is in a high speed, filled with thousands of visitors (in Dubrovnik usually from cruisers), while in the rest of the „season‘ the city is empty, it sleeps and waits for the new season to come. The authorities everywhere are trying to extend that season of ‘a speed city’, through different attractions and motives to attract contemporary nomads – tourists. Does it mean that all tourist cities will be soon only speedy cities? Because of tourism public space, streets and squares, of old historic parts of Dubrovnik and Zagreb are gentrified and emptied of identity and meaning for their inhabitants. Old parts of town are significantly decreasing in number of inhabitants, but there are more and more tourists that come, visit and see. Cities and their inhabitants are driven between two different forces – to live «normal» everyday life and to live «high» life of a tourist city. The main hypothesis of this paper is that the city that moves (in a higher speed) is a consequence of current pressures of the outer forces that moulds city's everydayness. So as a consequence, the change of the city speed, or at least the movements of cities from the slow motion to the higher 55 speed is by now and will be conditioned by the forces of global technological, political, economic and social developments on a world scale. In the inner sense, some cities could gather higher or slower speed depending on the contexts while the destiny of the cities will be preserved in the longer run whatsoever speed and movement will be at stake. The paper will be relying on the researches results previously gathered as well as on the personal observation and contemporary literature sources.

gentrification, tourism, city speed, identity

nije evidentirano