Urban tourism and the geography of the city

Abstract

For post-structuralist urban literature, cities appear as landscapes fractured in protected and exclusionary enclaves, which colonize and replace local places. Consequently, it is considered that tourist enclaves facilitate the authoritarian control of urban space, modifying the consumption and replacing and suppressing local culture with Disney-like environments. This article argues that, even when within tourist enclaves a non-democratic, directive and authoritarian regime is attempted -and generally achieved-, in this spaces social control in not complete; the analysis that this article proposes of tourist spaces reveals that the fracture of post-modern metropolises spaces is able to create diversity and difference, more than monotony and uniformity. It is conclude that, for the city visitors, the urban dystopia predicted by post-structuralist scholars has not been materialized yet. Key words: tourist enclaves, social control, post-structuralist urbanism, urban theory.

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