CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020
| Author | Hollge, Laureen |
|---|---|
| Title | Case of Prague: Can Overtourism Engender Urban Regime Change? |
| Summary | A new progressive coalition which wanted to address issues of overtourism was formed at Prague’s City Hall after municipal elections in 2018. The new city government introduced initiatives such as a first-ever strategy for sustainable tourism or the institution of night mayor. These initiatives are done strategically, in a cooperative, transparent manner, and demonstrate the government’s prioritaization of residents’ quality of life over economic returns. In so-doing, the government disrupts previous neoliberal urban governance regime characterized by profit-oriented ad-hoc decision making and state capture. However, such disruptions are now contested and mobilized against as shown on the case studies of the coalition’s fall in Prague 1 district, the negotiation of short-term rentals’ regulation, and the airport expansion debate. This research shows that while overtourism provides an opportunity to reorient governance towards sustainability in a way that disrupts neoliberal urban governance and state capture, this neoliberal urban governance and state capture that allowed the overtouristification in the first place are deeply embedded in local and national networks, thus making possibilities for such political change limited. This research contributes to the discussions on whether change of neoliberal urban governance is possible by providing a case study of partially successful, isolated and challenged urban regime change. |
| Supervisor | Zentai, Violetta; Bodnár, Judit |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2020/hollge_laureen.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University