La turistificación del ocio nocturno: Nuevos retos y desafíos en el estudio de la ciudad turística

For many largest cities in southern Europe, urban tourism, and particularly the touristification of their central urban areas, have emerged as key mitigation strategies to overcome the negative socioeconomic effects derived from the last financial and economic crisis. While an increasing number of authors suggest a clear interaction between tourist gentrification and commercial gen-trification, little scholar attention has been paid to the growing interrelation between the economy of nightlife, urban tourism and their complex forms of simultaneous interaction as fundamental driving forces of change in central areas of European cities. This article will expose the different theoretical and methodological challenges that the touristification of nightlife in central urban areas entails for the study of the tourist city. This paper will also argue that the touristification of nightlife emerges as one of the most aggressive forms of material, symbolic and heritage dispossession of local communities in the central historic neighborhoods of many European cities.