A few days ago, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine, and we were reminiscing about a one-day trip we took to Naples a few years ago. During this conversation, they mentioned a bookstore we visited then and told me how they wished to go back there on our next hypothetical trip to the city. “Actually, the bookshop has closed down; there is a restaurant there now.” My friend was bummed about it, but far from surprised.
That’s because, all across Europe and beyond, a phenomenon is happening, and it’s not just occurring in the big cities. Small towns have been affected as well, as long as they get a decent number of tourists. This phenomenon is what geographers, anthropologists, and activists have dubbed “foodification”: the process of gentrifying urban areas through unique food environments, where food creates and interacts with specific discourses, materials, and practices that ultimately foster a sense of displacement within the local community.
Foodification has changed the face of a working-class neighborhood in Turin, driven gentrification forward in racially mixed areas in Boston, and contributed to the metrification and spectacularizing of local culture and heritage in Naples. The opening of new eateries is just part of the equation. The rest of it is how and why there is so much discourse, buzz, and investment around food, regardless of whether it’s street food, “traditional” food, or yet another adaptation of some international fad.
Indeed, travel and food have always been inseparable. Merchants and pilgrims stayed and ate at inns in port towns and along pilgrimage paths back in the Middle Ages. Yet, food has now become a much bigger part of travel. It’s now a key factor in the choice of destination, as food and urban foodscapes are increasingly seen through what British sociologist John Urry called the “tourist gaze”: the idea that tourism is fundamentally a visual practice, where the way tourists see places is socially constructed through imagery fed to us by mass media rather than built autonomously according to one’s individual sensibilities.
Nowadays, though, it isn’t just mass media creating and cementing these simplified, consumable ideas of what a certain city looks and feels like. If you look up any popular destination on social media, you’ll be presented with a heap of video guides telling you what to eat, whether that trendy restaurant is worth your time and money, and where to find all the “hidden gems” that haven’t made the headlines yet.
This way, food and foodification feed overtourism, something that has been homogenizing the economy and culture of cities all over the world. As a result, locals can no longer find homes, afford rent, or recognize the places that shaped them, their loved ones, and their communities. This situation is no coincidence. It’s the result of the widespread adoption of neoliberal urban strategies that see tourism as a way to monetize local heritage and boost cities’ national and international images, particularly of historically low-income areas. This approach overlooks the broader socio-economic, political, and environmental consequences of overtourism. Instead of addressing social inequality, it banks on the trickle-down myth while actually making life much harder for countless residents.
The situation is bleak, but of course, cities and people fight back, make noise, and try to keep the place they call home alive. In the Japanese city of Fujiyoshida, local officials have canceled the city’s yearly massive cherry blossom festival after residents complained of littering and trespassing. Protests in Albania, dubbed the “Flamingo Revolution,” have been fighting against the construction on ecologically sensitive coastal lands of a luxury resort project linked to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. Because food, land, and heritage aren’t simple commodities; they are above all rights.
