Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The backlash against overtourism

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 311 posts

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#201

Post by gamblor956 »

csomar wrote: post #120

Couldn't this be a failure from the European cities in question? While European countries are on the top of the list, the cities? Not that much. The first one is Bangkok. With around 22 million tourists. Paris is third with 18 million. Interestingly, Paris has more things to see, a more extensive metro system (actually waaa..y more extensive). Yet, I seem to be more bothered by tourists in Paris than in Bangkok. In B…

In Bangkok, the tourism is spread around the city.

This is how tourism works in LA. The tourist locations are so spread out from one another that the mobs of tourists can't overwhelm any particular part of the city.

That being said, events like this past weekend's Sportsmageddon and last year's Women's March demonstrated that LA is fully capable of handling large masses of visiting crowds without much negative impact other than more garbage.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#202

Post by mitchdoogle »

totalperspectiv wrote: post #65
jolesf wrote: post #3

“To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience, It is to impose yourself on places that in all non-economic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction afte…

I struggle with this every time I travel! I think that part of the... guilt? ... can be assuaged by intent. As in, you are there to learn and absorb a culture and broaden your horizons, as opposed to being there for the entertainment of seeing crazy things and getting the Instagram shot. But maybe that's just a pretense I make up for myself.

The thing with absorbing cultures, sightseeing, and taking photos of landmarks is that to an outside observer they all look the same.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#204

Post by Symbiote »

mc32 wrote: post #32
esotericn wrote: post #4

Mass tourism is being treated as unique when really, we're discovering that everyone cannot have a "good" standard of living. We can't all go travelling, we won't fit in the same place and we'll boil the earth doing so. We can't all have a car because we'll boil the earth. If we develop EV's and don't boil the earth, they won't all fit downtown. We can't all live in the country, that's not sustainable either. We can'…

Maybe Bhutan provides a glimpse of what tourism can be. Put a cap on the numbers and charge a significant fee for a tourist visa. I’m sure this might seem extreme, but with more people getting into midfle class and affording the yearly foreign vacation, something has to be done. It’s completely unsustainable. Not only does the environment suffer, but the locals also have no sense of what their locale is like normally…

A much more moderate example is Cologne's "Culture Tax", which adds a few euros to the price of a hotel room, but not for business travellers.

https://www.stadt-koeln.de/politik-und-verwaltung/steuern-ge...

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#205

Post by TangoTrotFox »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #109
TangoTrotFox wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, you also have to understand that humanitarianism must have limits. The resources of nations are not infinite and individuals that are unable to provide for themselves are a tremendous burden on society. And when you accept people that fail to integrate you risk imperiling the very policies that you hold to be worthwhile. For instance, Sweden will be a phenomenal test case. The Globe and Mail ran an…

Just pointing out that 'piece' is an editorial, not a news article. The US has had multiple waves of immigration from most of the world, over the last few centuries. And there has been similar pushback from nativists over and over again. If that long history is any indication, Sweden will be fine.

What do you think would be a comparable migration in the US? I see three key distinguishing factors that make Sweden quite interesting as a test case:

1) The first is of course just sheer volume. Sweden has gone, in less than a single generation, from a mostly ethnically homogeneous nation to one where about 20% of the population is foreign born and that's only going to keep rising. The US is at record setting levels recently, with a foreign born population of less than 14%. And it's always been a rather diverse nation.

2) Relatively incompatible cultures. Large chunks of the migrants to Sweden are coming from backgrounds that hold very different cultural values on a wide range of fundamental issues. By contrast the vast majority of migrants to the US tend to hold quite similar cultural values.

3) Distorted migratory motivations. Throughout the US's history, migration has been about work -- in the past and present. People's motivation for coming here is to work. When the economy tanked in 2009, so did immigration. As it picks back up, so does immigration. Sweden, by contrast, is attracting people exclusively because they offer extremely generous benefits, particularly for refugees. They are attracting individuals that are only moving there because they can get more stuff from their government than they can from other nations. Ideally this could just be a liminal phase, but the current outcomes are far from promising. If people end up beginning to take the government handouts for granted, I think this would be a serious problem.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#206

Post by ufmace »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #129
spiralx wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because world population is already forecast to peak and then decline over the next few decades, economic development has already "done something" about this issue, unless you're proposing mass murder or something equally implausible.

Would paying people in countries with high birth rates to not have children be exploitative?

I would guess that a lot of the sub-populations with the highest birthrates are disconnected enough from the global economy for money to be meaningless for them.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#207

Post by Loughla »

quest88 wrote: post #64
Loughla wrote: post #16

Honest to God, the best take on this theory was actually the Consul's tale in Hyperion explaining why he was against the Hegemony. The degradation of Maui-Covenant is just so very realistic and easy to visualize. Reading that as a child actually led me to travel less than I really want to as an adult. Instead, I enjoy making my small part of the world 'mine' instead of trying to make the rest of the world 'mine'.

What do you think of traveling to experience other parts of the world that you can incorporate into your part of the world?

Genuinely. I can't come up with a reason or 'thing' that I wouldn't be able to learn from the internet/video chat/vr (hopefully soon).

What were you thinking of when you wrote this?

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#208

Post by Loughla »

mitchdoogle wrote: post #190
zanny wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't hurt that you can get a large chunk of the travel experience virtually now. Either watching someone elses travel vlogs (from just phone camera stuff to professional productions on various places) or using something like google maps lets you "tour" the world. If I want the sensation of being somewhere busy I could just drive an hour and walk main street in my closest city. I'm sure all the shops and attract…

VR can only ever satisfy the visual and auditory experience, which I would argue is much less than 99% of an experience of visiting a different place. Even if VR came along that could reliably emulate our other senses, you would still be missing out on a vital part of most experiences - interacting with others.

> interacting with others.

What? Why wouldn't there be substantive human interaction as part of this process. If we can do that via text (see this post for an example), why not vr? Virtual Tour guide could be a thing. Or Just think of a VR version of Second Life, but with less sexual overtones.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#209

Post by lozaning »

js2 wrote: post #52
robben1234 wrote: post #42

I won't argue about off topic issues, but I don't think mass tourism is killing any sights. Ignorance kills natural sights, over advertisement kills human created sights. Nearby Venice there's so much interesting stuff and small cities, a bit further are big cities. None of them really struggles with tourists as much as Venice. Maybe you'll see a huge line for Firenze Duomo but that's it, streets and other sights are…

I stayed with my wife and two kids on Venice almost exactly four years ago this month. We avoided the busy spots during the day, and had Venice to ourselves at night. So even at places as busy as Venice, it's still possible to avoid crowds. We actually found Florence to be busy almost everywhere, even with lots of people still wandering around at night. The Uffizi was the one place that was impossible to enjoy, mostl…

I found Florence pretty miserable and dont get me started on the 'italian food' within a mile of the Coliseum in Rome. I had the good fortune to spend quite some time in Castiglion Fiorentino and found that much preferable.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#210

Post by scythe »

esotericn wrote: post #4

Mass tourism is being treated as unique when really, we're discovering that everyone cannot have a "good" standard of living. We can't all go travelling, we won't fit in the same place and we'll boil the earth doing so. We can't all have a car because we'll boil the earth. If we develop EV's and don't boil the earth, they won't all fit downtown. We can't all live in the country, that's not sustainable either. We can'…

>We can't all go travelling, we won't fit in the same place and we'll boil the earth doing so.

Not every city is as famous as Venice. No, everyone can't go to Venice. Everyone can go somewhere, though.

> If we develop EV's and don't boil the earth, they won't all fit downtown.

Gridlock is a rounding error compared to air pollution. Sure, congestion is bad. But it doesn't deserve to be compared to the worst environmental crisis ever. (After all, studies showing induced demand are also showing that people choose to sit in traffic -- they can't hate it that much.)

> We can't all eat high quality meat as often as we want. We'll boil the earth and it'll require too much farmland, anyway

Lab-grown meat is an easy fix. We don't eat very much "high-quality" meat to begin with, at least, not most of us. Most of us eat Taco Bell, which is already only 30% meat or whatever.

> We can't all live in the country, that's not sustainable either.

No, but it's possible for a significant fraction to live in well-designed small towns. Obviously cities are necessary; we've never been without them. But you can fit a lot more people into three-story houses on 1/12 acre lots (33' by 110') than into one-story houses on half-acre lots. We have a lot of the latter these days. There's no need to jump all the way to small apartments in mid-rises on car-free streets. (But building some of these is good because there is clearly some demand from people who would like to live there.)

>But the idea that everyone should be able to do the same things implies a set of "things" very different from what, say, the middle class families on my suburban street do today.

I don't disagree with the general claim, but most people's predictions are far too dire. These problems are much more addressable than some people seem to think. They won't be, if population continues to skyrocket, but at current loading, the Earth will be okay.

(Unfortunately, some surveys indicate that people are choosing not to reproduce because they're unhappy. If we make those people happy, the population problem could come back. That's my greatest worry in the long-term.)

Post reply on HN