Big city and tourism in the post-industrial transition: new and old processes, new and old theories. The case study of metropolitan area of Madrid.

Abstract

Urban tourism, and especially tourism in big cities, has recently been an important theorization field. In fact, tourism has became a crucial factor to explain many of the sociospatial processes in cities at the post-industrial transition, and furthermore, in a strategic activity for the urban policies. In this context, the research has focused on explaining the current relation between tourism and urban processes, and how the traditional theories about urban tourism are being progressively replaced. This theoretic perspective will be applied to the example of Madrid, using different scales of analysis, from metropolitan to the smallest one (district, cluster).