Zed Books Slumming It: The Tourist Valorization of Urban Poverty

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Slumming ItThe Tourist Valorization of Urban PovertyBy Fabian FrenzelZed Books LtdCopyright © 2016 Fabian FrenzelAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-1-78360-444-9ContentsList of figures, Acknowledgements, 1 Introduction, 2 Tourism and the social question, 3 The slum and the city, 4 Value practices and tourist valorization, 5 Slums in local value regimes, 6 Disruptive valorization: putting slums on the map, 7 Co-opting and engineering tourist valorization: policy and real estate responses, 8 Tourist valorization in the post-Fordist care regime, 9 Slum tourism and political activism, 10 Conclusion, References, Index, CHAPTER 1IntroductionTourism and the slumIn 2014 over one million tourists visited a township, a favela, a barrio or a slum in some part of the world. By far the largest number visit South Africa's townships, where, since the end of apartheid, slum tourism has become a mass tourist activity. Rio's favelas and one large slum in Mumbai, Dharavi, also receive significant numbers of visitors. In a variety of locations around the world, slum tourism is now emerging as a niche form of tourism. Slum tourism takes place largely as three- to four-hour guided tours, but recent years have shown a remarkable diversification of tourism activities. Slum tourism takes place in vans and jeeps, but also as walking tours or on bikes. Beyond touring the slum, tourists today find accommodation in slums, and visit restaurants, bars, concert venues, markets or festivals. In Johannesburg, South Africa, it is possible to bungee-jump from the cooling towers of a disused power plant, overlooking the large cluster of townships that is Soweto (Frenzel et al. 2015).Much of this recent trend in tourism emerged in South Africa and in Rio de Janeiro in the early 1990s. As a form of tourism it has spread from these two destinations, inspiring new destinations to provide similar offers. The first slum tours in India, founded in 2006 in Dharavi, Mumbai, as Reality Tour and Travel (RTT), were conceived when one of the founders visited Rio and took part in a tour there. In the meantime RTT has expanded to Delhi, has supported the set-up of slum tours in Manila, Philippines, and, importantly, inspired a number of competitors in Dharavi. In the countries neighbouring South Africa, including Zambia, Namibia and Zimbabwe, township and slum tours have emerged, building on the success of tours in Cape Town and Johannesburg. In Latin America, barrios have become tourist destinations in a number of cities, following the model of favela tourism in Rio de Janeiro (Freire-Medeiros 2013).Tourist interest in slums has influenced policy-makers. In South Africa policy has attempted to use the tourism income streams for the cherished 'broad based black economic empowerment', attempting to make the tourism industry more beneficial for the country's black and often relatively poor majority. In Rio de Janeiro, favela tourism has been embraced and supported by policy in attempts to 'pacify' and normalize favelas and to create employment and income opportunities. In Medellín, Colombia, the city government improved the transport infrastructure of Medellín's barrios by constructing cable cars that provide access to the city. They also aimed at and succeeded in bringing tourists to the barrios, encouraged by building landmark architecture on the high platforms of the cable car. Tourists have since flocked into the barrios, very much as in Rio, where now two of these cable cars exist and double as resident and tourist modes of transport (Koens 2012; Steinbrink 2014; Freire-Medeiros et al. 2013; Rogerson 2004; Hernandez-Garcia 2013).Slum tourism might be expanding today on a global scale, but it is not a new phenomenon. In Victorian London rich West Enders regularly visited the poor, slum-like East End. Areas and boroughs like Hackney, Shoreditch and Hoxton offered illicit consumption and entertainment, be it drugs, prosti