Urban Dualism and a Shift of the Decision-Making Centre, from the Pre-Tourist City to the Tourist Town, in Mediterranean Spain in the Early 21st Century
Since the 1960s, along the Mediterranean shores, mass tourism has been giving rise to dual towns (agriculture/tourism, fishing/tourism, permanent neighbourhood/seasonal neighbourhood). The two principal types of resorts include recreational annexes grafted onto village-centres and “planned resorts”, created ex nihilo. In the case of recreational annexes, prevalent along the Spanish Mediterranean coastline, urban centrality has shifted from the pre-tourist city to the tourist town, within a span of forty years of recreational development. The birth of mobile and multi-resident societies in Europe since the 1990s has contributed to accelerating this trend, which is at the source of the rise in important spatial, societal and cultural discontinuities among various urban components.