Tourism and Urban Development: The case of a coastal village in a small island state

Abstract

This paper discusses how Marsascala, a coastal town in Malta, has been urbanized over the years, with particular attention to the development of the tourist industry. Young’s (1983) “general model of the process of ‘touristization’ and landscape change” is engaged with to study the impact of tourism development on the locality and local community. Different research methods were used, including qualitative interviews via thematic analysis, fieldwork, orthophoto maps, and analysis of secondary data. Findings show that tourism plays a major role in the local economy. Overdevelopment and population increase (fuelled by tourism and influx of foreign workers) are major challenges in the locality. The former fishing village has as a result reached stage six (intensive tourism consolidation) of Young's model. While more services are available to locals and visitors, the quality of life in the locality is deteriorating. This has raised questions about the need to redevelop the Jerma Hotel which will partly be a real estate project. The authors propose a seventh stage to Young’s model - ‘real estatation’ whereby more areas are taken over by real estate projects including for short-term rentals. This paper is linked to the EU Cost Action CA221222 Rethinking the Blue Economy: Socio-Ecological Impacts and Opportunities (RethinkBlue), in particular in relation to the themes covered by Working Group 3 - Port cities & coastal communities.