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Text A: Our City Is Not a Theme Park. By Marta Vidal, a teacher who has lived in Barcelona all her life.

Every morning, on my way to work, I used to pass a bakery that had sold bread to my grandmother. Last spring it closed, and a shop selling souvenir magnets opened in its place. Nobody in my neighbourhood buys magnets. That small change sums up what has happened to many of Europe's most beautiful cities: little by little, they are being reshaped for people who stay for three days and then leave.

Let me be clear: I am not against tourists. My own family travels, and I love showing visitors the city where I was born. The problem is not tourism itself but its scale. Barcelona is home to about 1.6 million people, yet it receives millions of visitors every year, most of them in the same few neighbourhoods during the same summer months. On some streets in the old city, it is now hard to find a resident at all.

The most serious damage is to housing. When an apartment can earn more from holiday rentals than from a family that pays rent every month, owners make the obvious choice. Rents rise, young people move to the suburbs, and neighbours are replaced by strangers with suitcases. In 2024, the city announced that it would stop renewing licences for tourist apartments by 2028. Many people outside Barcelona called this extreme. To those of us who cannot afford to live in the city where we grew up, it seemed overdue.

Barcelona is not alone. In 2024, Venice began charging some day visitors an entrance fee, and Amsterdam stopped approving new hotels. Critics call these measures unfriendly, even selfish. I see them as an attempt to keep cities alive as places where people live, not only places that people visit.

The usual reply is that tourism creates jobs. It does, and I do not dismiss that. But many of those jobs are seasonal and badly paid, and a large share of the profits goes to international companies rather than to local families. An economy that depends on a single industry is also fragile, as every tourist city discovered in 2020, when the visitors suddenly disappeared.

A city is not a theme park, and its residents are not part of the scenery. Setting limits is not a sign of hostility towards visitors; it is a way of making sure that there will still be a real city for them to visit. Protect the bakery, and the tourists will still come.

Text B: Don't Close the Gates, Manage the Crowds. By Tom Levi, a tour guide in Jerusalem.

For twenty years I have earned my living by walking visitors through the narrow streets of Jerusalem's Old City. I have seen the crowds at the Western Wall on a summer afternoon, and I understand why some people in Europe now say that their cities have had enough. But when I read about entrance fees and bans on new hotels, I worry that we are treating the wrong illness.

In 2020, I learned what a city without tourists looks like. During the pandemic, the alleys of the Old City were empty for months. The family that has sold me coffee for two decades could not pay its rent, and the craftsmen who make jewellery and ceramics for visitors closed their workshops. Tourism is not only hotels and international chains; it is thousands of small businesses that feed real families.

The real problem, in my experience, is not the number of visitors but where and when they go. Most tourists crowd into a handful of famous sites at the same hours, while beautiful neighbourhoods a few streets away remain almost empty. Spread the same number of people across the day, the week and the city, and much of the pressure disappears. Some famous sites already do this. The Alhambra in Granada sells tickets for specific times and limits the number of visitors each day, and the Louvre in Paris asks visitors to book a time in advance.

I also worry about who pays. A fee for entering a city sounds fair until you realise that it falls most heavily on students, families and young travellers, while wealthy visitors hardly notice it. Travel should not become a privilege of the rich. Some of the most important lessons I have seen visitors learn in Jerusalem had nothing to do with history books: they came from sharing a meal or a conversation with people whose lives are very different from their own.

None of this means that cities should do nothing. Residents are right to be angry when apartments become hotels and rents rise beyond their reach. Clear rules for holiday rentals make sense, and I would support them. But that is a question of housing policy, not a reason to treat every visitor as a problem.

Tourism, like water, can flood a place or bring it to life. The answer is not to build a wall, but to build better channels.

Text A: Our City Is Not a Theme Park. By Marta Vidal, a teacher who has lived in Barcelona all her life.

Every morning, on my way to work, I used to pass a bakery that had sold bread to my grandmother. Last spring it closed, and a shop selling souvenir magnets opened in its place. Nobody in my neighbourhood buys magnets. That small change sums up what has happened to many of Europe's most beautiful cities: little by little, they are being reshaped for people who stay for three days and then leave.

Let me be clear: I am not against tourists. My own family travels, and I love showing visitors the city where I was born. The problem is not tourism itself but its scale. Barcelona is home to about 1.6 million people, yet it receives millions of visitors every year, most of them in the same few neighbourhoods during the same summer months. On some streets in the old city, it is now hard to find a resident at all.

The most serious damage is to housing. When an apartment can earn more from holiday rentals than from a family that pays rent every month, owners make the obvious choice. Rents rise, young people move to the suburbs, and neighbours are replaced by strangers with suitcases. In 2024, the city announced that it would stop renewing licences for tourist apartments by 2028. Many people outside Barcelona called this extreme. To those of us who cannot afford to live in the city where we grew up, it seemed overdue.

Barcelona is not alone. In 2024, Venice began charging some day visitors an entrance fee, and Amsterdam stopped approving new hotels. Critics call these measures unfriendly, even selfish. I see them as an attempt to keep cities alive as places where people live, not only places that people visit.

The usual reply is that tourism creates jobs. It does, and I do not dismiss that. But many of those jobs are seasonal and badly paid, and a large share of the profits goes to international companies rather than to local families. An economy that depends on a single industry is also fragile, as every tourist city discovered in 2020, when the visitors suddenly disappeared.

A city is not a theme park, and its residents are not part of the scenery. Setting limits is not a sign of hostility towards visitors; it is a way of making sure that there will still be a real city for them to visit. Protect the bakery, and the tourists will still come.

Text B: Don't Close the Gates, Manage the Crowds. By Tom Levi, a tour guide in Jerusalem.

For twenty years I have earned my living by walking visitors through the narrow streets of Jerusalem's Old City. I have seen the crowds at the Western Wall on a summer afternoon, and I understand why some people in Europe now say that their cities have had enough. But when I read about entrance fees and bans on new hotels, I worry that we are treating the wrong illness.

In 2020, I learned what a city without tourists looks like. During the pandemic, the alleys of the Old City were empty for months. The family that has sold me coffee for two decades could not pay its rent, and the craftsmen who make jewellery and ceramics for visitors closed their workshops. Tourism is not only hotels and international chains; it is thousands of small businesses that feed real families.

The real problem, in my experience, is not the number of visitors but where and when they go. Most tourists crowd into a handful of famous sites at the same hours, while beautiful neighbourhoods a few streets away remain almost empty. Spread the same number of people across the day, the week and the city, and much of the pressure disappears. Some famous sites already do this. The Alhambra in Granada sells tickets for specific times and limits the number of visitors each day, and the Louvre in Paris asks visitors to book a time in advance.

I also worry about who pays. A fee for entering a city sounds fair until you realise that it falls most heavily on students, families and young travellers, while wealthy visitors hardly notice it. Travel should not become a privilege of the rich. Some of the most important lessons I have seen visitors learn in Jerusalem had nothing to do with history books: they came from sharing a meal or a conversation with people whose lives are very different from their own.

None of this means that cities should do nothing. Residents are right to be angry when apartments become hotels and rents rise beyond their reach. Clear rules for holiday rentals make sense, and I would support them. But that is a question of housing policy, not a reason to treat every visitor as a problem.

Tourism, like water, can flood a place or bring it to life. The answer is not to build a wall, but to build better channels.

Text A: Our City Is Not a Theme Park. By Marta Vidal, a teacher who has lived in Barcelona all her life.

Every morning, on my way to work, I used to pass a bakery that had sold bread to my grandmother. Last spring it closed, and a shop selling souvenir magnets opened in its place. Nobody in my neighbourhood buys magnets. That small change sums up what has happened to many of Europe's most beautiful cities: little by little, they are being reshaped for people who stay for three days and then leave.

Let me be clear: I am not against tourists. My own family travels, and I love showing visitors the city where I was born. The problem is not tourism itself but its scale. Barcelona is home to about 1.6 million people, yet it receives millions of visitors every year, most of them in the same few neighbourhoods during the same summer months. On some streets in the old city, it is now hard to find a resident at all.

The most serious damage is to housing. When an apartment can earn more from holiday rentals than from a family that pays rent every month, owners make the obvious choice. Rents rise, young people move to the suburbs, and neighbours are replaced by strangers with suitcases. In 2024, the city announced that it would stop renewing licences for tourist apartments by 2028. Many people outside Barcelona called this extreme. To those of us who cannot afford to live in the city where we grew up, it seemed overdue.

Barcelona is not alone. In 2024, Venice began charging some day visitors an entrance fee, and Amsterdam stopped approving new hotels. Critics call these measures unfriendly, even selfish. I see them as an attempt to keep cities alive as places where people live, not only places that people visit.

The usual reply is that tourism creates jobs. It does, and I do not dismiss that. But many of those jobs are seasonal and badly paid, and a large share of the profits goes to international companies rather than to local families. An economy that depends on a single industry is also fragile, as every tourist city discovered in 2020, when the visitors suddenly disappeared.

A city is not a theme park, and its residents are not part of the scenery. Setting limits is not a sign of hostility towards visitors; it is a way of making sure that there will still be a real city for them to visit. Protect the bakery, and the tourists will still come.

Text B: Don't Close the Gates, Manage the Crowds. By Tom Levi, a tour guide in Jerusalem.

For twenty years I have earned my living by walking visitors through the narrow streets of Jerusalem's Old City. I have seen the crowds at the Western Wall on a summer afternoon, and I understand why some people in Europe now say that their cities have had enough. But when I read about entrance fees and bans on new hotels, I worry that we are treating the wrong illness.

In 2020, I learned what a city without tourists looks like. During the pandemic, the alleys of the Old City were empty for months. The family that has sold me coffee for two decades could not pay its rent, and the craftsmen who make jewellery and ceramics for visitors closed their workshops. Tourism is not only hotels and international chains; it is thousands of small businesses that feed real families.

The real problem, in my experience, is not the number of visitors but where and when they go. Most tourists crowd into a handful of famous sites at the same hours, while beautiful neighbourhoods a few streets away remain almost empty. Spread the same number of people across the day, the week and the city, and much of the pressure disappears. Some famous sites already do this. The Alhambra in Granada sells tickets for specific times and limits the number of visitors each day, and the Louvre in Paris asks visitors to book a time in advance.

I also worry about who pays. A fee for entering a city sounds fair until you realise that it falls most heavily on students, families and young travellers, while wealthy visitors hardly notice it. Travel should not become a privilege of the rich. Some of the most important lessons I have seen visitors learn in Jerusalem had nothing to do with history books: they came from sharing a meal or a conversation with people whose lives are very different from their own.

None of this means that cities should do nothing. Residents are right to be angry when apartments become hotels and rents rise beyond their reach. Clear rules for holiday rentals make sense, and I would support them. But that is a question of housing policy, not a reason to treat every visitor as a problem.

Tourism, like water, can flood a place or bring it to life. The answer is not to build a wall, but to build better channels.