'Kill Venice': a systems thinking conceptualisation of urban life, economy, and resilience in tourist cities

The paper interrogates the effectiveness and desirability of tourism as a local economic engine in urban contexts, especially under mass tourism. It situates the debate within contested notions of “sustainable tourism” and overtourism, highlighting tensions between claimed economic benefits (e.g., jobs, capital inflows) and harms to residents’ quality of life, housing, urban fabric, and the environment. The Covid-19 pandemic is framed as a critical shock exposing the fragility of tourism-dependent urban economies and an opportunity to rethink city goals and configurations for sustainability and resilience. Resilience is linked to diversity in systems; by analogy, tourist monocultures are portrayed as highly vulnerable to external disruptions (pandemics, extreme weather, economic crises). The authors note growing literature on tourism’s ecological impacts and calls for tourism reduction, but identify a gap regarding systemic resilience of tourist cities and a lack of comprehensive systemic frameworks. They propose a systems thinking approach to conceptualise tourist cities’ metabolism and feedbacks, focusing on Venice as an emblematic, vulnerable destination. Guiding questions include: (i) to what extent a tourist city can be sustainable while preserving authenticity; (ii) what the real goals of touristic transformations are and for whom cities are touristified; and (iii) whether pursuing local well-being is among those goals and whether alternative strategies can compete with tourism.

The paper reviews streams of work on sustainable tourism and overtourism, noting that despite increasing publications, a coherent theoretical framework for the tourist city remains lacking. Prior studies often rely on static sustainability indicators, simple causal loops, or sectoral/system dynamics applications outside European urban contexts (e.g., seaside destinations in Oceania/SE Asia; urban sustainability assessment in China). Such approaches frequently: (1) miss dynamic feedbacks governing system evolution; and (2) lack a quantitative common ground to identify leverage points. Literature assesses ecological impacts of global tourism and advocates reductions, yet far fewer contributions address resilience of tourism-dependent cities. The authors situate their work within systems thinking traditions (von Bertalanffy, Forrester, Odum), emphasising energy systems language and stock–flow representations to capture urban metabolism, feedbacks, and leverage points. They also reference discussions of touristification/gentrification, urban planning’s weak integration with tourism in Europe, and critiques of extractivist logics of urban tourism. This positions their contribution as a comprehensive, systemic conceptualisation tailored to European urban tourist destinations, filling a gap in framing sustainability and resilience.

The study employs an epistemological tool rooted in Systems Thinking, using an energy systems/stock–flow diagramming approach (after H.T. Odum) to conceptualise a tourist city’s metabolism. Key steps: (1) define system boundaries distinguishing external drivers from internal processes; (2) identify stocks (e.g., urban assets; population; cultural assets/image) and flows (matter, energy, information, labour, money) that describe system state and operations; (3) map processes and controls linking flows and stocks, capturing feedbacks (reinforcing and balancing) operating at different hierarchies and time delays; (4) highlight tourism-specific structures and feedbacks (e.g., asset allocation to tourism; expulsion of residents; attraction via image); (5) include “sensors” to indicate economic monoculture dependence and monetary outflows (fleeing money). The approach distinguishes Systems Thinking from network analytics by focusing on a limited set of state variables and feedback structures rather than micro-level big-data dynamics. While the method can support future quantitative simulation (e.g., dynamic models), this paper provides a qualitative, conceptual diagram intended to reveal leverage points and guide policy/urban planning. The framework is flexible and applicable to various destinations, with Venice used as a focused case to illustrate data and dynamics. Data informing the conceptualisation include official statistics, five years of weekly monitoring of news, engagement in public debates/meetings (Venice, Rome, Naples, Barcelona), and exchanges with practitioners and citizen groups.

• The systemic diagram reveals a core reinforcing loop: as tourist numbers rise, the process of asset allocation (A) diverts urban assets (housing, space, services) from resident life/general economy to the tourism industry, which further increases tourist capacity and flows. This diversion fuels touristification and gentrification (gentri-touristification), displacing residents (process E) and reconfiguring urban functions toward hospitality and visitor services.
• A balancing feedback exists via the city’s image/cultural assets: tourist pressure depletes authenticity and well-being, potentially reducing attractiveness. However, this balancing is often overwhelmed by reinforcing dynamics and the persistence of demand for commodified/banalised experiences.
• Money flows tied to tourism largely leak from the local system (sensors F: fleeing money) due to external ownership of transport, hospitality, and retail chains; thus, profits concentrate elsewhere while impacts are borne locally. The system becomes a fragile economic monoculture (sensor M), with high dependence on external arrivals and capital.
• Jevons paradox applies: efficiency gains in the tourism industry can accelerate resource diversion from resident life, exacerbating depletion.
• Environmental/metabolic burdens grow (e.g., waste), further stressing the local environment (e.g., Venice’s lagoon), which provides essential ecosystem services.
• Venice data illustrate the dynamics and fragility: • Registered tourists in City of Venice rose from 4.2 million (2013) to 5.0 million (2017); overnight stays from 9.8 to 11.7 million. • 86% of visitors are from abroad, mostly arriving by air; airport terminal capacity grew about +170% (2000–2018). • Accommodation stock expanded: hotel beds ~29k→31k (2013–2017, +7%); complementary facilities 2.8k→6.0k (+114%); beds 18.7k→32.5k (+74%); Old Town offered >43,000 beds (2017), ~49,260 in 2019 (about +500% vs 2008); restaurants grew +160% (2008–2019). • Residents in Old Town fell to 52,143 by end-2019 (−21.5% in 20 years), with nearly half of all beds in the city devoted to tourists. • Cruise passengers reached ~1.6 million (2018), often surging >30,000 additional visitors on weekends/peaks. • Prior to Covid-19, high tides already depressed bookings; with Covid-19, travel bans and lockdowns precipitated unemployment and underemployment, exposing extreme vulnerability of the monocultural tourist economy.
• Proposed policy responses (entry barriers/taxes for day trippers, moving cruise terminals, caps on arrivals) are assessed as either marginal, counterproductive, or neutralised by the existing system configuration and goals, as they do not alter core feedbacks or asset allocation dynamics.
• Comparative notes: Rome partially mitigates by spatial expansion (pushing displacement to outskirts, with environmental costs), while Naples shows early-stage touristification with rising prices and quality concerns; Venice faces hard physical limits (lagoon), intensifying expulsion beyond the city and accelerating loss of cultural knowledge.

Addressing the guiding questions, the analysis suggests that under a profit-maximising, capital-accumulating regime, mass urban tourism is structurally incompatible with long-term sustainability and resilience. The system’s true operational goal in a tourist city tends toward profit maximisation for a few (extractivist industry), not residents’ well-being; this shapes asset allocation and feedbacks that displace residents, commodify culture, and increase dependence on external flows. The reinforcing feedback of asset diversion overwhelms potential balancing via image depletion, leading to self-undermining but still persistent tourism dynamics. Economic benefits are overstated locally due to significant financial leakages and external ownership, while risks/costs (social, environmental, economic) are widely distributed among residents, workers, and SMEs. The Covid-19 shock made explicit the fragility of the tourist monoculture: when arrivals stop, livelihoods and basic urban operations become precarious. Policy proposals that tweak information or logistics (e.g., limited ticketing, moving cruise terminals, caps without structural changes) fail because they do not change the system’s configuration or goals. The systems perspective underscores leverage points: the city’s image/cultural assets and, more critically, the competition over allocation of urban assets between resident life and the tourism industry. Effective transformation requires redefining the city’s goal to prioritise residents’ safety and well-being, reconfiguring asset allocation back to resident needs and diverse local economies, and rebuilding capacities for livelihoods less dependent on external drivers. Without this, overtourism or its collapse will continue to “kill” the city as a living, populated place.

The paper introduces a systemic, stock–flow conceptual diagram for tourist cities and applies it to Venice, illuminating how tourism-driven feedbacks undermine sustainability, justice, and resilience. Main contributions: (1) a comprehensive systems-thinking framework that clarifies dynamics and leverage points, laying groundwork for future quantitative modelling; (2) demonstration that in a capitalist, extractivist configuration, the operational goal of tourist cities is profit for the few, with substantial monetary leakages and locally borne risks; (3) identification of two major leverage points—(a) the city’s image/cultural assets (subject to self-destroying feedbacks under touristification) and (b) the allocation of urban assets between residents and tourism (an often irreversible diversion); (4) evidence that tourist monocultures are weak, non-resilient socio-ecological systems, as revealed starkly by Covid-19; and (5) critique of prevailing policy proposals as inadequate without a goal and configuration reset. The authors advocate rethinking city goals toward residents’ well-being, restoring diversified local livelihoods and reducing dependence on external arrivals/capitals, guided by systems insights and potentially informed by future quantitative simulations.

• The study is a qualitative, conceptual systems-thinking analysis; it does not develop or validate a quantitative computational simulator of dynamics, which is proposed as future work.
• Empirical illustrations rely on official statistics and sustained monitoring of media, public debates, and stakeholder exchanges; the approach does not provide causal estimation or predictive modelling.
• The focus is on mass urban tourism in European contexts (especially Venice); nature-based or community-based tourism forms are explicitly out of scope.
• The diagram abstracts complex realities into limited state variables and feedbacks; while useful for identifying leverage points, it simplifies heterogeneity across destinations and sectors.