Jorge Dioni López, born in Benavente in 1974, gained recognition with his debut work La España de las Piscinas (Arpa, 2021), where he explored how urbanized lands are produced in Spain and the lifestyles they shape. In this second article, he returns to a critical examination of contemporary urbanism shaped by neoliberal thought, a system the author contends has turned cities into commodities accessible only to those who can pay for them.
The title draws on Sigmund Freud’s 1930 essay Unrest in Culture. In this piece, Freud argues that happiness is elusive for humans and that three traditional sources feed our misery: nature, human nature, and the limits of regulating family, state, and society. He questions why guardians of collective well-being often fail to protect all people when they should help them flourish.
López opens by asking why contemporary urbanites feel unhappy and offers an initial answer: people leave cities because they have been expelled from them. The roots of this exodus echo Freud’s concerns about institutions that do not guarantee protection and well‑being for everyone. Across the article, the author traces the causes and consequences of urban malaise, connecting economic forces, planning, and social and environmental factors that shape citizens’ experiences.
The breadth of the book, given its topics and the wealth of observations it contains, leads López to treat the work as a synthesis of his two central arguments: the neoliberal city and the tourist city, the latter being its most visible offshoot. The discussion begins with the neoliberal city.
1 The neoliberal city emerges from successive economic and political crises that have marked capitalism since the 1970s and is often seen as the outcome of the dissolution of the welfare state built after World War II, which supported a balance between liberal and social policies. The result has been a shift toward private property and free trade as the path to well‑being, with the idea that everything should be valued, monitored, and commercialized. The author contends that rulers in the neoliberal city view inequality not as a flaw but as a mechanism to spur creativity and risk-taking.
2 The neoliberal city distinguishes itself from the capitalist metropolis of the prior century by redefining the roles of markets, the State, and administration. While liberalism seeks to shrink state involvement, neoliberalism calls for their cooperation to shape property relations and to keep markets functioning. In this model, even basic urban services—from water to waste management—are created through processes of value, monetization, and privatization, and López explains how neoliberal ideas have penetrated economic, urban, social, and cultural life across various European and American cities.
3 The neoliberal urban space centers on movement and the capture of flows, including people and investments. The city becomes a producer of value rather than a source of wealth; production shifts to becoming production itself. The aim is not merely to manage growth but to stimulate it by linking local developments to global currents, with management focused on creating new markets, reducing risk, and safeguarding profits.
4 Urban deregulation stands as a hallmark of the neoliberal project, recalling past episodes of deregulation in regions like the Valencian Community during the property bubble. By contrasting publicly steered urbanism with deregulated approaches, the text shows how deregulation disrupts the harmony between urban areas and their broader regions. It highlights Thatcher’s reform era as a case study, including the dissolution of a major metropolitan planning body and the promotion of privatization in urban spaces such as London’s Docklands.
5 A particularly troubling claim in López’s article is the shift from a social conception of city life to one driven by exchange value. He argues that individuals are valued according to their market worth and that freedom is recast as private property. The piece draws a parallel with the film Billy Elliot, where financial pressures transform familial roles and opportunities.
Tourist city
The tourism industry epitomizes the neoliberal city by redirecting production toward rent extraction. López analyzes how tourism reshapes merged urban areas, noting that turning a location into a tourist center is one thing and fitting it into a living, historic urban fabric is another. Benidorm is cited as an early example of a city conceived around tourist demand. The article then considers questions about how tourism influences citizens, their relationship with local government, and the housing and employment implications of a tourism‑driven economy. It also asks how traveler preferences shape the city’s design and governance.
Key conclusions include: first, the primary objective of city councils in tourist towns tends to be drawing in visitors and tourism profits rather than improving residents’ welfare; second, the tourist city is not truly a place to live, but a space in constant motion for people and goods; third, movement is central to the tourist economy, with passers-by prized over permanent residents who can adapt their work; fourth, tourism often relegates residents to a secondary status as the industry itself grows in prominence; fifth, the traveler who spends a few hours in port or on a cruise attracts entertainment, dining, culture, and public space tailored to brief experiences; sixth, tourism markets authenticity by selling what the location lacks in tradition or locally produced goods; seventh, tourism commodifies landscapes, seas, streets, heritage, and memory, diminishing citizens’ ownership of their city; eighth, public space shifts from use value to exchange value, becoming a site of consumption; ninth, tourism does not bind regions or locations but can drain resident life as capital flows elsewhere; and tenth, tourism often widens social inequality, with wealth concentrated in tourist zones and lower-income areas facing greater risk of poverty and material deprivation.