The need for regeneration of urban spaces, together with the need to touristically affirm Portuguese medium-sized cities, demonstrate a growing importance of urban tourism in Portugal. However, this form of tourism is predominant in two major Portuguese metropolises - Lisbon and Porto, due to the diversity of infrastructure, complexity of socio-cultural interactions and dynamics existent in these territories. These factors altogether contribute to a greater concentration of tourism enterprises in these two urban centres, if we are not counting the long acclaimed Algarve region. Therefore, within the WP5, Porto and Lisbon will be used as exemplary case studies, whereas Aveiro will serve as a pilot study.

 In order to achieve the general objective of raising awareness about how tourism will evolve in the future and how countries could benefit from this development, specific objectives of the WP5 consist in the following: - Characterisation of new tendencies and outlines of tourism supply and demand in urban areas in question; - Identification of the main policies and guidelines for managing tourism growth in urban areas; - Description of the impacts adjacent to the growing tourist demand in Portuguese urban centres; - Creation of an explanatory/predictive framework of new urban tourism dynamics and the corresponding territorial implications.

 In addition, the two central axes of WP5 are: (1) New dynamics of the tourism production chain, delimiting the field of the study to new (emerging) types of accommodation; and (2) sociocultural interactions influenced by the tourism activity and the impacts that these generate in urban environments.

(1) Within the tourism production chain, accommodation is one of the most relevant sub-sectors, as this is where the tourists concentrate an essential part of their travel expenses. Over the past years, this sector has undergone major changes due to new market dynamics (e.g. online sales platforms and sharing economy). In the context of urban tourism, accommodation can be considered an indicator of the interrelationships between the tourism activity and cities, since evolution of these establishments can be associated with the expansion of tourism in urban areas, also being intrinsically related to spatial changes, urban restructuring and the related socio-economic impacts (Timothy and Wall, 1995; Timothy and Teye, 2009; Rogerson, 2012, 2013).

(2) Gentrification is a phenomenon that increasingly affects local populaces and cultural heritage in urban areas and, together with tourism, influences the influx of innovative / creative projects that contribute to urban regeneration. However, it also contributes to the depopulation of historic centres and the de-characterization of heritage and genius loci (Atkinson and Bridge, 2005; Cócola-Gant, 2018; Mendes, 2017). Socio-cultural interactions are, hence, studied from the perspective of gentrification and the gentrification-related issues.

Coordinated by: Carlos Costa (GOVCOPP)