‘It’s just a rich man’s playground now’: how St Ives became patient zero of British overtourism
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/aug/10/its-just-a-rich-mans-playground-now-how-st-ives-became-patient-zero-of-british-overtourism
Posted by citizenkeene
12 Comments
Greed and a broken housing system is killing everything that is good about British towns and cities. Eventually the whole thing will eat itself as the very thing that makes cities like London and towns like St Ives popular will be eroded until there is nothing interesting left to visit.
The solution is radical reform of our planning system to create new classes of dwellinghouse to include and assign categories for owner occupied, second homes, student house, holiday/airbnb letting, etc. This can and should be a flexible system, but it absolutely should be allocated on the basis of what the area needs to remain sustainable, healthy, and vibrant.
This needs to stop, before we have nothing left of any value.
Sad to see those incomers take over and the locals effectively turned out but at least the Guardian has the back of those whose lives have been affected by demographic and cultural change.
This article focuses a lot on the problems caused by tourists and second homes, but that is only one side of the problem.
> A hundred years ago there were 250 fishing boats here; now there are 20, and in summer they are outnumbered by tourist craft.
Other than the tourism industry, there isn’t really much else to support places like St. Ives. Clamping down on second homes and short term lets to reduce tourism will just kill the places like this faster unless it’s replaced with something that brings in in large numbers of decent jobs, that can attract young workers.
What I want to know the answer to is, how do the people employed in the service industry here, working in cafés and restaurants, afford to actually live in the area, when these jobs are often paying a minimum wage?
St Ives is one of the most boring places in Cornwall I don’t see why so many people visit it.
I’m grateful though as it means the really nice spots aren’t as busy as they could be during the season. .
The article would have benefitted from some input by second home owners or tourists. If there was any I didn’t read it. Their usual response is to say they and their guests spend money in the area which is very true and some profit from that, but ignore the 6 months of the year when few visit. This is difficult because refusing pp for second homes or discouraging them will have an impact when there is an insufficient local economy to make investment profitable without holiday maker’s money. Short of a serious social housing programme and subsidies for business it’s hard to see a solution.
Alternative title: Brits get a taste of what they have been causing in portugal, spain, greece and many more places
Some of this has to be to do with people taking multiple wives with too many cats
Folkestone – where I am is very similar – and I have mixed feelings about it.
On the one hand – there has been an lot of investment that has come in from outsiders or from the de Haan family – but that investment has been predominantly for the benefit of the tourists and DFLs.
They have started building a seaside development – where one bed flat start at £375k. Way out of the price range for first time buyers from down here.
have i gone through a time warp or is this article from 1986?
I absolutely loved visiting St Ives. The natural geography is amazing… up to 6 or 7 beaches within walking distance, the clear water, the woodlands on the bays. But it was a serious shame walking in the otherwise pleasant town centre, and seeing every other home was a holiday cottage. I went down this cute alleyway and it was all just holiday homes.
Always amuses me to see the Guardian highlight a problem that they themselves contribute to.
They regularly publish articles encouraging and idealising 2nd home ownership in rural, Welsh and Scottish settings. Such as their “why don’t you move to….” or “escape to Britain’s wilderness” or “grow your property portfolio” series: Property porn for the middle classes whose greed leaves those on lower incomes struggling to even find/afford one roof over their heads.