Reimagining Urban Tourism - with Donagh Horgan

Hi and welcome back to the first episode of season 3 of the Cities Reimagined Podcast.

To kick things off, I’m joined by Donagh Horgan — a social designer, researcher, and all-round urban thinker who’s doing some pretty exciting work at the intersection of placemaking and tourism. Donagh is based between Ireland and the Netherlands, where he leads the Urban Leisure & Tourism Lab at Inholland University. He’s also a lecturer at Erasmus University Rotterdam and works with cities around the world to make them more inclusive, creative, and resilient.

In this episode, we dive into the changing role of tourism in our cities. Urban tourism exploded after the 2008 financial crisis — bringing in money, but also creating real tensions: rising rents, disappearing housing, and a sense of alienation for many local communities. Together with Donagh, we explore how regenerative tourism might offer a way forward — one that puts local people, stories, and places at the centre. We talk about reimagining tourism as something that can give back rather than just take, and how we might start thinking about cities as ecosystems again, rather than playgrounds for capital.

Donagh popped by my apartment while in Vienna and we had a great conversation — I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed recording it.