Airbnb and the reshaping of urban space: analyzing touristification in Seville

The article examines the effects of touristification on the social and functional reconfiguration of urban space driven by the expansion of tourist accommodation platforms in Seville, a representative case of global urban dynamics. This case offers a lens to understand how the expansion of short-term rentals reshapes the spatial logic of urban tourism cities, where residential and touristic functions increasingly overlap. Using a mixed methodology that integrates geospatial analysis through geographically weighted regression (GWR) with socioeconomic and urban indicators, the study compares changes across census sections between June 2024 and March 2025. Unlike previous research focused on descriptive or qualitative analyses, this study develops a spatially explicit and temporally comparative model using geographically weighted regression to quantify the evolution of touristification. Results reveal an intensification of tourism, with high accommodation density in the historic centre and Triana, and a gradual spread towards residential peripheries, signalling a shift from a centralised to a more diffuse tourism model. Regression outcomes demonstrate significant links between accommodation density and factors such as education, housing size, and service availability. The research highlights touristification as a measurable, multiscale process and advocates the use of open data to guide public policies regulating tourist housing and mitigating its social impacts. The study contributes to the field of urban tourism by offering empirical evidence of how digital accommodation platforms influence the spatial structure of tourism cities and the daily life of their residents.