Bas Spierings

Bas is Associate Professor in Urban Geography at the Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning at Utrecht University.

His research focuses on the nexus between urban consumption, retailing and public space – with specific interests in city centre competition, retail development, touristification and commercial gentrification, urban tourism, (cross-border) leisure shopping, walking mobilities, and encounters with difference. He analyses how urban competition for mobile consumers and consumption capital increasingly commercialises public space, and what that implies for practices and experiences of various social groups – i.e. for processes of social interaction, differentiation, and inclusion and exclusion in particular. 

Combining qualitative and quantitative methods – with specific interests in qualitative participatory and visual methods, including go-alongs, mental mapping and photovoice – his research develops around the following interrelated themes.

Urban tourism and commercial gentrification

Consumption spaces and everyday mobilities

Differentiation processes and public space