Second homes have a long tradition as a supplementary form of accommodation used for tourism and leisure purposes in rural areas. Over the last two decades, they have become increasingly prevalent in urban areas. This shift has promoted a range of transitions in the social and governance structures pertaining to second-home tourism and in turn, has triggered a myriad of challenges associated with urban development and planning. The long-standing central debate around second-home tourism in rural areas is underpinned by sustainability concerns due to their impact on local communities and in particular, impacts pertaining to inequalities between second-home tourists and rural residents (i.e., socioeconomic status, social capital). The complexity of urban social spaces exacerbates this controversy in the urban context (i.e., cultural differences, wealth disparity, etc.). Yet, existing studies focusing on urban second-home tourism have to date, only adopted either a management or a marketing lens which arguably, does not provide a comprehensive understanding of the sociospatial impacts brought about by urban second-home development. Therefore, this research critically analyses and evaluates the extent to which second-home tourism facilitates sociospatial impacts on local residents in urban areas. To achieve this aim, the research is guided by two Research Objectives:

Research Objective 1: To better understand the socio-spatial development of urban second-home tourism.

Research Objective 2: To identify and measure the impacts of second-home tourism on the residential satisfaction of urban locals.

This thesis is scaffolded by a post-structuralist approach. It is underpinned by enclave theory from urban geography literature and employs a mixed methods approach to data collection and analysis. Semi-structured interviews with 34 second-home industry stakeholders were conducted to better understand the socio-spatial impacts of residential segregation brought about by second-home tourism in urban areas. With the thematic coding using MAXQDA software, 15 themes were identified and coded. These results were then employed to underpin the latter phase of the study by identifying the four dimensions of segregation and providing empirical evidence for the measurement of residential segregation. Subsequently, to address Research Objective 2 of the thesis, quantitative data were collected from 626 valid surveys for the testing of a Residential Satisfaction Model using SPSS and Amos v28 statistical software packages. [...]