City Spaces - Tourist Places

Bruce Hayllar, Tony Griffin, Deborah Edwards

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781136417115
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Over the last decade, commentaries and research on urban tourism precincts have predominantly focused on: their role in the tourism attractions mix; their physical and functional forms; their economic significance; their role as a catalyst for urban renewal; their evolution and associated development processes; and, perhaps more broadly, their role, locality and function within the context of urban planning. City Spaces – Tourist Places both consolidates and develops the extant knowledge of urban tourism precincts into a coherent research driven contemporary work. It revisits and examines the foundational literature but, more importantly, engages with aspects of precinct development that have previously been either underdeveloped or received only limited consideration, such as the psychological and socio-cultural dimensions of the precinct experience. Written by an international team of contributors it provides the reader with: * A comprehensive analysis of foundational theory and cutting-edge advances in the knowledge of the precinct phenomenon
* An examination of previously underdeveloped topics and themes based on contemporary and ground-breaking research
* Typological and theoretical frameworks in which to locate precinct form, function and experienceBrilliantly edited to ensure theoretical continuity and coherence City Spaces – Tourist Places is vital reading for anyone involved in the study or planning of urban tourism precincts.

IIKey Themes and Issues

5Urban Tourism Precincts: An Overview of Key Themes and Issues

Deborah Edwards, Tony Griffin and Bruce Hayllar

DOI: 10.4324/9780080878270-7

Introduction

The previous section illustrated that precincts are multifaceted environments that under analysis draw on a number of dimensions – geographic, political, economic, behavioural and sociocultural. Understanding how these issues manifest themselves in the urban environment, and influence consumption, experience, behaviour and design is critical. As the previous chapters highlighted, the issues are complex and cannot be seen as operating in isolation from one another. They are inextricably linked together by elements such as context, visitation, representations, social relationships, spatial development, flows of information, property markets, financial transactions, different levels of governance and specific local issues. Making sense of the urban environment and the way in which tourism takes place in it requires a framework which can help to organize thinking and facilitate a greater understanding of urban precincts. A framework that meets these aims can be useful for researchers, educators, policymakers and potential sponsors of any future research.

The purpose of this chapter is to outline a framework that provides the focus for the following chapters in this section. It is possible to study individual elements of urban tourism precincts and their specific consequences but as the chapters in Section I have identified, each element is in effect part of a dynamic urban tourism system.

Figure 5.1 is adapted from Edwards et al. (2007: 22). This conceptual framework presents key issues that could, or should, be addressed in an analysis of urban precincts. The framework comprises seven broad areas: the urban destination context; structure and form of the precinct; relationships within the city; the tourists’ precinct experience and behaviour; environmental, sociocultural and economic impacts; conflicts and politics; and best practice. Each box encapsulates a key set of precinct related issues and the arrows indicate the multidirectional relationships that exist between them. An explanation of each element is developed further below.

Figure 5.1 Urban tourism precincts: a conceptual framework

Conceptual Framework

Urban Destination Context

The key set of issues within the framework is embedded in the context of the city destination itself. In any tourism destination, the physical, social and environmental ‘setting’ establishes the context for experience and the experience itself is part of that context. That is, our experience both shapes and is shaped by the setting/context. Stevenson (2003) captures the fluid nature of the setting when she notes that signs, images, surfaces, movement and temporary moments are the milieu that underpins a visitor's experience in which the possibilities of change and renewal are endless and open.

A city observed at different times can be busy, quiet, festive, sombre, serious or fun. The intrinsic activity of the city will influence the consumption of the urban precinct. The issues surrounding the urban destination context are explored by Kelly in Chapter 6 who states that ‘no matter what happens, it must happen somewhere’. Kelly discusses the characteristics of urban tourism precincts that make precincts distinctive within cities.

Structure and Form of Precincts

Overlayed onto the context of the city is the structure and form of the precinct. While some precincts are clearly demarcated by development or specific cultural signs, many ‘cities divide into geographically discrete precincts which rarely conform to imposed administrative or political boundaries’ (Stevenson, 2003: 73). Since urban spaces are places in which people like to walk around with or without intent, it is the physical form, as defined by such things as individual buildings, facades and architecture, which defines the precinct with recognizable markers that help visitors to locate their experience. Layered over the physical structure, a precinct performs clear functions that service the physical and personal needs of visitors.

Increasingly precincts are being structured as centres of recreation and tourism, as places of consumption and economic competition to stimulate visitation and improve economic conditions. Most precincts aspire to be recognized as a place ‘to go’. Regeneration strategies are formulated in order for leisure, enjoyment, spectacle and pleasure to be produced, packaged, marketed and consumed (Stevenson, 2003). The motivations for embarking on urban regeneration are varied. They may form part of a government's agenda for economic or cultural redevelopment; as a means of attracting investment and tourism; or regeneration projects may be a way of initiating wider environmental improvements and infrastructure developments (Smith, 2006). A key aspect of these motivations is the belief that regeneration will have a cumulative effect, acting as a catalyst for further business activity and development of other initiatives that will reinvigorate otherwise vacant urban spaces.

Ideally the features described above should come together in a way that marks each precinct as unique. However, more frequently it is noted that precincts are being replicated with a resultant ‘evolutionary sameness’ where it is increasingly difficult in the eyes of the visitor to differentiate one urban space from another. It is argued that cities like Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and others compete to construct monumental edifices in the form of international hotels, shopping malls and entertainment complexes that are provoking debates about the problems of homogenization and the serial reproduction of culture in different destinations (Relph, 1976; Augé, 1995; United Nations Human Settlements Programme Staff (CB), 2004; Richards & Wilson, 2006; Smith, 2006; Piggin, 2007). Ironically, as Richards and Wilson (2006: 1210) have observed, ‘even the strategies adopted by cities to avoid such serial reproduction and create a “distinctive” image are also converging’. Krolikowski and Brown tackle these issues in Chapter 7 with a discussion of the functional and spatial characteristics of precincts in reference to contrasts between precincts that exhibit mixed-use developments and those that reflect specialist themes and the clustering of attractions. Here, they argue that there is a relationship between form and structure of tourism precincts where different environments encourage different forms of behaviour and where ‘spatial properties of tourism precincts constitute a stage which affords particular touristic performances’.

Urban Precinct Experience and Behaviour

Experience and behaviour incorporate a key set of issues required for developing a better understanding of the urban visitor. This set of issues is central to understanding the ensuing impacts that occur in an urban precinct and how the key elements of the industry can serve the visitors’ needs and meet their expectations. Experience and behaviour are inextricably linked to structure and form.

Urban precincts are multifaceted spaces. The concept of urban is both virtual and real in that it encompasses places and spaces where people, as they move around, find themselves outside and inside structures. Yet, this movement creates a complex relationship between experiences, activities and interpretation. According to Raban (1974) there is no reality outside of the personal experience and the personal experiences people seek to gain are their own. Raban's analysis reminds us that urban space is always personalized and imbued with emotional meanings which according to Holmes (2001: 15) ‘are produced in time on a moment by moment basis’. Balshaw and Kennedy (2000: 3) acknowledge this personalization arguing that interpretation of urban space always comes, ‘almost as an afterthought to the production of social space; “reading” follows production in all cases except those in which space is produced especially in order to be read’. Selby, Hayllar and Griffin expand the personalization of space. In Chapter 9 they discuss the textual community, suggesting that visitors have varying experiences dependent on the way in which their encounters and reflections reconfigure the landscape and whether those experiences occur as an individual or as a social group.

In developing the urban tourism precinct, how do we engage local communities who are often packaged as passive assets to be consumed by the tourist? According to Maitland (Chapter 11) this can be achieved by providing the amenities that matter to local residents as they argue that tourists have a desire to share a similar set of consumption opportunities. This ‘developmental dualism’ ensures that the local community is socially included and their needs are not lost within the emerging tourism economy. At the same time the lived experience of the tourist is enhanced (perhaps just as they expected it to be) through the sharing of urban space with the local residents.

Relationships Within the City

Experience and behavioural issues are linked to the economic and spatial considerations of industry through product delivery and the economic benefits realized from visitors. In Chapter 6, Kelly argues that precincts can be examined as industrial complexes with the components of the complex being the tourists, the hotels, market places, shops and museums. In this chapter he highlights the spatial relationships that occur between the components and the external environment.

More contemporary considerations of precincts as places for visitors, rather than static spaces, have lead to the reconfiguration of spatial structures more centred around information, leisure, recreation and tourism (Thorns, 2002). It is the rise of the experience economy that is changing the shape of the urban landscape to one that emphasizes playfulness, accessibility, interaction and entertainment. These changes are evidenced by the staging of festivals and activities in open spaces, café culture that has spread onto the street, artwork that fills the gaps in the built environment and museums that have become hands on rather than hands off.

Tourism then has an influencing role in shaping the spatial characteristics of cities: it has driven precinct development towards the needs of tourists. Consequently, in examining the economic contribution of precincts Ritchie states that ‘it becomes difficult to separate the tourism component (or even specific entertainment or cultural tourism components) from the local component, because of this multi-use aspect of the Tourism Business District or precinct’ (Chapter 8).

However, the problem of replication is ever present. The increasing use of distinctive architectural features and public art across the urban landscape has been so successful that it has led to replication of the strategy itself. As Richards and Wilson (2006: 1210) observe, ‘there is now a waiting list of 60 cities for a Guggenheim “kit” so perhaps “McGuggenheim” is now a more appropriat...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• List of Contributors
• Section I Foundations
• Section II Key Themes and Issues
• Section III Precincts in Practice
• Section IV Lessons for Theory and Practice
• Index