Tourism, Cultural Heritage and Urban Regeneration

Urban regeneration is often regarded as the process of renewal or redevelopment of spaces and places. Investments in tourism, especially in post-industrial cities/wider regions, are part of nascent regeneration strategies linked to transitioning economic bases. But there is a need to look at tourism and urban regeneration with a particular focus on cultural heritage. Cultural heritage consists of tangible heritage (such as historic buildings) and intangible heritage (such as events). The wider need and impact for such work is because places (destinations) change (regenerate) to keep up with the shifts in demand so to maintain a competitive advantage in an increasingly expanding global economy. Moreover, places need to keep up with the pace of global change or they risk stagnation and decline, especially since increased competition is resulting in increased opportunities and choice for consumers. This book will critically frame these mutually interrelated areas by incorporating interdisciplinary perspectives across a range of international cases to assess and address contemporary approaches by considering the influence of cultural heritage on urban regeneration to create or recreate tourism. The chapters in this book include cases from: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, China, Estonia, India, Japan, Scotland and the United States of America, with one chapter discussing a number of countries in the Southern African Development Community region. The chapters build on a range of theoretical perspectives of space and place to critically evaluate the practice, impacts, legacies and management of tourism within specific contexts pertinent to cultural heritage and urban regeneration.

When walking into downtown Clarksdale in the Mississippi Delta, you’re walking into the birthplace of Blues music. This is the fabled ‘crossroads’ of Highways 49 and 61 and the place renowned for Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Ike Turner, Sam Cooke, and many others associated with Blues music and the Delta. The downtown has Blues 7-nights a week, year-round. It has the Delta Blues Museum, juke joints, festivals and other events, art galleries and specialty retail, cafes and restaurants, and unique places of visitor accommodation. Southern hospitality abounds. But just a few short years ago, this focus on cultural tourism and the deep Delta heritage in Clarksdale was struggling at best. Declining population and jobs due to the mechanisation of agriculture, the loss of manufacturing industry, the loss of downtown trade to commercial enterprises located out on State Highway, high levels of social and economic malaise, and many other factors contributed to a decline in the role and function of downtown. Indeed, many downtown buildings were physically derelict and uninhabitable. Today, downtown Clarksdale is now on the road to revitalisation. This chapter highlights the significant role of creative individuals in building on cultural heritage and tourism, bringing new investments in business and in building rehabilitation, and also bringing new jobs, more tourists, and a new ‘sense of place’ to this small Delta town.

Beer has become a driver of urban regeneration worldwide. In particular, breweries have become symbolic when physically transforming former industrial areas. Beer festivals, visitor centres created by major breweries and the popularity of the craft breweries and brewpubs each contribute to the growth of beer tourism. Meanwhile, adaptive reuse of former industrial breweries brings new life to former industrial spaces. This chapter focuses on the ways in which Tsingtao beer influences regeneration of Qingdao, China and this work frames these developments in the broader perspective of beer-led urban regeneration.

Football is an essential component of Brazilian culture and identity. Stadiums in Brazil are iconic structures and comparable to religious institutions because football is often regarded as a religion in Brazil. It is also fitting that one of the most significant museums in São Paulo is the Estádio Municipal Paulo Machado de Carvalho, also known as Estádio do Pacaembu (Pacaembu Stadium) which opened in 1940 and is located in the city’s Pacaembu neighbourhood. While still in use for sporting competition, it used to be the home grounds for the football club Corinthians before they moved to the new Arena Corinthians across the city after the 2014 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup. Perhaps the most significant transformation of this stadium came in 2008 when the Museu do Futebol was created to commemorate the history of the stadium in the city and to tell the story of Brazilian football, after an extensive renovation in 2007. This transformation meant that the use of the stadium and its impact extends beyond match days and is the formation of an extended sports tourism site in the city. Such regeneration is unique to this venue as a way of framing the stadium as a national historical marker. This chapter will address and assess both tangible and intangible changes that aim to preserve and sanctify this venue as a space and place of Brazilian sporting heritage, culture and identity.

The historic centre of Tallinn, Estonia with its medieval old town heritage has become an internationally recognised tourism destination. It has undergone major regeneration in the course of ownership reform which made business investment possible. This transformation of the city has revived relatively deprived quarters of Tallinn’s medieval Old Town after Estonia regained its independence in 1991. Alongside the first wave of gentrification in Tallinn, private and public investments influenced the refurbishment and restoration of historic buildings. This has enhanced these buildings for residential and various socioeconomic and cultural practices, especially tourism. However, with increased popularity, mass tourism, fast commercialisation and scarce public restoration funding are endangering the socio-spatial qualities of this unique medieval heritage space. Gradual regeneration of adjacent more recent historical areas and a modern city centre, conducted in the frame of expansive urban developments in Tallinn, is linked to the city’s rapid growth and inward investments. The plan albeit is to work towards solutions that integrate Tallinn’s Old Town into neighbouring urban areas to diversify urban attractions.

This contribution focuses on the role of heritage tourism as an economic (re)development tool by examining the development of the Sweet Auburn a Historic District located west of downtown in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1976, the site received the National Historic Landmark designation. In 1992, the National Trust for Historic Preservation identified the area as one of the most threatened historic places in the United States. The significance of Sweet Auburn derives from its position as a center of heritage for the city’s African American population as well as its contributions to the civil rights movement. The Big Bethel A.M.E. Church, the Wheat Street Baptist Church, Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, and the Ebenezer Baptist Church are all located within its boundaries. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist Church and his nearby boyhood home is part of the Martin Luther King, Jr National Historic Park (designated in 2018). Many African American businesses and organizations were established along Auburn Avenue in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including the first African American owned daily newspaper, the Atlanta Daily World (founded in 1928). The construction of the massive Downtown Connector (Interstate I-75/85) through Atlanta’s urban core in the 1950s and early part of the 1960s divided the Sweet Auburn District. Disinvestment and urban decline followed, further accelerating social problems including population loss, housing decay, crime, and unemployment. The Historic District Development Corporation, an organization founded in 1980, has focused on revitalizing and preserving the area. Since then, the promotion of the historic designation, tourist attractions, and commercial opportunities, helped create a vibrant locale with eateries, bars, outdoor and indoor markets, museums, exhibits, and festivals. The recent addition of a stop by the Atlanta Streetcar has substantially increased the number of visitors, making this one of the most sought-after neighborhoods of the city.

The focus of this chapter is to highlight the potential of festivals to deterritorialise and reterritorialise urban spaces. Deterritorialisation is able to expose urban spaces, albeit temporally and provisionally, to new re-organisation; it is conceptually understood by the theorists Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari as a movement producing change, which is immanent to space itself. The study context of this chapter is the Beltane Fire Festival in Edinburgh. It has been associated to the category of neo-pagan festivals, celebrated as revival of ancient Celtic rituals. Beltane is celebrated in Calton Hill, a contested place that is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Old and New Towns of Edinburgh site, situated at the fringe of Edinburgh city centre. Although Edinburgh’s Beltane Fire Festival has been criticised for its ‘playful deviance’, these and other festivals that draw on Scotland’s cultural heritage are increasingly appraised as powerful visitor attraction assets and therefore included within the destination’s event portfolio strategies.

Kumbh Mela (the festival of the sacred Pitcher) is the largest peaceful congregation of pilgrims, held in India. During this festival, participants bathe in a sacred river (UNESCO 2017). This study explores how Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be used to focus on sites of urban regeneration for conserving cultural heritage tourism related to Kumbh Mela. This chapter focuses on the city of Ujjain (in the state of Madhya Pradesh), one of the four Indian cities that host the festival. Ujjain is considered one of the world’s oldest religious cities, with over 5000 years of history. During the last Kumbh Mela in 2016, Ujjain City registered 80 million tourist visits. This paper discusses two approaches through which Ujjain City can enhance the Kumbh experience of pilgrims while they visit and stay in the city. The first approach talks about enhancing the universal accessibility of bathing in ghat areas using GIS. Ghat areas, situated along the sacred Kshipra River, are the most important as these places experience the maximum footfall during the Kumbh Mela event. The second approach discusses how geospatial approaches can be utilized to provide safety to pilgrims, which must be considered in future development planning, as the event is prone to stampedes given the number of visitors. Approaches thus proposed in this study may be adopted by other host cities of Kumbh Mela which will ultimately help conserve heritage aspects of the event.

Tokyo has been Japan’s capital since the beginning of the Meiji period (1868). Since then, the first incident to completely change Tokyo’s cityscape was the Great Kanto earthquake in 1923. Soon after recovering from the 1923 earthquake, Tokyo was destroyed again by WWII. Tokyo 1964 Olympics was a great opportunity to showcase its recovery from the war and the nation’s ability to present a developed country to the international audience. Many imperial and military properties were converted to sports facilities and hotels in preparation for the 1964 Games. Japan’s economy reached its peak in the late 1980s, but has suffered from deflation after that. The Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics are expected to improve this situation. The ongoing regeneration includes construction of a new main stadium, redevelopment of urban districts and verticalisation of buildings. Along with recent inbound tourism boom and diverse cultural heritage of the city, current urban regeneration linked to Tokyo 2020 is expected to revitalise Tokyo and Japan as a whole.

Stari Most (‘Old Bridge’) is one of Mostar’s most iconic structures and highly regarded as the symbol of the city. Stari Most was destroyed during the Balkans War in 1993, where it collapsed in the Neretva River below. It must be noted that for Mostar to attract visitors, Stari Most was reconstructed (completed in 2004). While this bridge symbolises the city’s heritage, memories of its destruction during war remind visitors not to forget the tragic events of the early-1990s. Insight from the geography literature helps us explore conceptual meanings of cultural heritage landscapes, geographical imaginations and memory—to help critically understand crucial turning point in Mostar’s recent history. The chapter frames what Mostar and Stari Most endured during the brunt of war (where its unique heritage met a tragic fate, at least temporarily) to the (re)building of Stari Most and its defining presence as the city’s key attraction once again.

Between 1975 and 1979 upwards of two million men, women, and children died in the Cambodia genocide. Decades after the cessation of direct violence, the question of reconciliation in Cambodia remains fraught, in part because of competing claims over the meaning of reconciliation; and also because of the ‘authorship’ of Cambodia’s past. Coincident with the contestation over the meaning and memory, there has been an effort to promote the genocide as an investment strategy, that is, to cultivate the growing number of ‘dark tourists’ wanting to visit sites associated with the genocide. Simply put, to not forget, in this context, is to profit. In this chapter, I consider both the positive and negative aspects of the marketing and memorialization of the Cambodian genocide from the standpoint of urban regeneration. The genocide was largely rural in practice, as urban areas were depopulated, with men, women, and children forced onto agricultural cooperatives. Sites of remembrance, however, are largely urban-based. The promotion of dark tourism in Cambodia, ironically, potentially facilitates urban regeneration to the neglect of rural areas. This has profound implications, both for the authorship and interpretation of the genocide and for the survivors.

The historical background of Southern Africa and the failure by contemporary heritage managers to develop a locally relevant practice for cultural heritage has been identified as one of the limitations to promote inclusive tourism across the region. Tourism is one of the leading economic activities globally, however, regional or local challenges such as cross boarder issues affects tourism development and beneficiation. Therefore, effective motivational regional tourism strategy is essential to obtain maximum benefits from the sector. Framed within the concept of Maslow’ Hierarchy, motivational theory, this chapter argues that to develop a locally relevant practice in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, tourism, as one of the key pillars of economic growth, can contribute to urban regeneration and gentrification. Evidence from cultural heritage sites in the SADC region, including cultural villages, that promote urban regeneration will be presented and discussed.

This concluding chapter considers some research directions and expanding perspectives for researchers who are looking to align research in the areas of tourism, cultural heritage and urban regeneration. Each of the themes outlined in this chapter is closely associated with multiple aspects of tourism, cultural heritage and urban regeneration such as spaces and places for the supply and demand sides of tourism, tangible and intangible cultural heritage, and the past, current and future of historical spaces and urban regenerations. Ten key themes emerged from this book and we encourage authors writing across these areas to consider these as points of reflection to take new ideas forward given the holistic research avenues in tourism, cultural heritage studies and urban studies, independently or inter-dependently.