Tourism marketing and urban politics: cultural planning in a European capital

ABSTRACT

The cultural heritage of capital cities is a local capital in the global competition for tourism income as well as a public good of urban societies and a symbol of national identities. When developing cultural heritage as an asset for tourism, city marketing turns these complex urban meanings into rather simplistic commercial images. Such symbolic manipulations of culture intervene in deeply affective, institutionalised structures and thus risk political conflict and public contention. The strongly controversial planning for the cultural flagship district of the Museumsquartier Vienna highlighted cultural diversity as an urban characteristic that remains often underweighted in urban political economy's focus on corporate dominance or local community. Enquiring into the discursive–institutional interactions which turned the political economic repositioning of urban culture into a plural political process, what lessons can we draw for tourism planning? As democratic societies meet diverse contemporary challenges in addition to tourism, managing the cultural heritage of cities is indeed a highly sensitive and controversial political task. But what initially appeared a planning failure and even deadlock of democratic government has since emerged as an urban space that is rather well accepted by local and international visitors. In the context of Vienna's international opening as a European capital, the controversial political emergence has contributed to constructing this cultural district as new interpretation of the historic city. Despite many shortcomings, unsolved conflicts and exclusionary decisions, the new landmark offers a specific combination of external images with internal visions, old paths with contemporary needs. Thus, instead of a rigid top-down plan, tourism planning needs to continuously consider diverse social, economic and political claims in an inclusive, differentiated and open-ended approach to urban development.

摘要

首都城市的文化遗产在全球竞争旅游收入的背景下既是当地的资本, 又是都市社会的公共产品和国家认同的符号。当城市营销部门把文化遗产开发成旅游资产的时, 他们把复杂的城市意义转化为相当简单的商业形象符号。这种对文化符号化的操控干预了极富情感色彩的、习以为常的符号体系, 并且因此而冒政治冲突和公众争论之大不韪。这种对维也纳博物馆旗舰文化街区极富争议的规划强调把多元性作为城市文化的一大特色, 而这种都市文化街区的多元性在强调企业主导还是本地社区主导的城市政治经济体制中经常被低估。探究都市文化遗产这种看似离题的、习以为常的面向, 从政治经济学方面把文化重新定位为一个多重的政治过程, 我们从这种旅游规划中得到哪些启发呢༟随着民主社会满足当前除发展旅游之外的各种挑战, 城市文化遗产的管理的确是一个高度敏感、富有争议的政治工作。但是城市文化遗产从最初表现为规划失败甚至是民主社会政府管理的僵局发展为广受中外游客接受的城市空间。在维也纳作为欧洲都市国际窗口的背景下, 这种对城市文化遗产的举措有助于把这种文化街区构建为一种对历史城市的全新解读。这种新的地标尽管有诸多不足、未解的冲突甚至排他性的决策, 但是它提供了一种外部形象与内部图像、旧的方法与当前需要特殊的组合。因此, 这种旅游规划不应是僵化的、自上而下的规划, 而应该在包容性、无差异与开放的城市发展方向中持续地考虑社会、经济与政治的多元要求。

KEYWORDS:

• Tourism
• culture
• planning
• flagship
• urban politics
• capital city
• Vienna
• Museumsquartier

关键词:

• 旅游
• 文化
• 规划
• 旗舰
• 城市政治
• 资本城市
• 维也纳
• 博物馆街区

Acknowledgements

This article goes back to Noam Shoval's initiative who kindly invited my keynote speech to the conference on ‘Urban Planning and Tourism Consumption’ of the European Forum at Hebrew University Jerusalem in November 2016. In addition to the discussions at the conference, I am grateful to Noam for offering his valuable advice on a first draft for this journal and to three anonymous referees for their useful comments. Introducing a slightly different perspective, this is also an updated review of my PhD case study and first book, Therefore, I would also like to thank again my supervisors, mentors and colleagues at EUI, LSE, University of Chicago, University of Vienna and other institutions (particularly Michael Keating, Ian Gordon, Terry Clark, Sieglinde Rosenberger, Alan Scott and many others) who have supported me or with whom I have discussed my work since.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by a grant from the Austrian Zukunftsfonds (P16-2489) and drew on earlier research conducted by the author for her PhD at the European University Institute Florence (1999–2004).

Notes on contributors

Monika De Frantz

Monika De Frantz, PhD from the European University Institute EUI Florence, has held academic positions at the University of Chicago, University of New Orleans, London School of Economics, Universities of Vienna and Innsbruck, Bauhaus-University Weimar and the EUI Florence. Following her book ‘Capital City Cultures’ (2011) on Vienna and Berlin, she is completing her second monograph on political theories of urban globalisation and leading a research grant on the democratic governance of urban diversity.