Jenny HALL, York St John University, United Kingdom
Brendan PADDISON, York St John University, United Kingdom
The mantra of twenty-first-century global capitalism is ‘consume, be silent and die’ (White, 2019, 290). In tourist historic cities, the promise of sustainability and social transformation are empty as policymakers have concentrated on sustaining tourism over supporting greater social, economic and environmental sustainability. Despite the prevalence of scholarship exploring the impacts of overtourism in historic cities, there is a paucity exploring the harms tourism policymaking and governance processes produce. This paper explores the spatial in(justice) public policymaking has on the ecology of the historic city and the inequalities experienced by its inhabitants. Taking an interpretive case-study approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with leading policymakers and destination stakeholders to identify how spatial (in)justice manifests through governance and policy processes during a period of crisis. Drawing on Lefebvre’s The Right to the City (1968), we explore how lessons learned during COVID-19, which saw the voluntary mobilisation of its citizens to restore the city’s social life, could transform tourism futures in historic urban spaces. Lefebvre’s notions of participation call communities to become “interested parties” and politically mobilised citizens who actively inhabit and appropriate space during everyday life – in this case in tourist historic cities (after Purcell, 2014, 148). The hopeful signs emerging from York’s response to the pandemic shows how communities and destinations in historic urban centres can build resilience. As such, we aim to demonstrate the implications this has for future policymaking in historic cities and ultimately their ecological health.
Mots clés : Historic-Cities|Resilience|Policy|Spatial-Justice|Stakeholders
A105402JH