Search results

In contemporary cities, private actors, such as luxury fashion houses, increasingly participate in projects, affirming themselves as relevant players in urban transformation. Based on the case of “SouPra” district (Milan, Italy), this chapter focuses on the effects of the opening of a fashionable artistic venue on the tourism development. It explores the promotional actions implemented by tourism entrepreneurs after the opening of the Prada Foundation. The analysis leads to two main results: actors in tourism exploit the urban brand conveyed by Prada, which becomes an integral part of the city branding. Fashion houses also act as marketing devices, producing new urban narratives that influence both the tourist and the real estate market.

The purpose of this paper is to understand urban sculpture venues that emerged in the recent decade and their connections to the on-going entrepreneurial urban policies and urban strategies in Shanghai. How does this phenomenon relate to Shanghai’s urban policies? How does urban sculpture development reflect the nature and characteristics of the urban sculpture authority?

Case study is the major research method used to achieve an in-depth understanding of the developmental processes, mechanisms and characteristics of urban sculpture projects. Three cases were selected and studied using purposeful sampling methods, including Duolun Road Sculpture Project (2002), the Shanghai International Sculpture Center (2006) and the Jing’an Sculpture Park (2009).

A twofold main argument is established in this paper. Urban sculpture venues emerged as a new type of instrument to advance urban entrepreneurial policies; the use of this instrument, however, also involves politics in that art politically transforms the features and functions of open spaces in Shanghai.

Although scholarly interest in exploring cultural development through urban planning in the Chinese context is evident, urban sculpture planning (termed as “urban sculpture” in the Chinese ideological context) in Chinese metropolitan cities, in particular, is an unexplored topic, and thus leaves a gap in the knowledge. This paper introduces a new conceptual model, i.e., “aesthetic regime,” to describe the role of the urban sculpture authority in the development of the urban sculpture scene. It looks at the artistic representation of artworks, design of the sculpture venues, functionality of the artworks and social mechanisms for the actualization of these projects. An evolutional trend of the three sites across the decade is concerned.

The purpose of this paper is to explore cultural tourism investment and resident quality of life in the Midwestern city of Indianapolis, Indiana. It is important to understand from a cultural tourism perspective how further attempts to grow and invest in tourism will affect resident perception of quality of life and future cultural tourism investment.

To achieve this goal, data from the 2012 Indianapolis Quality of Life survey was statistically analyzed to specifically examine how residents’ perceived quality of life affects cultural tourism investment. This allows for the study of what city-service attributes (i.e. safety, attractions, transportation, etc.) identify as potential indicators of whether residents’ perception of quality of life affects cultural tourism investment and if there were any correlations between demographic factors of age, gender, ethnicity, and household income with the perception that investing in cultural events and attractions for tourists is good for residents.

Results indicated that several key city-service attributes identify as potential indicators of whether residents’ perception of quality of life in Indianapolis affects residents’ perceptions that investing in cultural tourism for tourists is good for residents. Furthermore, excluding perceptions of cultural tourism investment, several key city-service attributes identified as potential indicators of residents’ perception of quality of life in Indianapolis. Finally, results indicated that demographic factors of gender, age, ethnicity, and income were not significant when it came to affecting the perception that investing in cultural events and attractions for tourists is good for residents.

The findings of this study have unique academic and applied implications in the continued study of tourism in Indianapolis, Indiana. This study provided research related to the study of quality of life in Indianapolis and reported statistics for the 2012 Indianapolis Quality of Life survey. The data and statistical analysis reported in this study will serve as valuable information for future endeavors concerning cultural tourism and quality of life in Indianapolis. The identification of city-service attributes that significantly impact resident perception of quality of life and city-service attributes that, in conjunction with resident perception of quality of life, affect how residents perceive cultural tourism investments is important information that can be utilized by future researchers, tourism planners, and policymakers in Indianapolis. The analysis revealed what city-service attributes are important to residents of Indianapolis and demographic factors that affect resident perception of quality of life. The continued examination of these city-service attributes may help to identify areas of public service that need to be improved.

This study demonstrates that resident level of awareness pertaining to the benefits of cultural tourism investment are relatively low. Tourism planners, officials, and researchers can utilize this knowledge to better facilitate methods to gain resident support for cultural tourism investment and development. In addition, this research can be utilized to better understand the needs of residents and how tourism and various city-services impact their quality of life. If cultural tourism planners and other tourism officials better understand methods to gain resident support for cultural tourism investment then they can maximize economic and cultural tourism gains for the city.

This case study specifically focussed on cultural tourism to better present data regarding this issue; however, the authors believe future studies that examine both cultural and sports tourism could be beneficial. Aspects such as city-services and resident perception of quality of life could be examined from both cultural and sports tourism perspectives. This approach could produce beneficial results regarding cultural and sports tourism investment and potentially highlight demographic characteristics unique to cultural tourism and sports tourism supporters in the city of Indianapolis.

Culture is an important motivation force to people within the context of tourism. It provides new opportunities for destinations to promote cultural elements and attract more travellers. This study aims to investigate how the cultural heritage of Cyprus is promoted online and to identify whether the needs of travellers who focus on experiential aspects and prioritise culture can be fulfilled.

The research aim is fulfilled through a critical discourse analysis of selected WebPages concerning representation of the culture of Cyprus within the tourism context.

Eighteen websites were included, and the results suggest that Cyprus has Web exposure specifically promoting its cultural heritage. However, the websites have been established with different tourism scopes, with culture comprising just one part of the content. Thus, the development of specialised websites is dedicated exclusively to culture and tourism, and it seems appropriate to attract travellers interested in more educational activities with cultural and historical value. This approach would bring many benefits because this cohort of travellers is in an upper-scale tourist market.

This study is original in nature because it brings together the case of Cyprus, an island destination highly depended on tourism in relation to cultural tourism Web discourse. The promotion of cultural parameters will provide more opportunities for the island and escape from the 3S’s (sea, sun and sand) image to be positioned as a culturally sustainable destination.

This study aims to understand how a community of practice (CoP) facilitates the knowledge spiral of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) in tourist destinations.

This case study focuses on Cantonese opera, a representative example of the ICH of Hong Kong. Narrative inquiry with eight CoP members was used in this study.

The CoP members believed that the city has unique and quality tourism knowledge. They used their professional expertise in the domains of creating, collecting and sharing both explicit and tacit knowledge. With the strategic goal of creating a sustainable competitive advantage, CoP act as a kernel in knowledge creation by converting explicit knowledge into tacit knowledge and vice versa.

This study uses the knowledge spiral model to understand knowledge creation, and it contributes to the sparse literature on knowledge management in the field of tourism, especially the role of CoP. It addressed a gap in the literature pertaining to knowledge creation and ICH.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the main UNESCO sites in China. The cases under study offer some insight into the complexity of the management of Chinese cultural organizations, as well as the problem of the presentation of China's heritage in a new global context.

The paper is based on field research in 2008/2009 on the Chinese sites on UNESCO's World Heritage List (WHL). While details of the research will be provided in a later stage, some interesting findings and patterns are emerging.

Building on the evidence of several case studies, a preliminary evaluation of the costs, the benefits and the negative outcomes of the listing process is presented in the second section. In a nutshell, the process appears to be increasingly expensive for local government and, despite the expectations for successful inscription onto the WHL, results in terms of increased tourism income are not always guaranteed. On the one hand, being listed raises the awareness of heritage protection among the general public but, on the other, there are also risks connected to tourism overexploitation.

From a methodological point of view the study points out the scarce quality of basic data regarding visitors and financial issues among Chinese World Heritage sites. This is particularly critical for sustainable development if it is considered that a World Heritage site should be accountable to the international audience. In the final section of the paper some open questions concerning sites' management models are presented.

Purpose – This chapter introduces the basic strategy and practice for developing a sustainable transportation system in China, and puts forward problems and directions of improvement.

Methodology – To begin with, the chapter elaborates on the development background of the Chinese urban transportation system and on the challenges in terms of urbanization, mechanization, and resource constraints. The chapter then systematically summarizes the implementation strategy for developing a green transportation system in China, including the government's leading role, public transportation system resource integration, the combination of nonmotor traffic and public traffic, and traffic demand management policy. It illustrates these with specific examples of practical activities conducted.

Findings – Finally, in response to typical problems challenging China, this chapter puts forward directions of improvement for aspects of land utilization, planning, intelligent transportation, traffic demand management, and public participation.

Implications for China – During the critical period featuring rapid growth of private motor vehicle population and transformation of urban traffic development policy, this chapter contributes to building a consensus among the Chinese government and the civil society and to promoting the implementation and sound development of sustainable transportation system by adopting comprehensive measures.

Literature on cultural districts has repeatedly pointed out the role of place branding as a tool to upgrade the image of urban environment as an indicator of meaning and significance. Throughout the case of UNESCO’s mining heritage district in Sardinia (Italy), the purpose of this paper is to investigate on the role that Place Branding Organizations (PBOs) has and/or may have in the construction of coherent images for landscape and cultural heritage in the design of “sustainable” cultural districts in connection with local authorities’ agenda. At this purpose, the authors propose an operative definition of “partnership building strategy” and a new analytic framework to evaluate PBO’s activity within place branding theory.

Considering what recently expressed by UNESCO about the integration between spatial and cultural planning, the authors focus the research on cultural heritage districts protected by this organization. Starting from the definition of strategy proposed by Anholt (2011) and the participation-based approach outlined by Hankinson (2010), the authors propose a new analytic framework to evaluate PBO’s activity and the authors try to apply it to the experience of mining heritage in Sardinia (Italy), comparing the activity of local PBOs (the Consortium for the UNESCO’s Sardinian Geo-mining Park and the Local Tourism System) with the Development Plan of the Carbonia-Iglesias Province. In the final part of the work, the authors discuss the outcomes of the comparative analysis in terms of partnership building strategy and its influence on cultural heritage district design.

The experience of the Sardinia district proves that partnership building strategy has a relevant role both in place branding and cultural heritage district design but it is not sufficient to make this letter really functioning. It confirms also that a place brand can survive to political regime changes on a periodic basis only if the PBO establishes an appropriate institutional framework for the creation of a cooperative network that can take the branding process forward. The research finding about place branding of UNESCO’s mining heritage sites, outline the demand for a new and more integrated approach in the district design, inspired to the geographic studies on “cultural basin.”

The analytical framework which the authors provide on the basis of a new operative definition of partnership strategy building, has proved to be a useful tool to assess PBO’s activity but, despite this, it represents only a partial result because the theoretical model of the relationships between PBOs, local and supra-local actors requires further developments to describe the effective type and nature of this links.

The research finding about place branding of UNESCO’s mining heritage sites, outline the demand for a new and more integrated approach in the district design, inspired to the geographic studies on “cultural basin.” To achieve a real sustainable development and a shared enhancement of identity and landscape, the authors propose as a possible solution the abandonment of administrative boundaries in cultural planning through a correspondence between cultural district and historic region, this latter defined according to the methods and tools developed by the geographical sciences for the “cultural basin.” At this scope the authors propose a new methodological framework which takes the participation-based place branding into the “cultural heritage chain” for the district design, setting a future research agenda.

The authors propose an operative definition of “partnership building strategy” for the participation-based approach outlined by Hankinson (2010) and, on this base, the authors test a new analytic framework to evaluate PBOs’ activity which combines the traditional activities of promotion and marketing with PBOs’ partnership strategies. Finally, the authors propose a methodological frame which brings the participation-based place branding into the “cultural heritage chain” setting a future research agenda in cultural heritage district’s design.

This paper is concerned with the cultural components of change and district coherence. The purpose of this paper is to present two district cases studies, illustrating their experiences with a particular initiative that guided local leaders through both structural and cultural changes.

The paper uses two qualitative case studies to illustrate how a new initiative led by an external partner might help local district leaders learn to shift from financial pass-through or compliance-oriented observer to coherence-making, capacity-building force for schools. Cases were conducted in New Hampshire, USA, studying two districts implementing an RTI-related initiative.

The project was an opportunity to use a common objective – improving learning for all students – and several common school elements – team meetings, student data and job-embedded professional development – in combination to impact how staff work and how they work together for the benefit of students. In particular, team-based leadership, instructional coaching, and collaboration structured around instruction and student data were all powerful practices with structural and cultural impacts.

It remains to be seen if the districts can both initiate these changes on their own as well as sustain these culture-making roles over time.

The paper illustrates several activities that other districts may use to work toward becoming cultural learning organizations.

The value of district central offices taking on new roles, such as learning organization or cultural coherence maker, is established by authors like Honig. This paper illustrates on way district offices might learn to take on these roles.

This article explores the connection between Culturally Responsive School Leadership (CRSL) and Positive School Leadership (PSL) and how both engage with a concept that deeply connects both leadership expressions – trust.

A multi-year, single site case study method examined a district-level equity leader, and her struggles and successes with promoting equity and positive culture throughout a large suburban district in the US.

Trust, established through regular interactions, allowed the district's leadership equity team to build positive relationships with building leaders. Trust was not only a mitigating factor on the relationships themselves, but also regulated the extent to which equitable practices were discussed and implemented in the district. Trust allowed conflicts to surface and be addressed that led to individual and organizational change.

The case highlights the importance of both CRSL and PSL principals, along with the idea of “soft power” in cultural change, to foster equity in schools. Established trust does not erase the difficulties of enacting CRSL/PSL, but allows the difficulties to be addressed. The authors found that dynamic, iterative, regular interactions over a long period reinforced trust allowed CRPSL to take root in the district.

The authors use a single subject case to argue that the core of empirical work moving forward should draw on an integration of culturally responsive leadership.