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.