Abstract
Industrial heritage tourism is aimed at promoting sustainable development in the regional social economy. Japan published Heritage Constellations of Industrial Modernization in 2007 and 2008, and treated them as an important resource to promote the activation of the local economy. Evolutionary economic geography offers a useful framework for studying the evolution of industries and has already been applied to study the different types of tourism destinations, what is often unclear, however, is under what conditions declining industrial cities can be transformed into an industrial heritage tourism destination and by whom. Thus, this article tries to employ the EEG approach to understand the development of industrial heritage tourism in Japan, using Kitakyushu City as a case. The case of Kitakyushu City illustrates the importance of initial conditions and stakeholder collaboration in promote the development of industrial heritage tourism. The results of this study also showed that participation of community residents and the application of new technologies, strong support from national and local governments are critical to the new path creation.
Highlights
Industrial heritage is often considered as the “landscapes of nostalgia” [1]
Textual analysis is used to examine the evolution of policy discourses related to the industrial heritages in Kitakyushu City, and the case study focusses on the strategies of important enterprises who take a role in promoting the development of industrial heritage tourism while semi-structured interviews are employed to understand the motives and reasons behind new actions and measures that are taken by key stakeholders
Our findings suggest that the industrial heritage tourism in Kitakyushu has experienced lock-in, path dependency, path creation and development, and adaption of local tourism phases
Summary
The potential value of former industrial heritage for promoting the development of the tourism industry has attracted increasing attention worldwide [2,3]. Japan has the largest number of centennial enterprises in the world, reaching 25,321, much more than that of North America and Europe. Compared with other industrialized countries, Japan’s industrial heritages are generally owned by long-lived enterprises, some of these spaces are still in service. Centennial enterprises often become the most direct stakeholders in the protection of industrial heritages, and play a key role in the transformation into new industrial space for cultural and touristic activities [13]. Under the influence of centennial enterprises, the development of industrial heritage tourism in Japan generally has strong path dependence
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