How Do Cultural Vitality and Socio-economic Factors Influence Urban Tourism? Evidence from Romanian Cities

Abstract

AbstractThe cultural vitality has an increasingly important role in urban development and revitalization strategies because it improves the community image and enhances the quality of life, providing opportunities for sustainable tourism development. Using data provided by The National Institute for Research and Training and methodology established by The Urban Institute of Washington (2006), our paper aims to analyze the relationship between cultural vitality and urban tourism development and to identify the cities with favorable conditions for successful cultural and tourist activities. We analyzed 41 Romanian cities (residences of counties) situated at 30 years distance from the major political-economic events that followed the communist regime fall in Central and Eastern Europe, being, thus, in a defining identity process (including from cultural and tourist perspective). On the one hand, we used five categories of indicators that helped us to obtain a cultural vitality index (cultural infrastructure, cultural participation, specialized human resources, creative industries, budgetary expenditure for culture), and on the other hand, we used tourism activity indicators and other economic, socio-demographic and accessibility indicators. Data were processed using multivariate statistics in order to highlight certain typologies of the analyzed cities and, more important, if the cultural cities are also attractive tourist destinations. The results indicated cities with intense economic dynamics that are growth poles of creative economy and top tourist destinations. We were surprised by smaller cities where cultural vitality exceeds economic development dynamic, fact reflected by high values of tourist flows. Some of the cities suffer for decades from the lack of interest towards creative economy (unattractive for the entrepreneurs), culture and tourism being secondary chapters of urban development strategies. Conclusions revealed strong correlations between cultural vitality index and urban tourism development and some permanent disparities between cities due to unequal adaptation to new economic, social and community context.KeywordsCultural vitalityTourism sustainabilityCommunism heritageTourism rejuvenationUrban development