Tourism spatial organization of historical streets – A postmodern perspective: The examples of Pingjiang Road and Shantang Street, Suzhou, China

Abstract

While tourism is closely associated with globalization and modernity, so too it has been held to exemplify post-modernism. This paper reports the application of the concept of deconstruction to urban heritage sites. Such locations are divided into the tourism zones of cultural, leisure and landscape spaces. After describing the construction of these three spaces it is suggested that “eight paths” of space organization exist, namely “culturalization”, “creative”, “experience”, “humanization”, “leisure”, “refinement”, “life-orientation” and “characteristic”. The final section of the paper proposes an integrated organization of space that aids our understanding of historical street design in Suzhou through a utilization of post-modern concepts.