Development Path of Industrial Heritage Tourism: A Case Study of Kitakyushu (Japan)

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.

Building Information Modelling (BIM) Driven Sustainable Cultural Heritage Tourism

“…Since the tourism industry is typically closely associated with multistakeholders [113], who are regarded as an important factor in any viable tourism development [114], new conflicts between stakeholders and changes in inter-subjective relationships are unavoidable in the process of sustainable transformation and quality development of tourism [113]. As shown in Table 2, the case study [18,29,47,49,50,58,113,[115][116][117][118][119][120][121][122][123] is a com-monly used research method to examine stakeholder relationships in sustainable cultural heritage tourism, followed by mixed research [8,27,89,[124][125][126][127][128][129][130], interviews [6,36,131,132], modelling [17,33,133], and literature reviews [90]. Current studies on BIM-driven cultural heritage conservation and sustainable cultural heritage tourism concern the following groups of people or organisations: heritage residents, community organisations, tourists, managers (including heritage planning managers including local governments, heritage management), and industry experts (e.g., heritage conservation experts and tourism planning experts).…”

“…The management refers to the central administration, local governments, and cultural tourism management in this paper. Government policy and regulation are considered as one of the most important factors in promoting sustainable tourism development [125]. The public sector is the driving force behind the development of heritage conservation plans, tourism development plans, and investment promotion [85,125].…”

“…Government policy and regulation are considered as one of the most important factors in promoting sustainable tourism development [125]. The public sector is the driving force behind the development of heritage conservation plans, tourism development plans, and investment promotion [85,125]. It also serves as a facilitator of dialogue and communication among various stakeholders, particularly in the promotion of public participation [125,126].…”

“…The public sector is the driving force behind the development of heritage conservation plans, tourism development plans, and investment promotion [85,125]. It also serves as a facilitator of dialogue and communication among various stakeholders, particularly in the promotion of public participation [125,126]. The way to improve tourism's sustainability is through culture heritage managers and other stakeholders maintaining stable and long-term collaborations [139].…”

Multidimensional Spatiotemporal Correlation Effect of County-Scale Population Shrinkage: A Case Study of Northeast China

“…Ben Armstrong has studied the role of state-level industrial policy in facilitating the different economic trajectories of two typical rust belt metropolitan areas in the United States (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Cleveland, Ohio), arguing that by empowering new local economic players such as universities, industrial policy can drive political change and thus achieve structural economic change [9]. Zhengyuan Zhao et al tried to use the EEG method to understand the development of industrial heritage tourism in Japan by taking Kitakyushu City as an example and believed that the participation of community residents, the application of new technologies and the strong support of the national and local governments were crucial to the creation of new paths [10]. Christa Reicher discussed the planning challenges and opportunities during the structural change of the Ruhr region in Germany in the second half of the 20th century from a historical perspective, arguing that although the development of the Ruhr region faced challenges, it could still serve as a model for many other regions with similar structures, and she expounded the efforts made by the deindustrialization and polycentric agglomeration of the Ruhr region for urban renewal [11].…”