People’s Impressions of a Tourist-Historic District Jenny Ernawati, University of Brawijaya, Indonesia

The combination of tourism industry and historic district is a complicated phenomenon. Many built heritage, particularly in developing countries, are found in the middle of living communities. Uncontrolled development of residential settlements in historic districts can destroy a city’s heritage assets and its tourist potential, while turning historic precincts into ‘urban museums’ can destroy a city’s living social fabric. So, for these countries, this kind of situation often fundamentally becomes one of the problems of development. However, historic area, as a tourist destination and people’s settlement, should evoke a sense of delight and pleasure for residents as well as visitors. From a practical standpoint, knowledge gained from visitor impressions can assist local bodies involved in management of these sites to convey a favorable impression to visitors. Meanwhile an understanding of resident impressions is important to provide a good living environment for the local community that is also conducive to tourism. This paper addresses these issues. It will assist environmental designers and policy makers to develop historic districts that are beneficial for local people as well as for tourists. Kampong Taman Sari, Yogyakarta, Indonesia that faces those problems was considered as appropriate to be selected as a case study site. The case study was done as preparatory to the main body of the research. The study purposed to identify salient dimensions of people’s impressions of historic districts. This research used a multiple-method survey research design, included participant photography and survey questionnaire involving the semantic differential method. A total of 306 people rated nine consensus photographs, which were gained from the participant photography. Factor analysis was employed to answer the research questions. Introduction An increased concern for local identity has influence a historical change from modernism to postmodernism in urban design and planning ((Tiesdell, Oc & Heath, 1996). While modernist planning tended towards the universal, postmodernism and contemporary urban design and planning draws more upon the sense of place, the significance of the local and particular (Robins, 1991). A notion of ‘the past’ as an important element of local identification has been referred to by many authors (e.g. Harvey, 2000; Herbert, 1995; Hewison, 1987; Lowenthal, 1985). Since built heritage has a potential for enabling people to make ‘a journey to the past’, historic sites usually attract many tourists. With such economic potential, historic sites linked to urban policies as a product to generate tourist activities is a worthwhile contribution to urban economic development. These situations raise the notion of urban redevelopment of the sites in order to attract visitors, both domestic and international. Unfortunately, in developing countries, where the majority of people living in these areas are middle to low income people due to a tendency for historic complexes being surrounded by dense residential settlements (kampong), urban redevelopment of the areas leads to the possibility of community relocation. Relocating people to other places may destroy the living social fabric of the local community. An historic district, without a doubt, if it is to be successful as a tourism site, requires great care in planning, development and management. In the conservation and development process, not only historic environments need to be safeguarded, but also the communities that inhabit them (Orbasli, 2000). In response to this, questions now arise in tourism literature about how to achieve a balance between the expectations of tourists in respect of the totality of the tourist experience and those of the community (Trotter, 2001). A review of the literature also reveals that historic conservation may become a pressure on the local community, especially if it is treated as a product of tourism. Local people, who live in an historic area, interact with these structures directly in their everyday lives. Therefore, there is a need to understand the interdependencies that exist between the community and the historic structure. Such understanding will point to the possibility of using the positive efforts of local people as an