Living with tourism in Lucerne. How people inhabit a tourist place
Creators: name: Eggli, Florian
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2021

description: Lucerne has been a much sought-after tourist place for over two hundred years. Over time, the tourism industry has not only shaped the physical appearance of the cityscape, but it has also influenced self-awareness, capabilities, knowledge, and know-how of its residents, as well as the overall identity, quality, and ability of the place, which hence formed its "touristic capital" (Stock et al. 2014:13). Due to the ongoing globalisation, tourism has become increasingly diverse, with many Asian tourists visiting the city in central Switzerland. This change in visitor segments has gone along with a constant growth in visitor numbers, fostering a debate over what kind of tourism Lucerne wants, how many visitors are enough, and where the tourism industry generally intends to develop. Under the umbrella of the catch phrase overtourism, an all-encompassing, vivid, and engaged controversy about how to deal adequately with tourism has dominated the public discourse in recent years.As a tourist place, Lucerne is thus contested: many different actors are inhabiting the city through many different practices, which are sometimes mutually enhancing, sometimes conflicting. The present PhD thesis aims to improve understanding of Lucerne's touristic situation and therefore opts for a qualitative examination of the field of research. It wants to comprehend the origins of the problem of overtourism, where conflicts, misunderstandings but also friendly encounters are rooted, and finally what lessons can be learned from this analysis so as to deal with the current situation more satisfactorily and adapt future developments. The present body of research approaches this endeavour in three different ways. First, it investigates the people dwelling in Lucerne (Ingold 2011; Lussault and Stock 2010; Sheller and Urry 2004). By enlarging the focus on the different actors inhabiting the city on a temporary, periodic, or even long-term basis, the thesis overcomes the outdated duality of the traditional host/guest relationship. Second, it is argued that it is not only the number of visitors that is decisive in assessing Lucerne's tourism situation. In contrast, the study postulates that it is rather about social, cultural, and material practices (Schatzki 2019; Reckwitz 2016; Stock 2014), that is, about how actors inhabit a place, instead of merely the amount of people who do so. Tensions over tourism arise out of different background knowledge, cultural norms, learned understandings, and personal motivations when dwelling in a place. Third, the thesis shows how a place unfolds out of the practices of the people associated with it (Bærenholdt 2004; Sheller and Urry 2004; Stock 2019). A tourist city such as Lucerne is not a fixed and determined container filled with definite purpose and meaning, but a fluid, dynamic and ever-changing place which is constantly negotiated, shaped, and produced by those living in it. The work presented here draws heavily on the new mobilities paradigm (Sheller and Urry 2006), which proposes that tourist places are co-produced and actively shaped by different actors and mobilities. Following this theoretical conceptualization, its consequences for the methodical approach must be drawn. Urban tourism situations cannot be observed satisfactorily in closed laboratories, but only in a vivid, open, dynamic living space such as a city is. This research therefore opts for mobile research methods (Büscher et al. 2009; Fincham et al. 2010; Urry 2007) which are succeeding information and informants on the move. A grounded theory approach brought out the insights and findings of 38 walking interviews (with more than 80 interview partners) and extensive participant observation. The empirical findings unfold in the form of an urban ethnography that sheds light on 'living with tourism' in Lucerne by finding new reasons for conflicts over tourism and fresh perspectives on potential future developments.
description: + ID der Publikation: hslu_88835 + Art des Beitrages: Dissertation + Name der Universität / Institution inkl. Ort: University of Lausanne, Faculty of Geosciences and Environment + Land der Universität / Institution: Lausanne, Switzerland + Sprache: Deutsch + Letzte Aktualisierung: 2022-05-27 11:57:01