INTERFERENCE BETWEEN HISTORICAL DISTRICT TOURISM DEVELOPMENT AND LIVING ENVIRONMENT TRANSFORMATION: A CASE STUDY OF“SHUANGDONG”, YANGZHOU
XU Xiao-bo1,2, WU Bi-hu1
1. Center for Recreation and Tourism Research, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China;
2. School of Urban and Regional Planning, Queen's University, Kingston K7L 3N6, Canada
Abstract Living environment is an important issue of protection of historical districts. Grounded on the theory by Lefebvre, historical district is a social space shaped mainly by traditional living styles of local residents. Elements of living environment, such as social relationship, local culture, and daily activities and so on, together with material environment are primary constructors of the social space of a historical district. Interactions between tourism impacts and residents' habitus dominate, with local society being an adjuster, transformative process of historical district's social space, thus the living environment.The case study of "Shuangdong" historical district in Yangzhou proves un-continuity and heterogeneity of effects of tourism development on living environments. Accordingly, residents can be clustered into three groups with differentiated perceptions and attitudes towards tourism development. Effects of subjective characteristics on differing three groups from each other are meaner than that of objective ones, that is, tourism facilities and locations. Meanwhile, to react on involvement of tourism development into "Shuangdong" living environment, rearrangement of tourism facilities and their locations plays key roles. It proves that tourism development contributes largely to promotion of local living environment; however, nurturing "Shuangdong" living environment is trapped by two dilemmas: maintaining local tradition while traditions transformation is inevitable, and the whole living environment of "Shuangdong" optimizing while both benefits and costs are asymmetric between residents.
2013, Vol. 28 
