Tourism Impacts
How Cultural Cities on UNESCO’s World Heritage List Become Museums For Tourists
As Hoi An Ancient Town became one of Vietnam’s premier heritage destinations, what happened to the local residents?
by Thomas E. JONES, Huong T. BUI, & Katsuhiro ANDO
UNESCO Let Us Know: Should We Stay or Should We Go?
In July 2021, UNESCO removed Liverpool from its list of world heritage sites. The story was a reminder of the ongoing pros and cons of inscription for the cultural cities that form a majority of sites. From 1978 to 2021, UNESCO’s list recognized 1,154 World Heritage sites of which 897 are cultural.
The list included 254 cultural cities by 2014. Most are situated in Europe (138), with almost half located in 4 countries: Italy (29 cities); Spain (17); France & Germany (11 each). Italy also sits top of the overall UNESCO medal table as the country with the most listed sites (58). Being a World Heritage Site brings prestige and tourism revenues.
Yet the World Heritage program has faced criticism in Italy — and elsewhere. One article in the Italian magazine, Domus, claimed that UNESCO was killing cultural cities by
“embalming them in a brand-name time warp.”
World heritage city centres and market towns, from Liverpool to Lazio, have been re-branded as tourism destinations. Along with this, town planning laws have tightened and heritage conservation measures have grown stricter.
In extreme examples, living landscapes are turned into static museums.
Our research asks if heritage conservation is helping or hindering vibrant communities? In particular, we ask if UNESCO’s planning tools, such as zoning, could do more to prevent “museumification” (also known as “museumisation”). Already common in Europe, this phenomenon is growing in Southeast Asia where World Heritage examples range from Cambodia’s Angkor Wat to Singapore’s historic colonial quarter (Miura, 2011).
From Europe to Southeast Asia
Tourism’s rapid development across Southeast Asia has increased its number of World Heritage sites (Dolezal, Trupp & Bui, 2020). The Domus magazine article debate in Italy is echoed in the research of Michal Di Giovine. He is a cultural anthropologist with roots in Urbino, an Italian hill town that is also on UNESCO’s list. Michal saw first-hand the museumisation process as World Heritage tourism took over his Renaissance town.
Di Giovine later worked as an international tour guide during Vietnam’s economic doi-moi (reform) in the 1980s. He saw how the sleepy, silted-up port of Hoi An was catapulted as an overnight conservation tourism success story. The ancient town was discovered by Polish architect Kazik in 1983 and later glorified by the Lonely Planet. Tourism investments poured in after its UNESCO listing in 1999.
But this hidden gem would eventually be labelled “one of the most glaring examples of museumification” (Di Giovine, 2009). Other long-term overseas observers of Hoi An also described the UNESCO listing as a “death sentence” for the ancient town’s community (Avieli, 2015).
Our study looks beyond the nostalgia for a quieter, pre-tourism period. We examine how World Heritage status has affected this living cultural city by causing the population to shrink in Hoi An’s core and the rapid development of its buffer zones.
Core & Buffer Zones Driving Development — Demographic Dilemma
A buffer zone is an area set up around the core to protect the core’s heritage. The heritage could be natural (e.g. an endangered species) or cultural (e.g. an ancient town). Buffer zones have been applied to World Heritage sites since 1977. Since 2005, UNESCO has strongly encouraged that all sites have a buffer zone.
We compared the core and buffer zones in Hoi An Ancient Town. We combined interviews and census data with maps and planning guidelines to understand the areas’ development and demographic changes.
We found that architectural renovations were made at the same time as the city adopted stricter regulations and UNESCO programs to promote the adaptive reuse of heritage buildings. By 2010, the population in Hoi An’s core zone had declined by 20%. Private residences were sold off or rented out and converted into shops, cafes, and other tourist facilities.
The compactness of Hoi An’s historic centre encouraged its social transformation. The core zone covers 30 hectares (74 acres) with 1,107 timber frame buildings, including monuments and commercial and domestic structures.
UNESCO’s guidelines include a conservation zone and a tourism facilities zone. But Hoi An does not have enough space to separate these. Thus, its heritage buildings retain their authentic wooden shell façade, but inside they have been converted into restaurants, coffee houses, and internet cafes.
Fuelled by the growth in visitors, the core has been transformed from a living town into an alfresco museum. The authentically restored architecture sets the stage for entrepreneurial new businesses. These are epitomized by the tailoring trade and re-created customs. For example. “the Lantern Festival” is an
“invented tradition’ designed to portray an idealized vision of the past by bringing back a night of the old days” (Di Giovine, 2009, p. 224).
Dollars or donuts? Negative and positive impacts of World Heritage listing
Hoi An’s success as a world-class tourist destination has brought great change and significant economic impacts. A ticket system regulates entry to the core zone and certain heritage buildings. This generates considerable revenue for the conservation and maintenance of the architectural authenticity of the town’s historic centre.
But the same system, together with tourism investments, has also driven a sense of “Disneyfication” (becoming like Disneyland). In 2008, ten years after its World Heritage listing, tourism already contributed 65% of the city’s GDP (UNESCO, 2008). There has been a
“tremendous increase in retailing, and growth in tourism-related accommodation and services [with a] shift in the ethos of the resident population (a growing proportion is now non-local)” (Parnwell, 2016, p.30).
As locals move out and the core zone converts into a stage for tourism, the atmosphere of central Hoi An has changed dramatically. Our assessment uncovered similar negative social impacts of UNESCO listing seen at other cultural cities and towns such as Shirakawa in Japan (Jimura, 2011). In Shirakawa, architectural renovations came with stricter regulations such as building heights, and landscape laws limited satellite TV dishes and A/C units in the central cluster of traditional wooden buildings.
Efforts have been made to mitigate museumification, including a series of craft villages around Hoi An’s perimeter. These encourage tourists to venture outside the core and experience intangible heritage such as woodwork and silk weaving. But the “donut effect” of the core-and-buffer-zone has created a hole in the middle where permanent residents are replaced by passing populations of tourists.
Implications for Sharpening UNESCO’s Planning Tools
Evidence from Hoi An is a reminder that core and buffer zones drawn up for World Heritage sites can have “enormous social impacts” by concentrating economic growth and demographic decline in certain areas (Gillespie, 2012 p.198).
Our case study shows how Eurocentric planning norms have been applied to a World Heritage site in developing Southeast Asia (Harrison & Hitchcock, 2005). UNESCO guidelines prioritize traditional buildings or other physical artifacts, especially in European Renaissance regions such as Italy. This bias remains skewed toward Italian-type cultural cities.
One such city is Liverpool. The home of the Beatles recently fell from favour to become only the third site ever to lose its World Heritage status (BBC, 2021). It was voted off the list following new and proposed waterfront developments on the edge of the historic city core.
Criticisms of UNESCO’s World Heritage list (like in this article) offer a chance to consider how these cities could be better managed as living heritage rather than a museum. UNESCO planning protocols must do more to prevent museumification, otherwise cultural cities risk “the transition from a living city to that of an idealized reproduction of itself” (Di Giovine, 2009, p.224).
This article is based on:
About the Authors
Thomas E. JONES is Professor in the Environment & Development Cluster at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU) in Beppu, Japan. His research interests include Nature-Based Tourism, Protected Area Management, and Sustainability. <110054tj@apu.ac.jp>
Huong T. BUI is Professor of Tourism and Hospitality cluster, the College of Asia Pacific Studies, Ritsumeikan (APU), Beppu, Japan. Her research interests are Heritage Conservation, War and Disaster-related Tourism, Sustainability and Resilience of Tourism Sector. <huongbui@apu.ac.jp>
Katsuhiro ANDO is Professor of the Faculty of Glocal Policy Management and Communication, Yamanashi Prefectural University, Japan. A Doctor of Engineering from Chiba University, his research interests are Heritage Tourism, Community-Based Tourism, and Rural Tourism in Vietnam and Japan. <k-andou@yamanashi-ken.ac.jp>
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