Tourism and Urban Development

Dear Colleagues,

We have been asked to edit a Special Issue of Sustainability on “Tourism and Urban Development”. Cities have become important tourism destinations, and although attention from travelers for cities as destinations of their travels already stems from the days of the Grand Tour, most cities missed the explosive growth of tourism demand that started immediately after the Second World War. In those days, holidays were rather long, concentrated in the summer months, relaxation was the principal motive, and the main form of transportation was the car. In fact, especially beach holidays were booming.

This started to change in the eighties. Holidays became shorter and more frequent. The interest in a cultural component in holidays was rising exponentially, and tourists became much more active during their vacation. Mobility grew, also because of the expansion of low-cost airlines. This led to an increasing interest in the so-called city-trip, a short, secondary holiday with a city as its destination. At the same time, many cities started to understand that the continuously expanding tourism market offered them concrete possibilities to enlarge their economic bases that had been eroding rapidly because of deindustrialization. They started to invest in tourism and to develop a strong brand that reflects their uniqueness, building the infrastructure that helped tourists to arrive easily from and return to their homes. Urban tourism quickly became one of the most important segments of the global tourism market.

It became so important, in fact, that academics started studying the phenomenon intensively. Ashworth and Voogd (1990), van der Borg (1991), Law (1993), Van den Berg, Van der Borg and Van der Meer (1995), and Judd and Fainstein (1999) are some examples of the first publications that contributed to a better understanding of the opportunities that tourism offers for economic and social development of (especially former industrial) cities. In fact, the predominant discourse at that time was that of tourism stimulating urban development unconditionally. A much less popular discourse in those days was the one that concentrated on the ‘dark side’ of urban tourism that considers (over)tourism a force that may suffocate urban economies and societies. This discourse can be found in, for example, Costa, Gotti, and Van der Borg (1996).

Today, the idea is that some form of sustainable development path should not only exist for destinations that thrive on natural beauty, but for cities as well. It seems, though, that the current and rather trendy academic attention for overtourism in cities like Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Bruges, Dubrovnik, Prague, and Venice is dominating the urban research agenda, while the original idea that tourism still might be a powerful engine of economic and social development for cities tends to be forgotten.

The Special Issue of Sustainability on “Tourism and Urban Development” wants to look into the complex relation between tourism and urban development in all its dimensions, looking for papers that help the readers to understand this complexity better, yet avoiding a dogmatic vision on this important relationship.

Anybody that wants to contribute to the Special Issue can send a short summary of about 200 words to sustainability@mdpi.com before the 31 March 2020.

Prof. Dr. Jan van der Borg
Dr. Nicola Camatti
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• urban development
• tourism
• impact of tourism on social and economic development overtourism, city branding and marketing
• urban tourism policy
• visitor management strategies