The spatial injustice in tourism-led historic urban area renewal: an analytical framework from stakeholder analysis

At present, China’s urbanization development has evolved from incremental expansion to stock redevelopment. Against this background, tourism-led urban redevelopment is widely regarded as an effective way to realize sustainable renewal in historical urban areas. Nevertheless, spatial restructuring during the renewal project entails the reconfiguration of stakeholders’ interests, which may bring spatial injustice. How balance the spatial interests of all stakeholders and improving spatial governance is crucial to the renewal progress and tourism development. Considering the spatial values, this study proposes an analytical framework to analyse the spatial interests, behaviours and targets of various stakeholders, then detect the potential spatial injustice. Through in-depth interviews, we take the Qianmen tourism-led renewal historical urban area in Beijing as an example, focusing on the main stakeholders’ relationship including the government, developers, residents, business operators and visitors. From the results, the local government is in a dominant position with various spatial interests and can affect all other entities’ interests, while the residents and business operators are relatively passive. Tourism development can be seen as a common object for the majority of stakeholders. Finally, policy implications are drawn to offer solutions and strategies and help future tourism-led regeneration in urban.