Vitality continuation or over-commercialization? Spatial structure characteristics of commercial services and population agglomeration in historic and cultural areas

• Fang Wang ^[1] ; Zhao Liu ^[1] ; Shanshan Shang ^[1] ; Yuelei Qin ^[1] ; Bihu Wu ^[1]
  1. [1] Peking University

     Peking University

     China

     
• Localización: Tourism economics: the business and finance of tourism and recreation, ISSN 1354-8166, Vol. 25, Nº. Extra 8, 2019 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Special issue: Spatial Economics and Tourism Development), págs. 1302-1326
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In recent years, with rapid urbanization and development of tourism, historic and cultural areashave become characterized by strong vitality. However, a dilemma has arisen concerning theirover-commercialization. In this study, 17 Chinese historic and cultural areas, and their sur-roundings within a radius of 1.5 km, were selected for research. Then, the spatial structure andpopulation agglomeration associated with points of interest (POIs), including commercial servicePOIs and tourist attraction POIs, were analyzed, resulting in five principal findings. (1) In China,commercial services in historic and cultural areas have become an integral part of touristattractions. (2) The relationships between the spatial structures of commercial service POIs andtourist attraction POIs can be classified into five types: fully encircled clustering, semi-surrounding clustering, overlapping clustering, contiguous clustering, and separate clustering. (3) Based on aPOI kernel density analysis, historic and cultural areas can generally be classified into threecategories: commercial service oriented areas, tourist attraction oriented areas, and commerce–tourism complexes. (4) The results illustrated that population agglomeration and spatial patternsof the POIs were tightly coupled; and this correlation was very consistent. The authors found thatwhile living, shopping, and catering services were attractive in isolation, tourist attractions,accommodation, and leisure services often combined to form a shared space to attract business.The research results also provided insights into maintaining the balance between community lifeand commercial development of historic and cultural areas.