Description
This paper aims to explore how overseas visitors experience off-the-beaten-track areas and
everyday life in London
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research
Everyday life as a creative experience in cities
Robert Maitland
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Robert Maitland, (2010),"Everyday life as a creative experience in cities", International J ournal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research,
Vol. 4 Iss 3 pp. 176 - 185
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Maria D. Alvarez, (2010),"Creative cities and cultural spaces: new perspectives for city tourism", International J ournal of Culture, Tourism
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Duygu Salman, Duygu Uygur, (2010),"Creative tourism and emotional labor: an investigatory model of possible interactions", International
J ournal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 4 Iss 3 pp. 186-197http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/17506181011067583
Lan-Lan Chang, Kenneth F. Backman, Yu Chih Huang, (2014),"Creative tourism: a preliminary examination of creative tourists’ motivation,
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Everyday life as a creative experience
in cities
Robert Maitland
Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to explore how overseas visitors experience off-the-beaten-track areas and
everyday life in London.
Design/methodology/approach – Initially scoped through quantitative research using visitor surveys
involving some 400 respondents, the study was subsequently developed through qualitative research:
49 semi-structured interviews with visitors from a wide range of countries.
Findings – These areas offer city visitors opportunities to create their own narratives and experiences of
the city, and to build a cultural capital in a convivial relationship with other city users. At the same time,
visitors contribute to the discovery of new areas for tourism - and in some sense the creation of new
places to visit.
Research limitations/implications – Further research in other areas of London and in other world
tourism cities is needed to develop ideas discussed here.
Practical implications – Subtler forms of tourism marketing are required to develop the potential of
areas like those discussed in the paper.
Social implications – Some tourists and residents enjoy a convivial and complementary relationship in
area development.
Originality/value – The paper focuses on everyday life as an element in the attraction that cities exert
for tourists, and on the visitors’ contribution to recreating the city.
Keywords Tourism, Cities, Social environment, Cultural synergy
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
City tourism can no longer be simply seen as a separate activity, focused on well de?ned
tourismprecincts, where comparatively passive visitors consume carefully designed tourism
products. This paper argues that for some visitors, an important element in the appeal of the
city is the opportunity to experience and feel a part of everyday life. These visitors do not
seek recognized tourist attractions or tourist precincts but what they perceive as the real life
of the city – a place in which overlapping activities of tourism and leisure now form part of its
fabric and life. For them, the everyday and mundane activities of city residents take on
signi?cance as markers of the real, and off the beaten track areas, not planned for tourism,
are valued as offering distinctiveness.
This paper draws on continuing research on the capacity of big cities to generate new
tourism areas as visitors discover and help create new urban experiences off the beaten
track (see for example Maitland, 2007; 2008; Maitland and Newman, 2009). It focuses on
potential synergies between some visitors and some residents, many of whom may be seen
as be seen as part of the creative class (Florida, 2002) or cosmopolitan consuming class
(Fainstein et al., 2003). For some tourists, as for Florida’s creative class, what is there, who is
there, and what is going on combine to form high quality of place, amenity and a search for
the real.
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VOL. 4 NO. 3 2010, pp. 176-185, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1750-6182 DOI 10.1108/17506181011067574
Robert Maitland is
Professor of City Tourism,
Director at the Centre for
Tourism Research,
University of Westminster,
London, UK.
Received December 2009
Revised January 2010
Accepted March 2010
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These areas offer city visitors opportunities to create their own narratives of the city. At the
same time, they contribute to visitors’ sense that they are discovering and in some sense
creating new places to visit. Some neighborhoods, often close to the historic center and to
traditional attractions, offer the mix of cultural difference and consumption opportunities that
can create new experiences for distinctive groups of city users, and apparently offer the
opportunity to experience everyday life.
Paradoxes in city tourism
More and more, tourismis shaping cities. Tourist numbers have boomed as wider processes
of globalization and economic change have forced cities to reposition and reimage
themselves to compete in the twenty ?rst century economy. Cityscapes have changed.
Projects have redeveloped and reaestheticized waterfronts and industrial zones. Cities have
reviewed and re-presented history and heritage, and they have promoted urban cultures
and entertainments. As Judd and Fainstein (1999, p. 262) point out, together with the growth
of large corporate of?ce functions ‘‘tourism has been a primary force in determining
contemporary urban form, as facilities for tourists have increasingly become interwoven with
other structures’’. This is especially true in world tourism cities (Maitland and Newman,
2009), ?rmly established on global networks – cities that are both leading destinations and
sources of iconic images of city life and of tourism. As competition has intensi?ed, cities have
become increasingly concerned with constructing attractions and symbols that signal their
aspirations and status as they seek to draw in not just tourists but mobile investment or
mobile professionals in search of amenity (Florida, 2002). Cities have refurbished historic
areas; reaestheticized and revalorized former industrial areas for cultural activities,
shopping and loft living; housed iconic attractions in spectacular and monumental new
buildings (Smith, 2007); and sought to host major events: the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao,
and the 1992 Barcelona Olympics are in?uential exemplars. As Fainstein (2007) points out,
one result is to create new shared experiences that are popular. They allow visitors to add to
their cultural capital by consuming an iconic attraction – whether long established like the
Eiffel Tower, or new like the Guggenheim. As visitors do so, they can increasingly easily
produce and share images that witness their experience and ‘‘this provides common
symbols and shared memories within otherwise fragmented cultures’’ (Fainstein, 2007, p. 2).
However, for critics the result of this serial reproduction (Richards and Wilson, 2006) is to
reinforce global processes making cities more standardized. The ubiquity of global retail
and entertainment brands is now echoed by major museums and galleries (Evans, 2003).
Ironically, cities’ attempts to outdo and distinguish themselves from their rivals may reduce
their competitive advantage as they become more alike. Waterfront developments around
the world resemble one another (Jones, 1998); visitors can ?nd the same Mayor’s Trophy
Cabinet of attractions and facilities (convention center, branded hotel, museum, festival
marketplace and so on) in many cities on different continents (Frieden and Sagalyn, 1990);
cities create modern icon buildings that have little association with the location where they
are built (Sudjic, 2005), and they brand their architects more effectively than they do the
place. In short, cities spot a rival that seems to have found a successful formula with
buildings or events - and copy it (Richards and Wilson, 2006).
There are paradoxes here. Cities seek to achieve competitive advantage through
differentiation, but achieve standardization. They do so because they follow familiar
strategies, successful in some places at some times in the past and attempt to out-build and
out-bid their rivals. Yet as they do so, the audience they seek – visitors, of many types – is
changing rapidly and defying conventional categorization. Both tourism and touristic
practices are changing and evolving. Tourism itself cannot any longer be bounded off as a
separate activity, distinguishable from other mobilities, and tourist demands cannot be
clearly separated from those of residents and other users of cities. Hannam (2009) argues
that tourism needs to be understood as part of a wider set of mobilities, whilst Sheller and
Urry (2004) think that mobilities represent a new paradigm within social science, including
the movement of people, information and capital. One consequence is to see tourism, as
conventionally de?ned (World TourismOrganization and United Nations, 1994) as just part of
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a continuum of mobilities that range from the short term to the permanent. For example,
business people and professionals come to cities on temporary assignments or short term
contracts; academics take up short term posts or work on research projects; creatives make
?lms, give artistic performances or devise campaigns. In many ways their activities and
behaviors will overlap those of comparatively well off business and leisure tourists. At lower
levels of the employment hierarchy, migrants take temporary jobs for long hours and lowpay.
They will share similarities with students, in town to study, from a few weeks to a few years,
and with backpacker or drifter tourists, traveling on a low budget and taking temporary jobs
(Fainstein et al., 2003; Maitland and Newman, 2009).
Whilst tourists are changing, so are those who inhabit the city more permanently: tourism
and touristic behavior is coming to be seen as an integral part of daily life. For Franklin and
Crang (2001, pp. 6-7) touristic behaviors and experiences are less and less separated from
daily life by time and space, and indeed tourismhas become ‘‘a signi?cant modality through
which transnational modern life is organized’’. In part, that means residents consume the city
in ways that are similar to tourists:
. . . citizens . . . increasingly make quality of life demands treating their own urban locations as if
tourists, emphasizing aesthetic concerns [emphasis added] (Clark, 2003, p. 292).
They enjoy the same activities as visitors, and consume the new urban culture (Judd, 2003).
In some cases, in large cities, this may be a straightforward case of internal tourism:
residents visit parts of the city that are new to them or which have particular attractions,
especially the central areas. But more broadly, there is a de-differentiation between touristic
practices and other spheres of cultural experience (Lash, 1990; Urry, 1990), and between
tourism and everyday life (Bauman, 1996; Urry, 2002).
The changing tourist experience of cities needs to be considered carefully, and change
should not be exaggerated. Some city tourism goes on much as it has before, especially in
well established destinations. First time visitors still arrive in Istanbul in organized groups,
consume iconic attractions like the Topkapi Palace or Haghia Sophia, adding to their
personal cultural capital in the process; then they move on to their next destination. In
London, new attractions like the London Eye and the Tate Modern art gallery have drawn
millions of visitors. But now, a lot of city tourism is not like this. Many visitors are experienced
users of cities and want to move beyond traditional tourism precincts. Some are highly
mobile and feel a sense of belonging to the place they visit - the cosmopolitan consuming
class (Fainstein et al., 2003) and transnational e´ lites (Rofe, 2003).
The dissolving boundaries between tourists, residents and other city users, and between
touristic and non-touristic behaviors means that it is futile for cities to base their appeal
simply on producing ever more attractions for visitors who are passive consumers. Attempts
to do so mean engaging in an unwinnable arms race that requires ever more investment in
the attempt to produce the ultimate icon. Instead, cities need to consider how tourists
themselves can create distinct experiences through their interplay with the city.
Creative tourism and everyday life
In their in?uential discussion of creativity and tourism, Richards and Wilson (2007, p. 20)
suggest that city tourism is shifting from a reliance on tangible resources like museums and
monuments to intangible resources like lifestyle, image and creativity. They associate this
with a shift in what visitors want – from ‘‘having’’ a holiday through ‘‘doing’’ the sights or
activities towards ‘‘becoming’’ – a focus on the tourism experience and its (potentially)
transformative effects. Similarly, Andersson Cederholm (2009) argues that being rather than
doing is emerging as a tourism value, with being with oneself (in a contemplative
experience), being with other tourists and being with the locals resulting in tourism
experiences. Not all tourists’ wants will be changing in this way, and the shifts are more likely
to affect more practiced visitors – whose numbers are growing.
More people are traveling to cities, and repeat visits are becoming increasingly important, as
they affect what visitors want. Tourism is a process that encourages learning. Learning can
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take place outside formal educational settings – so-called experiential learning – and
tourism practices encourage the re?ection and analysis of experience that promote learning
(Minnaert, 2007). Tourists linger over the tourist gaze, (Urry, 1990) and capture images. New
media and modern devices make it easier than ever to acquire, share and discuss images.
And visitors have long used guidebooks, visitor centers and guides as a means of
structuring their experiences of places. These practices mean that they learn new skills and
come to look at places with ‘‘an increasingly informed eye’’ (Urry, 1999, p. 74). This
knowledge affects their representation of the city and their aesthetic sensibilities (Maitland
and Smith, 2009) - and what they want from the tourist experience. Many visitors are also
returning to cities that they know well (in London, some 60 percent of overseas tourists are
repeat visitors (LDA, 2007)); many of them are frequent visitors. Repeat visitors’ demands
will differ from those of people coming to the city for the ?rst time. Familiar and iconic
attractions such as Big Ben and the Tower of London may have limited appeal as repeat
experiences, and visiting themonce adds little to personal cultural capital when visiting them
again. Thus, increasingly, experienced tourists will learn newperspectives and consumption
demands and, particularly as repeat visitors, they may wish to venture beyond recognized
tourism precincts. As Larsen (2008, p. 21) points out:
Much tourism theory . . . de?nes tourism by contrasting it to home geographies and
‘‘everydayness’’: tourism is what they are not . . . As a result, tourism studies produce ?xed
dualisms between the life of tourism and everyday life: extraordinary and ordinary, pleasure and
boredom, liminality and rules.
Yet experienced travelers may ?nd the exotic in the everyday, in the real life of the city to be
found off the beaten track.
The attraction of the everyday
Authors such as Maitland and Newman (2009) have investigated in detail the appeal of off
the beaten track areas in a series of world tourism cities. This paper focuses on two areas of
London - Islington and Bankside. Both attract large numbers of visitors although neither form
part of traditional tourist itineraries, nor are planned as a tourist precinct. They offer
contrasting aspects of tourism development in new areas. Whilst Islington is well connected
by public transport to central London’s main tourist concentrations, the area is spatially and
functionally separated fromthem. Bankside, by contrast, is contiguous to established tourist
areas in central London, into which the place is increasingly well integrated. Both areas have
experienced regeneration and gentri?cation including up-market housing, of?ce and studio
development, new restaurants, bars and shopping.
Islington is a fashionable residential area that has been gentri?ed for over 30 years. Much of
the historic street patterns and buildings have been retained, although there are mass social
housing blocks of the 1960s and 1970s as well as high value private Georgian and Victorian
streets. Gentri?cation and higher spending residents saw a growth in consumption
opportunities, with newrestaurants, bars and shops, some of themdistinctive or high quality:
Camden Passage antiques market or designer shops on Upper Street, for example. New
development in former industrial buildings created loft apartments and studio developments
whilst retaining the existing street pattern and renovating existing buildings. Tourism policy
in Islington has an uneven history, with no major tourism plan or investment in new iconic
attractions, although two theatres received substantial National Lottery funding for
refurbishment. A local tourism organization, Discover Islington, existed from 1991-2001,
and promoted the area as ‘‘the real London’’. By 1998 the place was attracting some four
million visitors (including day visitors) (Carpenter, 1999) but there was little evidence that this
was a consequence of tourism policy and the area maintained a comparatively low pro?le
(see Maitland and Newman, 2004, for more details).
Bankside by contrast had begun to establish a global image and reputation by the turn of the
millennium. The area lies between long established tourism precincts (Westminster/the
South Bank center, and the London Bridge/Tower Bridge area) and includes two new iconic
attractions – Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and Tate Modern art gallery (also a bene?ciary of
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National Lottery funding). However, like Islington, the key driver of development was not
tourism, and the area was not designed as a tourism precinct. Public authorities responsible
for the area aimed to spread commercial development pressures across the river from the
congested north bank. A key element was improving pedestrian links across the river, and a
new pedestrian bridge creating a route from St Paul’s to Tate Modern was opened in 2002.
New cultural icons and a design makeover (Teedon, 2001) provided an opportunity to attract
new commercial land-uses and upscale residents, whilst retaining much of the traditional
morphology. Remaking the riverfront created new amenity and an attractive location for
mobile professionals, who were seen as essential if London were to maintain its place in the
global economy. The area has continued to develop with more galleries and theatres, and
specialty food shops, bars and restaurants particularly focused around Borough Market.
Warehouses have been converted to loft apartments and there is a signi?cant population of
of?ce workers – some in modern towers, others in smaller spaces in converted warehouses.
Further south, and away from the river, apartment and of?ce conversions appear to have
driven development, often for the creative industries – including architects and designers.
In both areas, tourism has been one part of a wider scheme of regeneration. This process
promotes the areas’ development by bringing in visitors, and helps revalorize and create
interest in what was previously considered unattractive. Yet neither area was designed as a
tourism precinct, and the research discussed below investigates the areas’ appeal for
visitors.
The research is in two parts. Initially, questionnaire surveys of overseas visitors to Islington
and Bankside were conducted to explore their characteristics and the appeal of the area to
them. Visitors in the surveys turned out to differ from overseas visitors to London as a whole,
and could be differentiated from standardized markets. They were older, more experienced
travelers; had generally visited London before; were more likely to be visiting friends or
relations or to be on business; and made use of their connections through friendship and
other networks in deciding on the areas they wanted to visit. These characteristics were
more pronounced in Islington than in Bankside, with its proximity to established tourism
precincts (see Maitland and Newman, 2004, for a full discussion). In both areas visitors liked
the built form of the area and sense of place, along with atmosphere: sense of history, a
cosmopolitan feel, a sense that the area was ‘‘not touristy’’. They also enjoyed opportunities
for consumption – the range of shops, bars, cafes, and restaurants. Major tourist attractions
were rarely mentioned, which was true even of Bankside with the popular and well known
Tate Modern and Shakespeare’s Globe, as well as a range of other tourist attractions. This
lack of reference to the places seems surprising but is borne out by VisitLondon surveys of
the wider area of the South Bank, which show that despite the wide range of cultural and
other attractions, the most popular activity is going for a stroll, followed by visiting a bar, cafe´
or restaurant (VisitLondon, 2005).
For these visitors at least, the appeal of the areas seems to lay in atmosphere and their sense
of place and, apparently mundane elements of vernacular architecture, as well as shops and
cafes, may constitute attractions. These initial ?ndings were explored in more depth through
qualitative research. Semi-structured interviews lasting from 25 to 45 minutes were carried
out with overseas visitors selected on a convenience sampling basis in central locations in
Islington and Bankside. Visitors came from a wide range of countries from around the world
including Western, Central and Eastern Europe, North and South America, Australasia, India
and Africa, but interviews were conducted in English. Their ages ranged from20s to 60s and
most were in professional occupations. A series of themes emerge from the interviews and
three are discussed here (see Maitland, 2008, for a fuller discussion of other aspects). Text
from interview transcripts is shown within quotation marks.
First, visitors perceived both Islington and Bankside as ‘‘not touristy’’: not places that had
been designed to attract visitors. Instead they were seen as ‘‘out of the way’’ and ‘‘off the
beaten path’’, quieter and ‘‘less crowded’’. They were explicitly contrasted with other parts
of London that were seen as tourist hotspots: Covent Garden, Piccadilly Circus and
Leicester Square or the area around Buckingham Palace, for example. Respondents also
compared the zones with tourism precincts in other cities, such as the Champs Elysees in
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Paris. The perceived contrast is unsurprising in the case of Islington, but more unexpected in
Bankside. Visitors could be aware of or indeed actually visit a series of tourist attractions and
still maintain their perception of the area as ‘‘not touristy’’. Most interviewees on Bankside
were aware of Tate Modern and Shakespeare’s Globe and planned at least to take a look at
them. One respondent proved to have visited almost every attraction promoted in the Tourist
Information Center’s literature, but still enjoyed the area because of ‘‘the out of the way
places where there aren’t so many people catering to the tourists’’. People recognized the
‘‘big touristy attractions’’ but these icons did not dominate perceptions of the area, which
was seen as ‘‘quieter’’ with ‘‘places where you can take your time’’ away from tourist
hotspots.
Second, the built environment and a sense of place were frequently mentioned and often
described in some detail. Whilst for some visitors the appeal of the area was simply that it
was ‘‘nice – we like the buildings’’, others seemed much more observant and discussed
what they saw in considerable detail. Small aspects of vernacular buildings attracted
comment – windows, lintels ‘‘the chimney stack on a building down that alley’’; ‘‘the windows
of those shops, how they are designed, how they do it’’. Architecture could be appraised in
detail.
‘‘This part of the city, well, they’re doing construction to make it more modern but it looks like
there’s older buildings from the late 19th Century, early 20th Century . . . They haven’t
renamed them at all or tried to keep them in a current state. They’re just trying to upkeep the
brick and the whatnot from a lot of years ago which is nice’’.
Interviewees saw the physical qualities of place as embedding history and the
contemporary nature of the city – ’’there is a mix . . . it’s multicultural . . . a mix of people
. . . so in the culture there should be the old part and the new part of London’’.
Most comments focused on the vernacular, the everyday, and the ordinary buildings in the
areas rather than on icons like the Globe or Tate Modern.
Third, everyday life was at the heart of the regions’ appeal. Visitors were often acutely
observant of the mix of activities that were taking place; they noted that these were areas
where Londoners lived and worked, and this was crucial to how the places were valorized.
The observations were accurate and unromantic. Commenting on Bankside, one
respondent noted the mix of of?ces, studios and apartment, and the proximity to the
?nancial district and remarked that ‘‘it’s nice that you can live close to where you work’’ but
quickly added that to do so ‘‘you’ve got to be rich – more than rich’’. Islington was liked but
seen as ‘‘a high class community’’ and ‘‘pricey’’. Still, respondents felt that in these areas
they could meet local people and chat over coffee or a drink, and that the area was more
relaxed, and ‘‘you are not actually an outsider’’. This perception was more common in
Islington, but in Bankside too the presence of Londoners was crucial to the experience of the
area. In part, this was a ?aneur’s enjoyment of observation: ‘‘liking to see people going about
their daily tasks’’ or ‘‘normal Londoners just doing their thing’’. For more than one respondent
there was pleasure to be had in visiting Tesco (the dominant UK supermarket chain): the
opportunity to observe ordinary people, and what they bought made it ‘‘one of our favorite
places’’. Under the gaze of experienced travelers, mundane work routines took on new
signi?cance. For a North American couple, one highlight of their visit to Bankside was
peering into of?ce windows and observing workers typing at their computers – ‘‘you can’t
miss this’’. The recurring theme was that everyday life was both interesting in itself, and also
a marker of the ‘‘real London’’. It meant that for visitors, even Bankside was not experienced
as dominated by its big attractions, but as an area in which the city’s daily life went on. That
made it more interesting: ‘‘museums are museums and they’re all interesting, but museums
[could be] anywhere and I like to see what the city is actually about’’. The words of one
respondent speak for many: ‘‘tourist spots are always very generic, right, look at the places
where tourist are in any city you feel like, oh, I’m just one of the them and I’m just doing the
typical tourist thing but if you, somehow, end up in the place where the locals go, it feels like a
more authentic experience somehow’’.
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Discussion
These ?ndings suggest three themes about everyday life and creative tourism experiences.
First, built environment and sense of place are important. The morphology of the areas, with
traditional and intricate street patterns and buildings of varied age, type and style is
appealing, seen as distinctive - despite the insertion of new icons in Bankside. A
combination of gentri?ed cityscape and consumption opportunities is attractive for visitors
when combined with the presence of local people going about their everyday lives. This
?nding provides empirical evidence to support ideas about the way tourism mixes into the
fabric of the city (Terhorst, van de Ven and Deben, 2003). Observing everyday life is
interesting in itself, but perhaps more importantly, it acts as a marker or signi?er that the area
is part of the real city and not simply a show put on for visitors. As one respondent said, ‘‘it
doesn’t feel arti?cial . . . you don’t feel like you’re in Disneyland’’. The exotic is in the eye of the
beholder, and everyday life can be full of exotic signs (Urry, 1995). Particularly for
experienced travelers, often themselves living in large cities, this sense of being in a distinct,
real, unbranded area can be a sought after experience. As Till (2009, p. 139), drawing on
Lefebre, says, the everyday is not simply ordinary – ‘‘rather it is the site that contains the
extraordinary within the ordinary if one is prepared to look’’.
Second, the areas are not dominated by iconic buildings or strong historical or cultural
narratives, or clearly established routes through which they are consumed (despite some
considerable efforts at placemaking in the case of Bankside (Teedon, 2001)). This
con?guration frees visitors to construct their own narratives about the areas, and to explore
them in their own way, to exercise their imaginations – to be creative. The ordinary and
everyday qualities of the areas mean they are heterogeneous (Edensor, 2001) and open to
different experiences, different interpretations. As Raban (1974) points out, individuals
construct their soft city from the streets they visit and those they imagine, and this
representation is as real as the hard city shown on maps. People create different soft cities
and they can do this in any part of the city, but it is easier in areas that do not impose their
own identities and allow the imagination freer rein. Being with the locals (Andersson
Cederholm, 2009) can include a chat over coffee, but can also encompass imagining what
their lives are like. One respondent, discussing Islington, felt: ‘‘you can ?nd really, really nice
walks just watching the houses and sometimes I just imagine how they look inside, and
sometimes I see the people wearing different clothes and I think the people how is their life
how is their work in the house’’.
Third, notions of the real London, and the everyday city, are nonetheless elusive concepts.
Whilst it is true that London residents live and work in both areas, and that everyday life of the
city goes on there, they are the real city only in its middle class and gentri?ed guise. Visitors
to Islington (like its middle class residents) evidently navigate the area to avoid its often
unattractive social housing, which is never mentioned in interviews. If the real London is
where most of its inhabitants live and work, then it is not to be found in Islington and
Bankside, but in un-gentri?ed inner areas and in the suburbs and suburban centers of outer
London. Yet visitation to outer town centers like Croydon and Bromley is limited. Despite the
fascination for real life poverty evidenced by the growth of slum tourism in the developing
world (Gentleman, 2006), there is little sign that London’s poor areas like Dagenham or the
Aylesbury Estate at Elephant and Castle attract leisure visitors. Visitors to Bankside and
Islington knowthat they are visiting a particular version of the real London, in which the locals
they see are well off – ‘‘yuppies, maybe’’ – and in which shops and houses are expensive.
They creatively construct a London that is an idealized city – one that can be experienced in
places that emerge like islands in the sea of the modern commercial London, which is
increasingly homogenized and branded for consumption by visitors and inhabitants alike.
They relish those real places with their intricate built form, combination of old and new
buildings, and their interesting shops, cafes and bars, where one can watch locals go about
their everyday lives and enjoy a stimulating metropolitan buzz, along with the feel of an old
place. In this respect, they are like the middle classes that inhabit such gentri?ed areas.
They too exercise creativity in their interpretation of the place, to construct an appealing
experience. As Butler (2003, pp. 2374-476) says of Islington, the city is ‘‘a global space
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servicing the international service-class diaspora’’ and caters for the well-off – yet it has ‘‘an
aura of inclusivity and this is a large part of its appeal’’ to its residents.
Conclusions
Thetransformationof cities for tourismconsumption creates commodi?edlandscapes. But as
Gilbert andHancock(2006) argue, thischangealsocreatestheopportunityfor reactiontosuch
commodi?cation. Visitorscannegotiatenewpathways andnovel interpretations of thecity ina
creative interchange with the place, its history, urban formandeveryday life. This paper starts
by identifying paradoxes in city tourism: attempts to achieve distinctiveness can lead to
standardization, and policymakers are following familiar tourismstrategies whilst tourismand
tourism practices are rapidly changing and evolving. In these circumstances, conventional
attempts to distinguish tourists fromresidents in terms of time anddistance - tourists are in the
city only temporarily and have traveled some distance to get there - seem unhelpful in
understanding the interaction between cities and those who use them. It is better to think in
terms of a range of city users with a series of demands, behaviors and practices which re?ect
their widely different incomes, power andurban preferences. Theconsumption demands and
behaviors of some visitors will overlap with those of some residents and will help shape cities.
Exploring the perception and practices of visitors to areas not designed as tourismprecincts
helps provide partial resolution to these paradoxes. Some visitors deliberately seek out
everyday life and the real city. They want to go beyond ‘‘enclavic tourist spaces’’ created for
them, and ?nd ‘‘heterogeneous tourist spaces’’ – ‘‘multi-purpose spaces in which a wide
range of activities and people co-exist’’ (Edensor, 2001, p. 64). These areas are softer and
allow personal narratives to be created around them. Visitors value the everyday and the
presence of local people as markers of authenticity, and indicators that they are in the real
city. They use off the beaten track areas in a creative way, constructing their own narratives
and relishing everyday scenes - which can seemmore extraordinary than a spectacular icon
obviously planned for tourist consumption or a heritage building already familiar from
countless media images. As they enjoy the areas, visitors contribute to the renewal and
rebranding of neighborhoods and broader processes of urban change, development and
gentri?cation, which in turn feed through to the city’s image, and what it has to offer. Such
areas are not comprehensively planned for tourists, and whilst public policy can have
important in?uences in attracting visitors, in this case they are largely unintended. Exploring
tourists and gentrifying residents can have convivial links and contribute to the creation and
re-creation of upscale areas enjoyed by visitors and locals.
Such areas provide a means for cities to cater for a desirable niche market of practiced
travelers by offering an experience that is distinctive because it is everyday. This practice
allows cities to avoid the zero sum game of competition to provide the newest gallery or the
latest architectural icon or the most prestigious event as a lure for visitors. In those
competitions, there can be only one winner, and there is a constant battle to achieve the
greatest prize. The distinctiveness of the everyday provides a potential means for cities to
compete through differentiation and to avoid the high costs that such attractions and events
incur. Estimates of the costs to London of staging the 2012 Olympics are £9.3 billion ($15.4
billion). Although the bene?ts to the political leadership in London government are clear, as
opportunities are offered to connect with their followers (Newman, 2007), the bene?ts to
London tourism are less certain.
However, identifying the attraction of new tourism areas does raise new dilemmas. These
issues revolve around the stability of the mix of characteristics that make them attractive.
Promotion and marketing of cities is relentless, yet once areas are advertised and promoted
as undiscovered and off the beaten track they are likely to loose much of their appeal for
many visitors. Can tourism marketers restrain themselves and ?nd new and subtler ways of
making potential visitors aware of these places? And are we in any case seeing an evolution
of areas, in which visitors most concerned with exploration will seek out less discovered
parts of the city, in some version of Butler’s famous tourism area lifecycle (Butler, 1980)?
There are some indications that exploring visitors in London are seeking out newer
gentrifying areas like Shoreditch and Hoxton, and may be moving even further a?eld. More
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research is needed to improve our understanding of howvisitors use areas of the city outside
of recognized tourism precincts and how this experience interacts with the dynamics of their
development.
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About the author
Robert Maitland is Director of the Centre for Tourism Research at the University of
Westminster. He is an authority on tourism in cities, in particular world cities and national
capitals. His other research interests focus on tourism and everyday life, new tourist areas in
London, and social tourism. Robert Maitland can be contacted at: R.A.Maitland@
westminster.ac.uk
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This article has been cited by:
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International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38:10.1111/ijur.2014.38.issue-4, 1304-1318. [CrossRef]
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doc_520885686.pdf
This paper aims to explore how overseas visitors experience off-the-beaten-track areas and
everyday life in London
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research
Everyday life as a creative experience in cities
Robert Maitland
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To cite this document:
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Vol. 4 Iss 3 pp. 176 - 185
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Everyday life as a creative experience
in cities
Robert Maitland
Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to explore how overseas visitors experience off-the-beaten-track areas and
everyday life in London.
Design/methodology/approach – Initially scoped through quantitative research using visitor surveys
involving some 400 respondents, the study was subsequently developed through qualitative research:
49 semi-structured interviews with visitors from a wide range of countries.
Findings – These areas offer city visitors opportunities to create their own narratives and experiences of
the city, and to build a cultural capital in a convivial relationship with other city users. At the same time,
visitors contribute to the discovery of new areas for tourism - and in some sense the creation of new
places to visit.
Research limitations/implications – Further research in other areas of London and in other world
tourism cities is needed to develop ideas discussed here.
Practical implications – Subtler forms of tourism marketing are required to develop the potential of
areas like those discussed in the paper.
Social implications – Some tourists and residents enjoy a convivial and complementary relationship in
area development.
Originality/value – The paper focuses on everyday life as an element in the attraction that cities exert
for tourists, and on the visitors’ contribution to recreating the city.
Keywords Tourism, Cities, Social environment, Cultural synergy
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
City tourism can no longer be simply seen as a separate activity, focused on well de?ned
tourismprecincts, where comparatively passive visitors consume carefully designed tourism
products. This paper argues that for some visitors, an important element in the appeal of the
city is the opportunity to experience and feel a part of everyday life. These visitors do not
seek recognized tourist attractions or tourist precincts but what they perceive as the real life
of the city – a place in which overlapping activities of tourism and leisure now form part of its
fabric and life. For them, the everyday and mundane activities of city residents take on
signi?cance as markers of the real, and off the beaten track areas, not planned for tourism,
are valued as offering distinctiveness.
This paper draws on continuing research on the capacity of big cities to generate new
tourism areas as visitors discover and help create new urban experiences off the beaten
track (see for example Maitland, 2007; 2008; Maitland and Newman, 2009). It focuses on
potential synergies between some visitors and some residents, many of whom may be seen
as be seen as part of the creative class (Florida, 2002) or cosmopolitan consuming class
(Fainstein et al., 2003). For some tourists, as for Florida’s creative class, what is there, who is
there, and what is going on combine to form high quality of place, amenity and a search for
the real.
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VOL. 4 NO. 3 2010, pp. 176-185, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1750-6182 DOI 10.1108/17506181011067574
Robert Maitland is
Professor of City Tourism,
Director at the Centre for
Tourism Research,
University of Westminster,
London, UK.
Received December 2009
Revised January 2010
Accepted March 2010
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These areas offer city visitors opportunities to create their own narratives of the city. At the
same time, they contribute to visitors’ sense that they are discovering and in some sense
creating new places to visit. Some neighborhoods, often close to the historic center and to
traditional attractions, offer the mix of cultural difference and consumption opportunities that
can create new experiences for distinctive groups of city users, and apparently offer the
opportunity to experience everyday life.
Paradoxes in city tourism
More and more, tourismis shaping cities. Tourist numbers have boomed as wider processes
of globalization and economic change have forced cities to reposition and reimage
themselves to compete in the twenty ?rst century economy. Cityscapes have changed.
Projects have redeveloped and reaestheticized waterfronts and industrial zones. Cities have
reviewed and re-presented history and heritage, and they have promoted urban cultures
and entertainments. As Judd and Fainstein (1999, p. 262) point out, together with the growth
of large corporate of?ce functions ‘‘tourism has been a primary force in determining
contemporary urban form, as facilities for tourists have increasingly become interwoven with
other structures’’. This is especially true in world tourism cities (Maitland and Newman,
2009), ?rmly established on global networks – cities that are both leading destinations and
sources of iconic images of city life and of tourism. As competition has intensi?ed, cities have
become increasingly concerned with constructing attractions and symbols that signal their
aspirations and status as they seek to draw in not just tourists but mobile investment or
mobile professionals in search of amenity (Florida, 2002). Cities have refurbished historic
areas; reaestheticized and revalorized former industrial areas for cultural activities,
shopping and loft living; housed iconic attractions in spectacular and monumental new
buildings (Smith, 2007); and sought to host major events: the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao,
and the 1992 Barcelona Olympics are in?uential exemplars. As Fainstein (2007) points out,
one result is to create new shared experiences that are popular. They allow visitors to add to
their cultural capital by consuming an iconic attraction – whether long established like the
Eiffel Tower, or new like the Guggenheim. As visitors do so, they can increasingly easily
produce and share images that witness their experience and ‘‘this provides common
symbols and shared memories within otherwise fragmented cultures’’ (Fainstein, 2007, p. 2).
However, for critics the result of this serial reproduction (Richards and Wilson, 2006) is to
reinforce global processes making cities more standardized. The ubiquity of global retail
and entertainment brands is now echoed by major museums and galleries (Evans, 2003).
Ironically, cities’ attempts to outdo and distinguish themselves from their rivals may reduce
their competitive advantage as they become more alike. Waterfront developments around
the world resemble one another (Jones, 1998); visitors can ?nd the same Mayor’s Trophy
Cabinet of attractions and facilities (convention center, branded hotel, museum, festival
marketplace and so on) in many cities on different continents (Frieden and Sagalyn, 1990);
cities create modern icon buildings that have little association with the location where they
are built (Sudjic, 2005), and they brand their architects more effectively than they do the
place. In short, cities spot a rival that seems to have found a successful formula with
buildings or events - and copy it (Richards and Wilson, 2006).
There are paradoxes here. Cities seek to achieve competitive advantage through
differentiation, but achieve standardization. They do so because they follow familiar
strategies, successful in some places at some times in the past and attempt to out-build and
out-bid their rivals. Yet as they do so, the audience they seek – visitors, of many types – is
changing rapidly and defying conventional categorization. Both tourism and touristic
practices are changing and evolving. Tourism itself cannot any longer be bounded off as a
separate activity, distinguishable from other mobilities, and tourist demands cannot be
clearly separated from those of residents and other users of cities. Hannam (2009) argues
that tourism needs to be understood as part of a wider set of mobilities, whilst Sheller and
Urry (2004) think that mobilities represent a new paradigm within social science, including
the movement of people, information and capital. One consequence is to see tourism, as
conventionally de?ned (World TourismOrganization and United Nations, 1994) as just part of
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a continuum of mobilities that range from the short term to the permanent. For example,
business people and professionals come to cities on temporary assignments or short term
contracts; academics take up short term posts or work on research projects; creatives make
?lms, give artistic performances or devise campaigns. In many ways their activities and
behaviors will overlap those of comparatively well off business and leisure tourists. At lower
levels of the employment hierarchy, migrants take temporary jobs for long hours and lowpay.
They will share similarities with students, in town to study, from a few weeks to a few years,
and with backpacker or drifter tourists, traveling on a low budget and taking temporary jobs
(Fainstein et al., 2003; Maitland and Newman, 2009).
Whilst tourists are changing, so are those who inhabit the city more permanently: tourism
and touristic behavior is coming to be seen as an integral part of daily life. For Franklin and
Crang (2001, pp. 6-7) touristic behaviors and experiences are less and less separated from
daily life by time and space, and indeed tourismhas become ‘‘a signi?cant modality through
which transnational modern life is organized’’. In part, that means residents consume the city
in ways that are similar to tourists:
. . . citizens . . . increasingly make quality of life demands treating their own urban locations as if
tourists, emphasizing aesthetic concerns [emphasis added] (Clark, 2003, p. 292).
They enjoy the same activities as visitors, and consume the new urban culture (Judd, 2003).
In some cases, in large cities, this may be a straightforward case of internal tourism:
residents visit parts of the city that are new to them or which have particular attractions,
especially the central areas. But more broadly, there is a de-differentiation between touristic
practices and other spheres of cultural experience (Lash, 1990; Urry, 1990), and between
tourism and everyday life (Bauman, 1996; Urry, 2002).
The changing tourist experience of cities needs to be considered carefully, and change
should not be exaggerated. Some city tourism goes on much as it has before, especially in
well established destinations. First time visitors still arrive in Istanbul in organized groups,
consume iconic attractions like the Topkapi Palace or Haghia Sophia, adding to their
personal cultural capital in the process; then they move on to their next destination. In
London, new attractions like the London Eye and the Tate Modern art gallery have drawn
millions of visitors. But now, a lot of city tourism is not like this. Many visitors are experienced
users of cities and want to move beyond traditional tourism precincts. Some are highly
mobile and feel a sense of belonging to the place they visit - the cosmopolitan consuming
class (Fainstein et al., 2003) and transnational e´ lites (Rofe, 2003).
The dissolving boundaries between tourists, residents and other city users, and between
touristic and non-touristic behaviors means that it is futile for cities to base their appeal
simply on producing ever more attractions for visitors who are passive consumers. Attempts
to do so mean engaging in an unwinnable arms race that requires ever more investment in
the attempt to produce the ultimate icon. Instead, cities need to consider how tourists
themselves can create distinct experiences through their interplay with the city.
Creative tourism and everyday life
In their in?uential discussion of creativity and tourism, Richards and Wilson (2007, p. 20)
suggest that city tourism is shifting from a reliance on tangible resources like museums and
monuments to intangible resources like lifestyle, image and creativity. They associate this
with a shift in what visitors want – from ‘‘having’’ a holiday through ‘‘doing’’ the sights or
activities towards ‘‘becoming’’ – a focus on the tourism experience and its (potentially)
transformative effects. Similarly, Andersson Cederholm (2009) argues that being rather than
doing is emerging as a tourism value, with being with oneself (in a contemplative
experience), being with other tourists and being with the locals resulting in tourism
experiences. Not all tourists’ wants will be changing in this way, and the shifts are more likely
to affect more practiced visitors – whose numbers are growing.
More people are traveling to cities, and repeat visits are becoming increasingly important, as
they affect what visitors want. Tourism is a process that encourages learning. Learning can
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take place outside formal educational settings – so-called experiential learning – and
tourism practices encourage the re?ection and analysis of experience that promote learning
(Minnaert, 2007). Tourists linger over the tourist gaze, (Urry, 1990) and capture images. New
media and modern devices make it easier than ever to acquire, share and discuss images.
And visitors have long used guidebooks, visitor centers and guides as a means of
structuring their experiences of places. These practices mean that they learn new skills and
come to look at places with ‘‘an increasingly informed eye’’ (Urry, 1999, p. 74). This
knowledge affects their representation of the city and their aesthetic sensibilities (Maitland
and Smith, 2009) - and what they want from the tourist experience. Many visitors are also
returning to cities that they know well (in London, some 60 percent of overseas tourists are
repeat visitors (LDA, 2007)); many of them are frequent visitors. Repeat visitors’ demands
will differ from those of people coming to the city for the ?rst time. Familiar and iconic
attractions such as Big Ben and the Tower of London may have limited appeal as repeat
experiences, and visiting themonce adds little to personal cultural capital when visiting them
again. Thus, increasingly, experienced tourists will learn newperspectives and consumption
demands and, particularly as repeat visitors, they may wish to venture beyond recognized
tourism precincts. As Larsen (2008, p. 21) points out:
Much tourism theory . . . de?nes tourism by contrasting it to home geographies and
‘‘everydayness’’: tourism is what they are not . . . As a result, tourism studies produce ?xed
dualisms between the life of tourism and everyday life: extraordinary and ordinary, pleasure and
boredom, liminality and rules.
Yet experienced travelers may ?nd the exotic in the everyday, in the real life of the city to be
found off the beaten track.
The attraction of the everyday
Authors such as Maitland and Newman (2009) have investigated in detail the appeal of off
the beaten track areas in a series of world tourism cities. This paper focuses on two areas of
London - Islington and Bankside. Both attract large numbers of visitors although neither form
part of traditional tourist itineraries, nor are planned as a tourist precinct. They offer
contrasting aspects of tourism development in new areas. Whilst Islington is well connected
by public transport to central London’s main tourist concentrations, the area is spatially and
functionally separated fromthem. Bankside, by contrast, is contiguous to established tourist
areas in central London, into which the place is increasingly well integrated. Both areas have
experienced regeneration and gentri?cation including up-market housing, of?ce and studio
development, new restaurants, bars and shopping.
Islington is a fashionable residential area that has been gentri?ed for over 30 years. Much of
the historic street patterns and buildings have been retained, although there are mass social
housing blocks of the 1960s and 1970s as well as high value private Georgian and Victorian
streets. Gentri?cation and higher spending residents saw a growth in consumption
opportunities, with newrestaurants, bars and shops, some of themdistinctive or high quality:
Camden Passage antiques market or designer shops on Upper Street, for example. New
development in former industrial buildings created loft apartments and studio developments
whilst retaining the existing street pattern and renovating existing buildings. Tourism policy
in Islington has an uneven history, with no major tourism plan or investment in new iconic
attractions, although two theatres received substantial National Lottery funding for
refurbishment. A local tourism organization, Discover Islington, existed from 1991-2001,
and promoted the area as ‘‘the real London’’. By 1998 the place was attracting some four
million visitors (including day visitors) (Carpenter, 1999) but there was little evidence that this
was a consequence of tourism policy and the area maintained a comparatively low pro?le
(see Maitland and Newman, 2004, for more details).
Bankside by contrast had begun to establish a global image and reputation by the turn of the
millennium. The area lies between long established tourism precincts (Westminster/the
South Bank center, and the London Bridge/Tower Bridge area) and includes two new iconic
attractions – Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and Tate Modern art gallery (also a bene?ciary of
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National Lottery funding). However, like Islington, the key driver of development was not
tourism, and the area was not designed as a tourism precinct. Public authorities responsible
for the area aimed to spread commercial development pressures across the river from the
congested north bank. A key element was improving pedestrian links across the river, and a
new pedestrian bridge creating a route from St Paul’s to Tate Modern was opened in 2002.
New cultural icons and a design makeover (Teedon, 2001) provided an opportunity to attract
new commercial land-uses and upscale residents, whilst retaining much of the traditional
morphology. Remaking the riverfront created new amenity and an attractive location for
mobile professionals, who were seen as essential if London were to maintain its place in the
global economy. The area has continued to develop with more galleries and theatres, and
specialty food shops, bars and restaurants particularly focused around Borough Market.
Warehouses have been converted to loft apartments and there is a signi?cant population of
of?ce workers – some in modern towers, others in smaller spaces in converted warehouses.
Further south, and away from the river, apartment and of?ce conversions appear to have
driven development, often for the creative industries – including architects and designers.
In both areas, tourism has been one part of a wider scheme of regeneration. This process
promotes the areas’ development by bringing in visitors, and helps revalorize and create
interest in what was previously considered unattractive. Yet neither area was designed as a
tourism precinct, and the research discussed below investigates the areas’ appeal for
visitors.
The research is in two parts. Initially, questionnaire surveys of overseas visitors to Islington
and Bankside were conducted to explore their characteristics and the appeal of the area to
them. Visitors in the surveys turned out to differ from overseas visitors to London as a whole,
and could be differentiated from standardized markets. They were older, more experienced
travelers; had generally visited London before; were more likely to be visiting friends or
relations or to be on business; and made use of their connections through friendship and
other networks in deciding on the areas they wanted to visit. These characteristics were
more pronounced in Islington than in Bankside, with its proximity to established tourism
precincts (see Maitland and Newman, 2004, for a full discussion). In both areas visitors liked
the built form of the area and sense of place, along with atmosphere: sense of history, a
cosmopolitan feel, a sense that the area was ‘‘not touristy’’. They also enjoyed opportunities
for consumption – the range of shops, bars, cafes, and restaurants. Major tourist attractions
were rarely mentioned, which was true even of Bankside with the popular and well known
Tate Modern and Shakespeare’s Globe, as well as a range of other tourist attractions. This
lack of reference to the places seems surprising but is borne out by VisitLondon surveys of
the wider area of the South Bank, which show that despite the wide range of cultural and
other attractions, the most popular activity is going for a stroll, followed by visiting a bar, cafe´
or restaurant (VisitLondon, 2005).
For these visitors at least, the appeal of the areas seems to lay in atmosphere and their sense
of place and, apparently mundane elements of vernacular architecture, as well as shops and
cafes, may constitute attractions. These initial ?ndings were explored in more depth through
qualitative research. Semi-structured interviews lasting from 25 to 45 minutes were carried
out with overseas visitors selected on a convenience sampling basis in central locations in
Islington and Bankside. Visitors came from a wide range of countries from around the world
including Western, Central and Eastern Europe, North and South America, Australasia, India
and Africa, but interviews were conducted in English. Their ages ranged from20s to 60s and
most were in professional occupations. A series of themes emerge from the interviews and
three are discussed here (see Maitland, 2008, for a fuller discussion of other aspects). Text
from interview transcripts is shown within quotation marks.
First, visitors perceived both Islington and Bankside as ‘‘not touristy’’: not places that had
been designed to attract visitors. Instead they were seen as ‘‘out of the way’’ and ‘‘off the
beaten path’’, quieter and ‘‘less crowded’’. They were explicitly contrasted with other parts
of London that were seen as tourist hotspots: Covent Garden, Piccadilly Circus and
Leicester Square or the area around Buckingham Palace, for example. Respondents also
compared the zones with tourism precincts in other cities, such as the Champs Elysees in
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Paris. The perceived contrast is unsurprising in the case of Islington, but more unexpected in
Bankside. Visitors could be aware of or indeed actually visit a series of tourist attractions and
still maintain their perception of the area as ‘‘not touristy’’. Most interviewees on Bankside
were aware of Tate Modern and Shakespeare’s Globe and planned at least to take a look at
them. One respondent proved to have visited almost every attraction promoted in the Tourist
Information Center’s literature, but still enjoyed the area because of ‘‘the out of the way
places where there aren’t so many people catering to the tourists’’. People recognized the
‘‘big touristy attractions’’ but these icons did not dominate perceptions of the area, which
was seen as ‘‘quieter’’ with ‘‘places where you can take your time’’ away from tourist
hotspots.
Second, the built environment and a sense of place were frequently mentioned and often
described in some detail. Whilst for some visitors the appeal of the area was simply that it
was ‘‘nice – we like the buildings’’, others seemed much more observant and discussed
what they saw in considerable detail. Small aspects of vernacular buildings attracted
comment – windows, lintels ‘‘the chimney stack on a building down that alley’’; ‘‘the windows
of those shops, how they are designed, how they do it’’. Architecture could be appraised in
detail.
‘‘This part of the city, well, they’re doing construction to make it more modern but it looks like
there’s older buildings from the late 19th Century, early 20th Century . . . They haven’t
renamed them at all or tried to keep them in a current state. They’re just trying to upkeep the
brick and the whatnot from a lot of years ago which is nice’’.
Interviewees saw the physical qualities of place as embedding history and the
contemporary nature of the city – ’’there is a mix . . . it’s multicultural . . . a mix of people
. . . so in the culture there should be the old part and the new part of London’’.
Most comments focused on the vernacular, the everyday, and the ordinary buildings in the
areas rather than on icons like the Globe or Tate Modern.
Third, everyday life was at the heart of the regions’ appeal. Visitors were often acutely
observant of the mix of activities that were taking place; they noted that these were areas
where Londoners lived and worked, and this was crucial to how the places were valorized.
The observations were accurate and unromantic. Commenting on Bankside, one
respondent noted the mix of of?ces, studios and apartment, and the proximity to the
?nancial district and remarked that ‘‘it’s nice that you can live close to where you work’’ but
quickly added that to do so ‘‘you’ve got to be rich – more than rich’’. Islington was liked but
seen as ‘‘a high class community’’ and ‘‘pricey’’. Still, respondents felt that in these areas
they could meet local people and chat over coffee or a drink, and that the area was more
relaxed, and ‘‘you are not actually an outsider’’. This perception was more common in
Islington, but in Bankside too the presence of Londoners was crucial to the experience of the
area. In part, this was a ?aneur’s enjoyment of observation: ‘‘liking to see people going about
their daily tasks’’ or ‘‘normal Londoners just doing their thing’’. For more than one respondent
there was pleasure to be had in visiting Tesco (the dominant UK supermarket chain): the
opportunity to observe ordinary people, and what they bought made it ‘‘one of our favorite
places’’. Under the gaze of experienced travelers, mundane work routines took on new
signi?cance. For a North American couple, one highlight of their visit to Bankside was
peering into of?ce windows and observing workers typing at their computers – ‘‘you can’t
miss this’’. The recurring theme was that everyday life was both interesting in itself, and also
a marker of the ‘‘real London’’. It meant that for visitors, even Bankside was not experienced
as dominated by its big attractions, but as an area in which the city’s daily life went on. That
made it more interesting: ‘‘museums are museums and they’re all interesting, but museums
[could be] anywhere and I like to see what the city is actually about’’. The words of one
respondent speak for many: ‘‘tourist spots are always very generic, right, look at the places
where tourist are in any city you feel like, oh, I’m just one of the them and I’m just doing the
typical tourist thing but if you, somehow, end up in the place where the locals go, it feels like a
more authentic experience somehow’’.
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Discussion
These ?ndings suggest three themes about everyday life and creative tourism experiences.
First, built environment and sense of place are important. The morphology of the areas, with
traditional and intricate street patterns and buildings of varied age, type and style is
appealing, seen as distinctive - despite the insertion of new icons in Bankside. A
combination of gentri?ed cityscape and consumption opportunities is attractive for visitors
when combined with the presence of local people going about their everyday lives. This
?nding provides empirical evidence to support ideas about the way tourism mixes into the
fabric of the city (Terhorst, van de Ven and Deben, 2003). Observing everyday life is
interesting in itself, but perhaps more importantly, it acts as a marker or signi?er that the area
is part of the real city and not simply a show put on for visitors. As one respondent said, ‘‘it
doesn’t feel arti?cial . . . you don’t feel like you’re in Disneyland’’. The exotic is in the eye of the
beholder, and everyday life can be full of exotic signs (Urry, 1995). Particularly for
experienced travelers, often themselves living in large cities, this sense of being in a distinct,
real, unbranded area can be a sought after experience. As Till (2009, p. 139), drawing on
Lefebre, says, the everyday is not simply ordinary – ‘‘rather it is the site that contains the
extraordinary within the ordinary if one is prepared to look’’.
Second, the areas are not dominated by iconic buildings or strong historical or cultural
narratives, or clearly established routes through which they are consumed (despite some
considerable efforts at placemaking in the case of Bankside (Teedon, 2001)). This
con?guration frees visitors to construct their own narratives about the areas, and to explore
them in their own way, to exercise their imaginations – to be creative. The ordinary and
everyday qualities of the areas mean they are heterogeneous (Edensor, 2001) and open to
different experiences, different interpretations. As Raban (1974) points out, individuals
construct their soft city from the streets they visit and those they imagine, and this
representation is as real as the hard city shown on maps. People create different soft cities
and they can do this in any part of the city, but it is easier in areas that do not impose their
own identities and allow the imagination freer rein. Being with the locals (Andersson
Cederholm, 2009) can include a chat over coffee, but can also encompass imagining what
their lives are like. One respondent, discussing Islington, felt: ‘‘you can ?nd really, really nice
walks just watching the houses and sometimes I just imagine how they look inside, and
sometimes I see the people wearing different clothes and I think the people how is their life
how is their work in the house’’.
Third, notions of the real London, and the everyday city, are nonetheless elusive concepts.
Whilst it is true that London residents live and work in both areas, and that everyday life of the
city goes on there, they are the real city only in its middle class and gentri?ed guise. Visitors
to Islington (like its middle class residents) evidently navigate the area to avoid its often
unattractive social housing, which is never mentioned in interviews. If the real London is
where most of its inhabitants live and work, then it is not to be found in Islington and
Bankside, but in un-gentri?ed inner areas and in the suburbs and suburban centers of outer
London. Yet visitation to outer town centers like Croydon and Bromley is limited. Despite the
fascination for real life poverty evidenced by the growth of slum tourism in the developing
world (Gentleman, 2006), there is little sign that London’s poor areas like Dagenham or the
Aylesbury Estate at Elephant and Castle attract leisure visitors. Visitors to Bankside and
Islington knowthat they are visiting a particular version of the real London, in which the locals
they see are well off – ‘‘yuppies, maybe’’ – and in which shops and houses are expensive.
They creatively construct a London that is an idealized city – one that can be experienced in
places that emerge like islands in the sea of the modern commercial London, which is
increasingly homogenized and branded for consumption by visitors and inhabitants alike.
They relish those real places with their intricate built form, combination of old and new
buildings, and their interesting shops, cafes and bars, where one can watch locals go about
their everyday lives and enjoy a stimulating metropolitan buzz, along with the feel of an old
place. In this respect, they are like the middle classes that inhabit such gentri?ed areas.
They too exercise creativity in their interpretation of the place, to construct an appealing
experience. As Butler (2003, pp. 2374-476) says of Islington, the city is ‘‘a global space
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servicing the international service-class diaspora’’ and caters for the well-off – yet it has ‘‘an
aura of inclusivity and this is a large part of its appeal’’ to its residents.
Conclusions
Thetransformationof cities for tourismconsumption creates commodi?edlandscapes. But as
Gilbert andHancock(2006) argue, thischangealsocreatestheopportunityfor reactiontosuch
commodi?cation. Visitorscannegotiatenewpathways andnovel interpretations of thecity ina
creative interchange with the place, its history, urban formandeveryday life. This paper starts
by identifying paradoxes in city tourism: attempts to achieve distinctiveness can lead to
standardization, and policymakers are following familiar tourismstrategies whilst tourismand
tourism practices are rapidly changing and evolving. In these circumstances, conventional
attempts to distinguish tourists fromresidents in terms of time anddistance - tourists are in the
city only temporarily and have traveled some distance to get there - seem unhelpful in
understanding the interaction between cities and those who use them. It is better to think in
terms of a range of city users with a series of demands, behaviors and practices which re?ect
their widely different incomes, power andurban preferences. Theconsumption demands and
behaviors of some visitors will overlap with those of some residents and will help shape cities.
Exploring the perception and practices of visitors to areas not designed as tourismprecincts
helps provide partial resolution to these paradoxes. Some visitors deliberately seek out
everyday life and the real city. They want to go beyond ‘‘enclavic tourist spaces’’ created for
them, and ?nd ‘‘heterogeneous tourist spaces’’ – ‘‘multi-purpose spaces in which a wide
range of activities and people co-exist’’ (Edensor, 2001, p. 64). These areas are softer and
allow personal narratives to be created around them. Visitors value the everyday and the
presence of local people as markers of authenticity, and indicators that they are in the real
city. They use off the beaten track areas in a creative way, constructing their own narratives
and relishing everyday scenes - which can seemmore extraordinary than a spectacular icon
obviously planned for tourist consumption or a heritage building already familiar from
countless media images. As they enjoy the areas, visitors contribute to the renewal and
rebranding of neighborhoods and broader processes of urban change, development and
gentri?cation, which in turn feed through to the city’s image, and what it has to offer. Such
areas are not comprehensively planned for tourists, and whilst public policy can have
important in?uences in attracting visitors, in this case they are largely unintended. Exploring
tourists and gentrifying residents can have convivial links and contribute to the creation and
re-creation of upscale areas enjoyed by visitors and locals.
Such areas provide a means for cities to cater for a desirable niche market of practiced
travelers by offering an experience that is distinctive because it is everyday. This practice
allows cities to avoid the zero sum game of competition to provide the newest gallery or the
latest architectural icon or the most prestigious event as a lure for visitors. In those
competitions, there can be only one winner, and there is a constant battle to achieve the
greatest prize. The distinctiveness of the everyday provides a potential means for cities to
compete through differentiation and to avoid the high costs that such attractions and events
incur. Estimates of the costs to London of staging the 2012 Olympics are £9.3 billion ($15.4
billion). Although the bene?ts to the political leadership in London government are clear, as
opportunities are offered to connect with their followers (Newman, 2007), the bene?ts to
London tourism are less certain.
However, identifying the attraction of new tourism areas does raise new dilemmas. These
issues revolve around the stability of the mix of characteristics that make them attractive.
Promotion and marketing of cities is relentless, yet once areas are advertised and promoted
as undiscovered and off the beaten track they are likely to loose much of their appeal for
many visitors. Can tourism marketers restrain themselves and ?nd new and subtler ways of
making potential visitors aware of these places? And are we in any case seeing an evolution
of areas, in which visitors most concerned with exploration will seek out less discovered
parts of the city, in some version of Butler’s famous tourism area lifecycle (Butler, 1980)?
There are some indications that exploring visitors in London are seeking out newer
gentrifying areas like Shoreditch and Hoxton, and may be moving even further a?eld. More
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research is needed to improve our understanding of howvisitors use areas of the city outside
of recognized tourism precincts and how this experience interacts with the dynamics of their
development.
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About the author
Robert Maitland is Director of the Centre for Tourism Research at the University of
Westminster. He is an authority on tourism in cities, in particular world cities and national
capitals. His other research interests focus on tourism and everyday life, new tourist areas in
London, and social tourism. Robert Maitland can be contacted at: R.A.Maitland@
westminster.ac.uk
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