engleski

The dichotomies of local tourism and cultural development in the city of Dubrovnik

This chapter aimed to examine and illustrate the imbalanced, highly unsustainable patterns of local development in the city of Dubrovnik. These patterns interrelate two of the dominant local features: culture as a strong identity marker and asset, and tourism as the (only) dominant industry on which the whole local economy is dependent. These two fields are interrelated, yet the analysis undertaken for this chapter clearly suggests that tourism has overtaken development perspectives and has exceeded the limits of sustainability. This situation leads to deterioration of local cultural fabric, endangering the local lifestyle in its shape and existence, and conditioning local cultural production with the tourist demand. Several policy documents have been created and large-scale European cultural projects have been undertaken with the objective to provide new approaches and perspectives for reinforcing sustainability in the local tourism and culture development. The lack of follow through and adequate policy actions indicates that the local government has low interest in putting in place policy initiatives and responses that will systematically endorse and foster sustainability. In that line, it is urgent that Dubrovnik establishes coherent and consistent governance and management modes in tourism that will correlate and correspond with the city’s cultural character. These governance and management modes should involve local residents and all community groups in order to create sustainability through a synergy of local residents’ well-being, healthy culture, unspoiled nature/protection of resources, economic health, and optimum satisfaction of both residents and visitors.

local tourism ; cultural development ; the city of Dubrovnik ; (un)sustainability

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