Research On Tourist Service Area Of Historical And Cultural Towns

Ancient town tourism destination development has become a positive economic policy option in cultural and historical towns after the reform and opening up. It has been nearly 30 years since then. Although a lot of effort has been devoted to using cultural resources within ancient towns, the important function of the tourist service area by the town entrance is always overlooked. As the transition and transfer between ancient towns and new-built areas, its character in carrier of cultural identity and economic potential is far from being tapped. The single development model in the past used to consider the tourist service area as a simple "door" of the whole scenic. Thus embarrassing strategy limits its positive role in stimulating urban regeneration in local areas, which ignores its ablity in attracting lots of people and gigantic capital investment.In order to solve this issue, this thesis tries to use culture oriented strategies to guide the building process of tourist service area. By taking advantages of culture resources as a core elements in urban development, the strategies not only focus on the continuation of historical context, geographical characteristics of ancient town, but also stimulate local’s vitality, promote their economic development and make a contribution to urban renaissance.Plenty of methods are adopted to accumulate enough samples and catch the details about planning process, including literature retrieval, field investigation, case comparison, project practise and so on. After that, some effective methods, approaches, and implementation framework are worked out as references to guide similar development projects for the future.Chapter 1 IntroductionIn this part, it fistly identifies the backgroud, purposes and value of the research. Then the scope of objects are clarified. It is followed by the summary of relevant theories such as conservation of ancient towns, cultural-led regeneration and tourism development. What’s more, in order to ensure the research’s rigour, methodology and structure have been worked out to guide further study.Chapter 2Based on a series investigation and comparative analysis of typical tourism service areas in historical and cultural town, this part sorts out the problems and contradictions encountered in the development process. At the same time, a lot of efforts are spent to find out the underlying reasons which lead to the differentiation in many service areas, including the conditions of establishment, the components and essential functions, the way of streamline organization, the plan layout and development model. It presents a comprehensive summary of the current domestic practices within experience and lessons in the past.Chapter 3New approaches are proposed in the service area on the basis of the past experience of "culture-oriented design strategy", which has played an important role in urban regeneration. They can be divided into five aspects:Space construction, function development, sequence arrangement, landmark building, and cultural events marketing. All of these describe how culture resources could guide the design and planning.Chapter 4Finally, the construction of tourist service area of Fotang ancient town in Yiwu was addressed as the example of the application of Culture Oriented Strategy in China. It focuses on how to implement the srategies in practial project, which consists of the following steps: the assessment of cutural resources, culture mapping, goal setting, practice planning, monitoring feedback.Chapter 5Summarize the research contents and limitations. Prospect further research.