Tourism-related urban regeneration in two UK city regions.

Tourism is widely seen as a tool for urban regeneration and many old industrial cities in the UK incorporate tourism into their regeneration plans. This study explores the people and organisations involved in tourism-related urban regeneration, including their roles and relationships. The research uses a critical realistic perspective and three theoretical approaches: the regulation, policy network and structure-agency approaches. It explores two urban waterfront regeneration areas in the UK with significant tourism dimensions: The Quays in Greater Manchester and Newcastle Gateshead Quayside. Research data for these two cases were collected using semi-structured interviews, document analysis and participant observation. The study findings indicate that in the case study areas tourism had more of a complementary and supplementary role rather than the lead role. The relationships between the people and organisations involved in tourism-related regeneration reflected resource dependency and they were often conflicting as well as collaborative. There were gaps and a lack of coordination between the actors involved in tourism marketing, tourism development, and urban regeneration. The tourism-related urban regeneration processes were heavily influenced by political and economic structures at the macro level, but the individual actors still exercised personal agency through their individual leadership, personality and commitment. The individual actors played important parts in building the inter-organisational relationships and in achieving tourism-related regeneration. The study explores tourism-related urban regeneration using a multi-level conceptual framework that connects the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels, and also using a policy network approach that identifies gaps in coordinated policy making. These helped to advance understanding of the degree of integration between the actors and policy networks associated with tourism and with wider urban regeneration. The study also highlights the multifaceted and relational structure-agency relations involved in tourism-related urban regeneration.