Water Tourism in Ljubljana

Water Tourism in Ljubljana

In capitalist cities, tourists are usually regarded as revenue-generating subjects who are disruptive and should be disconnected from everyday life. Tourists and citizens tend not to engage with each other. But tourism has the potential to create spaces not only for tourists but also local residents, and for both. One challenge is to create an active boundary between them, an area that is connecting and also separating, dependent on the way they benefit from each other. In this project, the potential of tourism is used to improve the sewage and transport infrastructure and to heighten the use of the river edge in the city of Ljubljana. In this new area, citizens and tourists interact with each other in a number of productive ways along the river edge. This project experiments with the direct relationship between the accretion of tourism and the accretion of infrastructure. Infrastructural systems have to become bigger, because the city has to deal with more people, but tourism also has to lead to better infrastructural conditions for locals. Therefore, each addition of tourist-oriented programs has to come along with the addition of a more local-oriented program (or the expansion of an existing one). The embankment hosts activities for locals and tourists as the in-between of the river and the historic city centre.

Date

2005

Language

English

Output

Urban design proposal

Author

Günter Gassner

Keywords

Spatial practices

Spatial imaginaries

Commodification

Drawing

Heritage