Resilience on Economic Transition of Post-industrial Cities: Evaluation on Industrial Heritage Tourism Potential in Tianjin Based on Spatial Analysis

Current studies on urban economic resilience focus more on overall evaluation rather than specific economic sectors, thus lack effective directions on implementation. As for post-industrial cities, Industrial heritage tourism(IHT) is one effective strategy to make use of large amount of industrial heritage(IH) during social-economic transition. Tianjin, one of the most important cradle of Chinese modern industry, is also facing new challenges in the era of “New Norm”. The government is promoting IHT as one important increasing point of urban economy, and the potential of ITH makes great contribution to urban resilience of post-industrial cities. As tourism industry highly relied on spatial factors, in this paper, IHT in Tianjin are evaluated based on spatial analysis to examine to what extent IHT could contribute to urban resilience. To be specific, based on mode of tourism potential evaluation, two aspects are focused, namely, inner resources and outer support using GIS platform and polimetrics.

The former includes spatial patterns, cluster effect and spatial network. Firstly, the spatial patterns based on industrial types are explored through GIS platform using data of Tianjin IH Preservation Planning and that offered by the tourism sector. Secondly, the cluster effects are analyzed using NNI methods to identify the extent of IHT attractions affecting each other. Thirdly, the spatial network is analyzed to measure accessibility of each IHT attraction. The outer support evaluation mainly includes the policy intensity. These policies will be valuated according to their administrative level.

From the analysis above, the potential of IHT in Tianjin could be revealed. The results are also compared with Beijing and Shanghai which are more experienced on IHT development, to clarify the extent of IHT coordinating with urban planning and its contribution to urban resilience. The result could also be used to evaluate the current development problem.