So pleased to be accepted to be part of this special issue with Dr Brendan Paddision
Thank you to the editors Raymond Rastegar, Freya Higgins Desbiolles and Lisa Ruhanen.
We hope to see this in print in early August 2022
Tourism policy, spatial justice and COVID-19: Lessons from a tourist-historic city
In many historic and post-industrial cities, tourism is often positioned as an important component of urban regeneration. Yet, the promise of sustainability and social transformation are often empty as policymakers concentrate on sustaining tourism over supporting greater social, economic, and environmental sustainability. Furthermore, the pandemic has drawn attention to the unsustainable nature of the neoliberal model of tourism engagement. Due to the paucity of research exploring spatial injustice in urban tourism, this study examines the impact policymaking and governance structures have on urban destinations and the inequalities this creates. Drawing on Edward Soja’s approach to Lefebvre’s The Right to the City (1968), this research explores how lessons learnt during the pandemic in the tourist-historic city of York, UK, could transform tourism in historic urban spaces. Taking an interpretive case study approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with leading stakeholders to understand the spatial dimensions of the lived experience of policymaking. The hopeful signs emerging from York’s response to the pandemic demonstrates how communities can reclaim voice to build sustainable and purposeful models of engagement. This paper contributes to our understanding by demonstrating the transforming potential that future policymaking could have for reducing the negative impacts of tourism.
Paddison, B., & Hall, J. (2022). Tourism policy, spatial justice and COVID-19: Lessons from a tourist-historic city. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2022.2095391
Dr Jenny Hall 
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