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Governing the festival city. Exploring means of citizen participation in mega-event planning, study case on Edinburgh festivals

Kolodziejczyk, Albert (2021) Governing the festival city. Exploring means of citizen participation in mega-event planning, study case on Edinburgh festivals. Bachelor thesis.

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Abstract

Mega-events are usually connected with increased tourism. Especially reoccurring events can have a deep impact on the hosting community due to overtourism. Participatory planning is recognised as a method to increase community resilience to overtourism. This qualitative research aims at exploring citizen participation in mega-event planning. It is based on a single case study on Edinburgh Festivals. Firstly, it theoretically explores the concept of mega-events and outlies three categories of negative externalities: disruptions, festivalisation and commodification of public space. Next, it uses right to the city framework to predict that increased pressure on the residents can lead to a formation of social movement accommodated by civil society organisations demanding greater citizen power. The ladder of participation in tourist development serves as a benchmark to evaluate different levels of engagement. Based on the series of in-depth interviews, academic and non-academic literature, this work presents the evolution of collaborative planning in Edinburgh. First, it identifies key stakeholders, concluding that city cousin holds the most power and the residents the least, mostly due to lack of coherent representation. Next, the effects of negative externalities are confirmed. Civil society organisations are found to be crucial in accommodating the growing grassroots movement. Finally, that movement is found to create enough pressures to influence the council to engage in deeper participatory planning initiative. Confirming existing theory or right to the city, citizen participation deepens with an increase of pressure as a result of grassroots movements. Finally, referring to The ladder of participation in tourist development, it identifies the current level of participation as interaction.

Item Type: Thesis (Bachelor)
Degree programme: Human Geography and Planning
Supervisor: Dijk, T. van
Date Deposited: 14 Jul 2021 12:46
Last Modified: 14 Jul 2021 12:46
URI: https://frw.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/3565

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