Municipal strategies for protecting the sense of place through public space management in historic cities: A case study of Amsterdam

Over the last decades, the exponential growth of city tourism has led to economic, spatial, social, and cultural changes in historic city centres. Residential areas are turning into monofunctional tourist destinations, and consequently, activities are changing to temporary practices. Although dynamism is an integral part of urban life, these changes can destroy the emotional connection between people and the place, hampering the creation of narratives of self-identity and the sense of place. This research investigates which municipal strategies effectively manage the changes in historic city centres to protect the sense of place. It uses tourism and heritage management in the historic city centre of Amsterdam as a case study. Using a policy analysis, current strategies in Amsterdam city centre were compared with the principles in related international conventions applicable by the Netherlands. Coding and analysing the documents and comparing them with the results of expert interviews on actual measures taken showed that international conventions recommend soft instruments towards urban heritage management by taking participatory and multidisciplinary approaches, whereas tourism and heritage management in Amsterdam mainly uses hard instruments. A tendency towards taking participatory approaches to increase the commitment of the residents to the city was observed.