Suburban Heritage as Tourist Attraction?

• Main Author: Haanpää, Minni
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: tourism; heritage; suburb; Korkalovaara; /dk/atira/pure/person/fieldofscience2010/5/20/4; Tourism research; Rovaniemi; Lapland
• Online Access: https://research.ulapland.fi/fi/publications/5c8f3f7a-2487-4d1d-ad3d-de7999eadbea

Suburb-based housing was one of the developments to go together in the with urbanization and industrialization of Finland after WW II. This presentation focuses on suburban cultural heritage and if and how it can be part of a tourism offering of a destination. It is based on an on-going research project “Stories from Korkalovaara” which investigates Northern suburb as home and Lappish suburb culture through different time periods. Korkalovaara in Rovaniemi is a copy of a typical Finnish suburb, in a miniature size: it’s an after WW II built, blockhouse intensive area separated from the city centre where there are around 6 000 residents. Following the national development currents of the suburbs, Korkalovaara has been on the path of decline during the recent decade(s) and it has gained a reputation on being somewhat undesirable area to live in. Rovaniemi is a popular tourism destination in Finnish Lapland with 440 000 annual tourist overnights in 2021. The city is well-known by its main marketed attraction: Santa Claus. Tourism activity and development are concentrated in certain areas and these have their own established attractions and activities. Yet, these current forms of tourism leave out a lot of potentialities. In the project we investigate if a mundane and even unwanted “urban periphery” could be a space of leisure for locals and tourists. We ask: how and through what kind of mediation could the stories of the people and the neighborhood be told as part of local tourism offering?