Heritage Transformation and Sustainable Urban Tourism: Formation of a Hybrid Cultural Tourism Space at Urumqi’s International Grand Bazaar

Abstract

Under urban renewal and tourism development, traditional bazaars that continue to support commerce, livelihoods, and everyday local use face tensions among cultural continuity, tourism development, and business returns. This case study of the Erdaoqiao–Xinjiang International Grand Bazaar in Urumqi, China, adopts a qualitatively driven mixed-methods design integrating historical and policy documents, two phases of field observation, 60 core interviews and field conversations, and surveys of visitors and two merchant groups. Tourism has not simply replaced traditional commerce; rather, existing commercial networks, livelihood practices, and local uses have undergone cumulative reconfiguration alongside tourism consumption, cultural display, and governance requirements. Local culture enters the tourism space through cultural translation involving selection, recoding, media transformation, and organized presentation, increasing visibility while risking compressed local distinctiveness. In the sample, 85.96% of visitors were “very satisfied” overall, whereas 46.91% of valid responses in the general-merchant survey rated that year’s business conditions as “poor”, showing that visitor experience and merchant performance are not interchangeable development indicators. This study conceptualizes the resulting hybrid cultural tourism space as relational and treats sustainability as ongoing coordination across cultural, economic, socio-spatial, and governance dimensions rather than an achieved outcome.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Sustainability, 2026 · DOI ↗