A study on the impact of cultural tourism on urban landscape with reference to the city of Kandy

Abstract

Cultural tourism is a vast industry that thrive inculturally significant cities in the world. It mainly focusses on the cultural and heritage value of a particular place which have the capacity to attract tourists. The cultural cities have changed theirforms and patterns of living in a verity of ways for the purpose of fulfilling the requirements of these tourists. Kandy is onesuch popular cultural cityandrecognizedas a world heritage city by the UNESCO in 1988. The adaptations of the inner cityof Kandy for the purpose of cultural tourism industry has altered the pattern of the society as well as the built landscape. For this study, the urban landscape is understood as a combination of physical and social elements of the urban environment. The impacts from these adaptations have changed the mosaic of theurban landscape drastically. Of several factors which are affecting such changes of the urban landscape due to the cultural tourism industry, four factors; environment, services, events and society were identified asrelevant to Kandythrough a pilot study. Themain study is focused on the impacts of those factors on urban landscape in Kandy with reference to the cultural tourism industry. The data and information were collected through interviews with different resource persons involved in the cultural tourism industry as well as the photographs of the city of Kandy. The analysis proves that the environment and events in the field of cultural tourism have a positive impact on the urban landscape in Kandy, whilst in terms of services and societyreflect a negative impact on the urban landscape of Kandy. A proper balancing of these factors are required for the sustainable continuance of the cultural tourism industry in Kandy. The negatively impacted factors must be identified properly to give the necessary solutions to minimize the negativity and positive aspects must be strengthen.