City Stories

Abstract

Scholarship on urban tourism has addressed the multiple ways in which visual images and narrative texts, especially impressions by outsiders, play a vital role in shaping perceptions of place in cities. These perceptions are shaped both by civic boosters and also by critics and reformers, highlighting the complex process by which city officials, journalists, travel writers, and photographers create and sell certain images of cities that have the potential to promote renewal, growth, and allure but just as often evoke decay, devastation, and decline. Consideration of the official scripts of urban revitalization alongside narratives of fear and ruin allows scholars to flesh out the complex process by which place-making happens and through which residents and toursist alike create their perceptions of urban life.