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Towards a theory of sustainability,sustainable development andsustainable tourism: Beijing's hutongneighbourhoods and sustainabletourismCharles Samuel Johnstona

a aSchool of Hospitality and TourismAUT University, Private Bag92006, Auckland, 1001 New ZealandPublished online: 19 Sep 2013.

To cite this article: Charles Samuel Johnston (2014) Towards a theory of sustainability, sustainabledevelopment and sustainable tourism: Beijing's hutong neighbourhoods and sustainable tourism,Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 22:2, 195-213, DOI: 10.1080/09669582.2013.828731

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Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 2014Vol. 22, No. 2, 195–213, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2013.828731

Towards a theory of sustainability, sustainable developmentand sustainable tourism: Beijing’s hutong neighbourhoodsand sustainable tourism

Charles Samuel Johnston∗

School of Hospitality and Tourism, AUT University, Private Bag 92006, Auckland 1001,New Zealand

(Received 18 August 2012; accepted 24 May 2013)

There has been some discussion about the relationship between sustainable develop-ment and sustainable tourism, and the need to further explore the relationships betweentheory and practice. Using grounded theory, this paper reviews new and existing re-search on Beijing’s historic hutong neighbourhoods in relation to the housing, heritageconservation and hutong tourism sectors. Results indicate that sustainability as a the-oretical category has at least five extant properties. Sustainability is relative, dynamic,normative, contestable and reflexive. Sustainability is relative in the sense that pro-ponents of different sectors will construct it differently. It is dynamic in the relatedsense that this construction changes over time. Sustainability is normative because it isvalue-laden; one important ideal being that a sector should strive to become ever moresustainable. Proponents of different sectors will assert their values, hence sustainabilityis contestable. Finally, sustainability is reflexive in that the normative ideal may notoccur, thus the sustainability of a sector will be reflexive of the nature of its evolvingreal world development. The paper explores the substance of these properties, togetherwith a review of the several stages through which hutong tourism has passed in its short20-year life, including the emergence of governance systems.

Keywords: hutong tourism; sustainability; grounded theory; Beijing; housing; heritage

Introduction

The site of Beijing has been inhabited for several thousand years but the current morphologyemerged when Kubla Khan constructed his capital city there in about 1270 (Figure 1). Smallresidential streets were known as “hutong”. Originally meaning “water well” in Mongolian,by Khan’s Yuan dynasty the word meant “route to the well” (Li & Zhao, 2001). Houses theresidents constructed were “siheyuan”, quadrangle-shaped with interior courtyards. Theseranged from tiny dwellings to the 9999-room Imperial Palace (Yin & Gao, 2004). Aesthet-ically, Yin and Gao (2004, p. 9) assert that siheyuan were harmonious complexes in which“people feel nature comes to an end and art appears”. The demise of the Qing Empire, chaosin Beijing in the first half of the 20th century and Socialist housing policies through the1980s caused a century of decline to the hutong neighbourhoods, creating a housing crisis.Never having had the heritage status of Beijing’s imperial buildings, widespread demolitionoccurred in the name of development. As neighbourhoods disappeared, public reaction topreserving a centuries-old way of life emerged. Hutong tourism was born at this time ofdestruction. Its inventor, Xu Yong, had considered old Beijing an urban masterpiece (inter-view, June 2006). The hutong tour, composed of a visit to an attraction site, a ride through

∗Email: charles.johnston@aut.ac.nz

C© 2013 Taylor & Francis

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Figure 1. Beijing – old and new – showing hutong neighbourhoods. Base map source: Arlingtonand Lewisohn (1935). No scale in original.

the narrow lanes and a visit to a siheyuan resident, quickly became popular. The sight offoreigners riding in bicycle rickshaws down the narrow lanes, impressed by the authenticold Beijing way of life, astonished residents who wanted to escape to a modern apartment assoon as possible. Contestation between the views of hutong neighbourhoods as dilapidatedhomes versus treasured heritage has been mostly resolved during the past decade. Hutongtourism has continued to expand both in location and in form. Originally mainly in thenorth-western district of Shichahai, hutong tourism has lately spread throughout the oldcity due to expansion of the use of siheyuan as resources for leisure and tourism.

According to a content analysis of issues 1 to 15 of the Journal of Sustainable Tourism(Lu & Nepal, 2009, p. 11), 84% the published papers in the journal have been empirical(employing quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods) but only 16% have been theoreticalor conceptual in nature. This work adds to the latter group of papers. Its initial aim was toattempt to answer the question: is sustainable tourism (ST) the same concept as sustainabledevelopment (SD)? Such a question had been discussed conceptually by Hunter (1995)and Sharpley (2000), who had both asserted they were not. Hunter (p. 163) suggested STand SD had “areas of mutual concern” but also areas where the concerns differed. Sharpley(p. 14) suggested that SD was holistic while ST had a “product-centred perspective”.

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Definitively answering this question remains a residual objective of this paper. Its main goalis to write a theoretical paper about the properties of sustainability using data from Beijing’shutong neighbourhoods. During the research, it became clear that several properties ofsustainability could be discerned. Examining hutong tourism in relation to two othersectors – housing and heritage – indicated that sustainability is (1) relative, (2) dynamic,(3) normative, (4) contestable and (5) reflexive. For earlier case studies of hutong tourism,see Wang (1997), du Cros, Bauer, Lo, and Song (2005) and Gu and Ryan (2008, 2012).

Grounded theory (GT) underpinned the writing of this paper (Glaser & Strauss, 1967).GT is a comparative method for generating theory from data. An overview of the researchprocess now follows.

Hutong tourism in relation to housing was identified as a research problem during avisit to Beijing in late 2004, when demolition of hutong neighbourhoods had begun towane but was still occurring. Field research was undertaken during five subsequent visitsto Beijing, the latest in June/July 2011. Present and former students (acknowledged below)have been invaluable as interpreters and translators. Guan xi (Chinese social networking)has been used in combination with GT’s techniques of theoretical sampling and the constantcomparative method to identify informants and collect data on the three sectors discussed.The goal of theoretical sampling, in combination with the constant comparative method, isto reach a state of saturation; this occurs when further interviewing and analysis fails to findnew knowledge. To obtain a reasonable degree of saturation concerning housing, heritageand hutong tourism issues in relation to sustainability, the following types of people havebeen interviewed: university academics and government officials at different levels, whosejobs/areas of expertise involved housing, heritage, tourism or urban planning; directorsof museums which contain exhibits on hutong neighbourhoods; housing developers andreal estate agents; current and former hutong residents; apartment residents; multiple-generation Beijing residents; immigrants to Beijing; people who had been displaced bydemolition; people who had initiated demolition so they could live in apartments; advocatesof conserving hutong neighbourhoods for heritage reasons; owners of both tourism andnon-tourism businesses who had purchased and renovated siheyuan so their company couldbe housed in heritage premises; people who lived in neighbourhoods impacted by hutongtourism; employees of government-owned travel organisations, travel agents who organisedhutong tours; business people running or employed in hutong tourism companies; tourguides; hutong tour hosts; and hutong tourists. Between and during field research stints,secondary data were obtained from the Internet or in hard copy. The majority of these wereacademic articles and popular materials related to hutongs and hutong tourism. Severalvisits to the Beijing Planning Museum were very fruitful.

The theoretical properties were generated from these efforts. One ambition was toadvance the larger goal of developing a theory of ST. However, this grand task was notachieved. What is presented here represents an articulation of five components of theconcept of sustainability that were generated from comparative analysis of all data, boththeoretical and empirical. Using GT terminology, “sustainability” is taken as a majortheoretical category; the identified components are thus considered to be properties of thiscategory.

The next section discusses the five properties in different ways. The properties labelled“relative” and “dynamic” are generated through a comparative assessment of documents.Sustainability is shown to be “normative” by expanding on Hunter’s (1995) “immersion”models. The sections explaining “contestable” and “reflexive” use empirical data relatedto Beijing’s hutong neighbourhoods. Secondary and primary data are interwoven as agrounding method. The housing and heritage sectors are discussed in connection with

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“contestable” because proponents of each fought vigourously for their positions. Hutongtourism is discussed in connection with “reflexive” to show that sectoral proximity tosustainability can both advance and retreat as a function of the development of theindustry.

Properties of sustainability

When standing in the home of a resident during a hutong tour, listening to an explanationof the relationship of the resident to the property, the neighbours and the neighbourhoodhutongs, it is apparent that the residence itself serves multiple resource functions. Thebuilding is a home – it houses the residents. As a physical structure, it has a tangible heritage.As a space for living, it has an intangible heritage. As an attraction, there is an economicfunction for the owners and an experience function for the tourists. Whether conceived asan individual residence or a neighbourhood, it is apparent that any interpretation of SDmust be based on an analysis of multiple resource uses, thus multiple sectors. Studyinghutong neighbourhoods, including hutong tourism, from such a perspective enabled thediscernment of several sustainability properties.

Sustainability is relative and dynamic

Housing is very different from heritage; both are different from tourism. A review ofdocuments concerning housing, heritage and tourism indicated that the sustainability ofone could not be judged in terms of the others. To determine the nature of each, and tobe consistent, documents written at international scale – “conventions”, “charters” and“declarations” – have been examined. These are documents that have been signed byStates Parties1 (e.g. the World Heritage Convention) or that have been written by bodieshaving significant levels of prestige (e.g. ICOMOS). These documents carry weight be-cause they enable “normative action” (UNESCO Culture, n.d.). Du Cros and Lee (2007,p. 1) have endorsed use of these for cultural heritage management by noting that “coreprinciples . . . are embodied in formal heritage protection legislation or accepted heritagemanagement policies for most localities”. Specifically, they contain definitions of conceptsthat nations have agreed to in writing.

To show relativity, the concept of sustainability has been essentialised to a single wordfor each sector. For housing, the justification is that such a word has always existed –“adequacy”. Heritage is the most complex and problematic concept because the meaninghas expanded hugely since the 1970s. As an essentialised operational definition, heritagewill be considered sustainable when it is “accepted” that the old, in its multiple forms, needsto be conserved, that such conservation constitutes development and the heritage resourcestock is managed properly. Tourism is less problematic. Documents indicated a strongrelationship between tourism and development emerged during the 1960s. Essentially, thecreation of the tourism sector has been considered desirable for development; tourism is“aligned” with development.

Housing

As a social issue, housing has a pedigree. Article 25 of the 1948 Universal Declarationof Human Rights (United Nations) asserted that all people have “the right to a standard ofliving adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food,

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Table 1. Components of housing adequacy applied to Beijing.

Component of adequacy Application to Beijing

Strong government role: most deprived housedfirst

1980s – inventory of siheyuan identified housing inworst condition

Government must develop a real estate market 1990s – legislation established thisSupply must increase through new stock and

rehabilitation of oldEmphasis was on new housing outside the Old

City; rehabilitation insufficientAffordable Government monies/subsidies permitted affordable

relocationDesign should evolve Newer generations of apartments have become

larger and better appointedNeighbourhoods are important Initial “inconvenience” of new neighbourhoods

resolved as the city grew up around theapartment complexes

Heritage considerations important 2002 conservation laws establish this

clothing, housing . . .” The notion of “adequacy” has pervaded all subsequent declarationsand documents at the international scale. Adding “sustainable” did not inject any newfeatures to housing/settlement. Noting little low cost housing for the poor existed, OurCommon Future (OCF) (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987,p. 251) stated that “government intervention must be reoriented so that limited resourcesare put to maximum effect in improving housing conditions for the poor”. The 1996 HabitatII Conference (United Nations, 1996), held in Istanbul, reiterated that many people stilllacked decent shelter, especially the “deprived urban poor”. In Chapter 3, Commitments,paragraph 60 (pp. 11–14), “adequate shelter” was defined by a number of factors. Table 1lists the factors pertinent to Beijing’s hutong neighbourhoods that, collectively, substantiatethe concept of housing adequacy. These components suggest an important implication:sustainability is dynamic; views of what constitutes adequate housing change over time.

Heritage

For this study, the concept of heritage has been more complex than housing (or hutongtourism). Three aspects emerged. First, it became apparent that heritage types could beconceived along two dimensions, as shown in Figure 2, with examples from Beijing. Thegeneral relationship is matrix-like, yet specific resource sites contain multiple elementssuggesting continuums.

Second, the concept of heritage has expanded greatly in recent decades. This hasrequired a process of “acceptance” – a change in attitude that has led to favouring moreof the old being conserved. Gaining acceptance has often required a discourse war duringwhich conservation proponents persuade pro-development forces to preserve rather than

Figure 2. Heritage types in Beijing, relationships between them, stages of acceptance.

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demolish. The third aspect extends from the second: conserving heritage must be acceptedas a component of (sustainable) development. The numbers in Figure 2 indicate the sequencein which this occurred in Beijing.

Worldwide, the first discourse war was perhaps fought over the Aswan Dam in Egypt.The World Heritage Convention resulted in 1972; this conceived tangible heritage in termsof natural and cultural components. Cultural heritage was defined as monuments, groups ofbuildings and sites (UNESCO, 1972). By the 1980s, valuing “vernacular” heritage equallywith sites that were more “spectacular” (see Broudehoux, 2007) had been accepted withinUNESCO.

The acceptance of heritage conservation as SD was achieved in some of the same doc-uments that championed acceptance of intangible cultural heritage. Our Creative Diversity(OCD, UNESCO, 1996) was as fundamental for culture as Our Common Future was for theenvironment. In the President’s Foreword, Perez de Cuellar (p. 7) formally linked culture(including heritage) with development by noting that “development was a far more complexundertaking than had been originally thought” and “the time had come to do for culture anddevelopment what had been achieved for environment and development”. A fundamentalreason was because “The tangible can only be interpreted through the intangible” (p. 34).

“Way of life” (genre de vie) dates back to the work of Vidal (1911) in France. Wirth(1938) applied the concept to cities but virtually no urban case research was ever conducted.Wang (1997) called for a study of hutong way of life, to produce a more comprehensiveunderstanding of the relationship between cultural heritage, SD and tourism. Though itis mentioned in OCD (p. 7), no convention or institutional document appears to have yetaccepted way of life as a component of heritage to the extent that rules about its conservationhave been devised. For example, the UNESCO “Gaucho Way of Life” project (n.d.) usesthe term but UNESCO’s role is to “facilitate and promote exchange of knowledge andinformation about culture and biodiversity”, not to reproduce the intangible practices ofliving gauchos (Claudia S. Karez, e-mail communication, 24 May 2007).2

Tourism

The Statutes of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) show that the WTO was formedout of the International Union of Official Travel Organization (IUOTO) as “an internationalorganization of intergovernmental character” on 27 September 1970. Article 3, Point 1noted that the “fundamental aim” was “development of tourism with a view to contributingto economic development . . .” It can be asserted that tourism has been “aligned” withdevelopment from the date the WTO became an official intergovernmental agency. In 1982,the Acapulco Document on the Right to Holidays aligned tourism with both developmentand heritage. The 1989 WTO “Inter Parliamentary Conference on Tourism” produced theHague Declaration on Tourism, which aligned tourism with SD in Principle III, Point 2.

The definitive alignment between ST and SD was presented in Agenda 21 (1995).The overall aim (p. 38) was noted as “to establish systems and procedures to incorporatesustainable development considerations at the core of the decision-making process andto identify actions necessary to bring sustainable tourism development into being”. Thetourism industry was perceived in isolation from other sectors, so the relationship betweenSD and ST was straightforward: applying SD produces ST. Agenda 21 also noted the simpleidea that “If an activity is sustainable, for all practical purposes it can continue forever”(p. 30).

Nine years later, the UNWTO published Indicators of Sustainable Development forTourism Destinations: A Guidebook (2004). This volume specified a myriad variety of

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indicators that could measure when a state of sustainability had been attained. Part 3,Sustainability Issues and Indicators in Tourism, contains 13 sections where each listsmultiple issues and their relevant indicators. However, destination managers were advisedto use the guidebook as a “menu” (p. 55) because there was “clearly no ideal number” (Box2.10) and the challenge was to create meaningful indicators through a process “adapted tothe specific needs and conditions of the destination” (p. 21). Further, Section 4.13, UrbanTourism, noted “sustainability issues are not yet developed extensively in the field of urbantourism” (p. 283).

This section has compared top-level documents to show that sustainability is in the eyeof the beholder – it is relative. Tourism proponents do not discuss tourism sustainability interms of adequacy. Housing proponents do not discuss housing sustainability in terms ofacceptance. The articulation of sectoral relativity indicates sustainability conceptualisationsare dynamic. Notions of housing adequacy evolve as conditions improve. For heritage, theacceptance process itself indicates dynamism. The tangible has expanded to include theintangible; the spectacular has expanded to include the vernacular. Way of life, as vernacularintangible heritage, may become accepted at the States Party level in the future. The previousparagraph indicates that the alignment of urban tourism with sustainability is still a workin progress.

Sustainability is normative

The previous section has demonstrated that the three sectors under discussion have relation-ships with SD that are relative. This can be modelled and doing so reveals that sustainabilityis normative. Hunter (1995) provided initial models exploring the ST–SD relationship. Hepublished his models in this journal not long after the release of Agenda 21. Noting the orig-inal ST definition – “Sustainable tourism development meets the needs of present touristsand host regions while protecting and enhancing opportunity for the future” – Hunter (p.157) referred to Agenda 21’s explication of the relationship as “tourist-centric”. He as-serted that this failed on grounds of scale, scope and sector. He modelled the relationshipbetween ST and SD in terms of “immersion”, arguing that there were areas of “mutualconcern”, but also components that do not match. He later noted that ST had to make an“extra-parochial” contribution because “SD is so much more important than sustainabletourism” (p. 164). Figure 3 redraws Hunter’s original models. In the left, the state of “partialimmersion”, described above, is shown. The right panel shows Hunter’s (1995) situation of“total immersion” of ST within SD. He argued this situation was not realistically possible.What is obvious, however, is that this is the ideal one. Over time, the goal of sustainabilitymandates that a sector’s state of development should approach immersion within the SDcircle. Thus, as a concept, sustainability is normative.

Figure 4 expands Hunter’s ideas to the three-sector situation fitting Beijing’s hu-tong/siheyuan. The left panel models the equivalent for “partial immersion”. Because thismodel has been derived empirically, it must be interpreted somewhat differently. Rather thanHunter’s “areas of mutual concern”, the model interprets existing relationships between sec-tors and with SD. The model indicates the empirical realities that: (1) some aspects of eachsector are sustainable (inside the SD circle); (2) while mostly independent, there is someoverlap in the relationships. The right panel models Hunter’s (1995) normative situation of“total immersion”. Each sector has been managed well and is in a state of sustainability. Thechange between the left and right panels indicates the dynamism inherent in each sector.

The definitions above, combined with the models in Figures 3 and 4, establish con-clusively when ST = SD and when it does not. Specifically, ST would be the same as

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Figure 3. SD and ST for a single resource use situation.

SD when tourism was the only sector using a resource, and tourism’s use was shown tobe sustainable (for a full discussion on change internal to the tourism sector, see the finalsection on “reflexive”). For Bejing’s hutong neighbourhoods, tourism is just one of threesectors from which a sustainability interpretation can be made. To make a judgement thata hutong neighbourhood was sustainable, it must be concluded that housing and heritagewould need to be judged sustainable, as well as tourism.

“Total immersion” can be modelled to a more comprehensive level, shown in Figure 5.In this situation, the sustainability of any single sector is judged by multiple-sector criteria.That is, hutong tourism would not be judged sustainable by only tourism criteria; advocatesof housing and heritage would also have to judge that, from their perspective, hutongtourism’s use of the hutong neighbourhoods was sustainable.

Figure 4. Adaptation of Hunter’s (1995) models to a three-sector situation.

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Figure 5. Sustainability according to multiple-sector criteria for a three-sector situation.

Relative + normative = contestable

The previous sections have shown that sustainability is relative, dynamic and normative.These properties are more than words; people with different values will hold differentpositions about action concerning use of a given resource and will contest these differences.In this section, the housing and heritage sectors will be discussed, focusing on the differencebetween “adequacy” and “acceptance”. The goals are to overview the development of eachsector, substantiate the nature of contestation, suggest that the current status is one of partialmulti-sectoral balance and conclude that neither sector is yet completely sustainable.

Housing

Broudehoux (1994) has noted that individual siheyuan did not have a long lifespan butwere reconstructed every 30 years. An informant, an architect at Qinghua University inBeijing, verified this in 2006: “Success means rebuilding the house. There is no principleto keep the old building”. Conditions undermining housing adequacy in Beijing originatedin the late Qing dynasty, when poverty among siheyuan owners prevented the continuationof the 30-year restoration cycle (Elliott, 2001). By the 1920s “Old Beijing was crumbling”(Strand, 1989, p. 16) and, by the 1940s, siheyuan had become symbols of “backwardnessand embarrassment” (Roddi, 1951, p. 9). Early socialist policies after establishment ofthe People’s Republic of China (PRC) solved some problems. The homeless from theCivil War received shelter (Zhang, 1997). All housing was nationalised and real estateactivity was made illegal (Gu & Liu, 2002); this allowed the State to provide housing forworkers and their families. Housing was considered a welfare (consumption) item, thus,rent was “cheaper than cigarettes” (Zhang, 1997, p. 891). However, the rent collected wasinsufficient for government to afford renovation or to construct new housing (Broudehoux,1994), hence, only patchwork repairs were made to siheyuan that were more than a centuryold. In 1976, the Tangshan Earthquake weakened many siheyuan; they were “structurally

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unsuitable or unsafe” (Zhang, 1997, p. 85). A remedy was to allow courtyards to be in-filledwith “temporary” buildings (Alexander, Hirako, Dorje, & de Azevedo, n.d.). Lu (2004, p.22) noted that “residents . . . transformed . . . the once sunny, delightful open space into acrowded, confused and disordered labyrinth”. Siheyuan became known as “dazayuan” – “amess”. Population density reached levels hard to imagine. Luo (2006) noted that in 1980 thehigh density in Old Beijing afforded less than three square metres per person. The housingsector was in deep crisis, totally inadequate – a totally unsustainable situation.

With the onset of the reform period in 1978, one informant noted the “word in thealleys” had changed and adequate housing meant living in a new apartment. Broudehoux(1994, p. 57) noted a “general disdain for old houses, which are considered a ‘symbol ofpoverty’,. . . and unfit for human life”. Government thus became committed to constructionof apartments. Between the late 1980s and early 1990s a set of laws (for example, TheOld and Dilapidated Housing Renewal Program, April, 1990) was passed enabling localgovernment to demolish the dilapidated hutong neighbourhoods, relocate the residents andcreate a real estate market. The result was the largest urban renovation since Kubla Khan.The years between 1993 and 2002 witnessed a draconian solution to a drastic situation.The new set of official regulations meant behind-closed-doors-cooperation between localgovernment and real estate development companies was considered entirely in the long termbest interests of the Chinese society (see Fang & Zhang, 2003 and Leaf, 1995). Vast areasof siheyuan neighbourhoods were demolished and residents were relocated to apartments.Yet, in spite of this turmoil, the housing crisis was ending. By 2000, according to Alexanderet al. (n.d.), more than 90% of Beijing’s population now lived in apartments outside the OldCity.

The new apartments in which people were now living had been built to what Tan (1994,p. 5) has referred to as “normal standards” with respect to sunlight, green space, emergencyaccess, etc. While arguments over the appropriateness of the 1990s policies will continue,examination of the adequacy parameters specified in Table 1 would indicate that all havebeen addressed. Across the city, most Beijing residents reside in apartments that had beendeemed “adequate” at the time of construction. Yet it is not possible to say that, by 2012,the housing situation in Beijing’s hutong neighbourhoods had achieved sustainability. Aninventory done in 2002 (Huang, p. 11) noted that 285,000 people just in certain Old Beijingdistricts still lived in dilapidated housing and 118,000 would need to be relocated to reducepopulation densities to an acceptable level. However, a second interview in 2011 with asenior official in Beijing’s Municipal City Planning Commission indicated that governmentactivity was now limited to restoring individual siheyuan “one-at-a-time!” He was unableto speculate on when the job of restoring all siheyuan to a condition of adequacy would becompleted.

Heritage

In Beijing, the acceptance of heritage as a component of development has been relativelyrecent. While spectacular heritage has always been accepted, vernacular features onlybecame widely accepted in the past 20 years. For Old Beijing, Kubla Khan constructed farmore than Coleridge’s (n.d.) “pleasure dome”. According to Meyer (1976, p. 40), Khan’scelestial capital was an uranographic manifestation of the direct connection between thedeity Pangu who ruled heaven and the celestial emperor who ruled China, establishedthrough an urban morphology that reflected the cosmography of the night sky. During theMing Dynasty, morphological changes such as formalising the north-to-south central axisachieved an even greater uranographic relationship. This spectacular tangible stock only

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became heritage during the Republic. Beginning in 1911, Beijing became the qu du –the old capital (Naquin, 2000, p. 687). Since then, numerous sites have been accepted asheritage, as shown by the following examples related to tourism:

• The Imperial Palace was opened to tourists during the 1920s (Dong, 2003).• After the Reform (1978), visits to spectacular heritage sites such as the Imperial

Palace, Temple of Heaven and Summer Palace were the “musts” of any tour toBeijing (Informants, Beijing Tourism Office, June 2006).

• China became a signatory to the World Heritage Convention in December 1985. TheImperial Palace was listed in 1987. (UNESCO, n.d.-c)

• China became a signatory to the Intangible Heritage Convention in 2004 (see UN-ESCO, n.d.-b) and Kunqu Opera (performed in Beijing) was added to the list in 2008(see UNESCO, n.d.-a).

However, before the founding of the PRC, it is not clear that vernacular features such ashutong neighbourhoods were accepted as part of the city’s heritage. Arlington and Lewisohn(1935, p. 2) noted, for example: “Though the compounds of private citizens of Peiking,. . .have a special charm and fascination of their own, . . .architecturally they have little ofinterest to offer”.

A discourse promoting the conservation of hutongs as vernacular tangible heritagebegan in 1949 when Liang Si Chang, Qinghua University Dean of Architecture, wrote aletter to Mao Zi Dong requesting that he build a new capital outside Beijing’s city walls.Quoting, Fang and Zhang (2003, p. 149) stated that Liang considered Beijing to be an“unparalleled masterpiece of urban planning”, and then noted his comment that “where thetrue magic of this ancient city lies – tens of thousands of traditional courtyard houses withmore than one million local residents”. Mao ignored Liang, evidently preferring a “Stalinistperspective” (Abramson, 2007, p. 133).

Competing discourses arose during the 1980s over whether to “modernise” throughconstruction of high rises or to conserve the old neighbourhoods as an “affirmation ofnational identity” (Antier, 1985, p. 350). Abramson (2001, p. 9) has noted it was difficult toconvince residents to accept the value of hutong neighbourhoods as heritage and the notionwas “hotly debated”. Government officials also had trouble; Lu (1997, p. 65) quoted oneas noting that hutongs belonged to the “horse and cart era” and the worthy cause was toredevelop all of them with high-rise apartments. The passage of the laws leading to adequatehousing but demolition of hutong neighbourhoods was the nadir of conservation acceptance.Yet the “onslaught of the demolition” (Abramson, 2007, p. 130) produced a public outcry;hutong neighbourhoods were being eliminated so fast that the public perception was thatthey would soon be extinct. Lu (2004, p. 55) noted that “more people from all parts ofsociety appeal for protecting the remaining siheyuan”.

Anecdotal evidence from informants suggests that the creation and instant success ofhutong tourism was a strong and visible counter-force to demolition; it was a force thathelped lead to the acceptance that hutong neighbourhoods had heritage value. Each dayhundreds of foreign tourists were riding through the hutongs in bicycle rickshaw cara-vans. Their obvious fascination with the old way of life was arresting to the majorityof Beijingers, who dismissed the old houses as not worth preserving. In this case, hu-tong tourism aligned itself with the heritage position on development, rather than withhousing.

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Approaching multi-sectoral consensus

Work towards creating conservation districts in Old Beijing had begun during the 1990sbut nothing had been codified into law (Beijing Planning Museum Panel, 2008). Duringthis time demolition of large tracts of hutong neighbourhoods had occurred. Many of thesewere areas that had been previously inventoried as too dilapidated to restore but othersin good condition were also demolished so that developers had land parcels of adequatesize. In 2002, a major change in status between housing and heritage occurred, with thepublication of Conservation Planning of 25 Historic Areas in Beijing Old City (Huang,2002). This document, a book, legally established numerous conservation areas; theseoccupied 21% of Old Beijing. Its publication represents the date of official acceptance by theBeijing government that vernacular neighbourhoods represented heritage. Its publicationalso represented the beginning-of-the-end of the demolition stage. When field researchbegan in 2006 some neighbourhoods were still being demolished in several parts of the OldCity but in 2008 informants noted that systematic demolition had been completed in timefor the Olympics.

Thus, by 2013 a rough balance in values has resulted. The initial dominance of housingvalues led to demolition of hutong neighbourhoods but also to construction of millions ofapartments. The housing crisis consequently eased. Contestation over the imminent extinc-tion of a highly valued form of vernacular heritage and its associated way of life led toacceptance that this form of heritage was important. In 2013, both sectors are in a moresustainable state than during the 1990s. There is now considerable overlap in housing andheritage proponents’ conceptualisations of sustainability. Yet it is difficult to assert eitherhousing or heritage is completely sustainable. Many people continue to live in dilapidatedhousing. This condition also represents sub-sustainability vis-a-vis heritage because thesiheyuan themselves are falling apart. Restoring the siheyuan, with the associated require-ment to relocate families to outer city apartments, would enable both sectors to furtherapproach sustainable states. However, restoring siheyuan on a one-at-a-time basis meansdecades may pass before total sustainability is achieved.

Sustainability is reflexive

It is possible that, as a single business run by Xu Yong, the hutong tourism sector might havebeen completely sustainable, in the spirit of Agenda 21’s definition (“continue forever”).The situation would change because of both expansion of the industry and expansion inthe concept of the product. Hutong tourism can be interpreted to have gone through severalstages in its short lifespan. This suggests sustainability is reflexive of the nature of thesector as it exists at any point in time. Changes in the sector may mean change in its level ofsustainability immersion. Further, the normative ideal may not be the reality. Developmentalactivity may make the sector less sustainable than it previously had been.

In a 2006 interview, Xu Yong noted that when he began his business in 1993 he had themarket to himself. This continued to be the case until 1999 when other companies beganto enter. Conditions became much more competitive; he stated his business peaked around2000 and then declined somewhat. As he discussed the entry of other businesses it was clearhe conceived this as something like a product life cycle. After a request to do so, he drewa graph of his idea of the situation on the back of the interview question sheet. A photo ofhis drawing is reproduced in Figure 6. His sketch shows, first, the growth of his business,followed by the entry of competitors. Collectively, competition starting in 1999 had forceddown his share of the market. He also noted everyone’s share of the market was now smaller.

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Figure 6. Xu Yong’s drawing of the state of hutong tourism – June, 2006.

By 2006, there were a total of 20 hutong tourism businesses in operation (he hadn’t drawnall 20). He noted, and this was later confirmed by government officials, that his was the onlyprivate sector business. All 19 others were owned by government departments and wereequivalent to revenue generating businesses initiated to offset central government budgetcuts. By 2006, he noted (and others confirmed), that not many companies were makingmuch money – competition was too fierce. This condition of economic unsustainability wasbeing prolonged by the fact that 19/20 businesses were propped up by being, ultimately,government-owned. No business was going out of business, as would have been the case ina true market economy.

Beyond economics, the expansion of hutong tourism created other problems during thisstage. Two distinctive issues emerged – congestion and governance. The congestion issueoriginated because of the huge increase in demand for hutong tourism. A study, cited inWang and Cui (2008), noted that by 2005, (1) there were 6000 passengers on an averageday and 40,000–50,000 during peak public holidays; and (2) for the year there had been atotal of 1.256 million tourists. This increase in tourists required a corresponding increasein the number of rickshaws. Several hutong tour guides stated in 2006 that the original fleetof 50 rickshaws had expanded to 1800! Wang and Wang (2011) state that there were alsoat least 200 illegal rickshaws in operation. The negative impact on the residents had beensevere. Alleyway congestion from long trains of rickshaws, rickshaw–pedestrian accidents(especially on blind corners) and excessive noise (from tour guides shouting in the streets)had become the source of frequent complaints.

The governance issues were considerably more complex. At one level, they concernedthe illegal rickshaws. At a more formal level, they concerned the legal businesses andinadequacies within local government itself.

In the hutongs, tourists were being hassled by touts (see Gu & Ryan, 2012) carryingofficial-looking laminated itineraries, translated into English, Japanese, German, etc. Thesetouts attempted to convince tourists to purchase a hutong tour in an unlicensed (henceillegal) rickshaw. Wang and Cui (2008) note that from the government’s perspective there

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were multiple issues. There were low barriers to entry, hence private tours were operating.Being unlicensed, the tour was unregulated, hence, went untaxed. The rickshaws were oftenold, dirty, in bad condition and lacked standardised signage, thus, tarnished the productimage. The drivers were not trained as professional guides and thus, lacked credentials.Even less tolerable was the gang-like, bullying behaviour of the illegal drivers towardsdrivers from legal companies. The situation “triggered many contradictions” (p. 2) withrespect to public expectations of orderly Chinese society.

Government itself was a major cause of the problem. Again according to Wang and Cui(2008), there was acknowledgement from the government that the existing set of rules andregulations was weak. There was no government body with the power to inspect the areaor enforce any rules that did exist. Businesses had to deal with a myriad of bureaucracies,from the Beijing Administration for Industry and Commerce to the Tricycle VehiclesManagement Office. Rules were not comprehensive, hence, many loopholes existed. Forexample, a company could apply for a temporary license to do hutong tourism but thelicense had no expiration date. Even the legally registered businesses exceeded the spatialboundaries of where they were licensed to operate and what they were licensed to do.In 2011, an interviewee, a hutong tourism company manager, was asked to recall whatthose days had been like for business. “There was no order”, he replied, and continuedby describing how the legitimate businesses at that time were demanding reform by thegovernment as stridently as were the residents. The changes during these years are perhapstypical of all tourism situations when the government is not prepared for rapid developmentand the industry goes somewhat out of control. When this happens, the unsustainability ofthe situation reflects the deteriorating conditions. The growing importance of governancefor ST generally has been confirmed by Bramwell and Lane (2011).

Official reform came through legislation: Beijing Municipal People’s Government De-cree No. 193 “Beijing hutong tour human passenger tricycle franchise regulations”. Thiswas promulgated on 1 August 2007 and went into force on 1 October 2007. The overallgoals were to standardise management, bring the scale of development under control andmaintain order in the tourism market. Holistically, the decree served as an umbrella act forhutong tourism by specifying governmental authority and responsibility as well as param-eters on the size of the industry and management obligations of the businesses. Specificsincluded, first of all, that there would be no more than 300 rickshaws operating and thesewould be standardised in appearance. Only five companies would be allowed to operate;they were chosen through a franchising mechanism where companies were required tosubmit a bid package and a bond of RMB 1.5 million (c. US$ 250,000). The licence to thefranchisee would be for three years. Specific routes were established for specific rickshawcompanies (see Chinatouristmaps.com). Guides and drivers had to have undergone trainingbefore they could be registered.

The entire existing fleet of rickshaws was removed from the streets in 2008 (Wen, 2008).It was replaced by 300 rickshaws that were built to design specifications that presented animage of quality. Apparently, this legislation was successful at resolving the problems ofcongestion and governance. Wang and Wang (2011) reported on a survey that had been doneby China Central Television (CCTV) on 31 December 2010. Based on results from 693,000people, 88% had answered that they thought the regulations and current managementpractices were effective. This survey suggests that hutong tourism was again approachinga sustainable state. A second franchising round was conducted in early 2011 (ShichahaiScenic Area Management Bureau, 2011a). The total number of rickshaws remained stableat 300. Hutong tourism routes remained the same. The hutong tour company manager citedabove noted that some of the original companies had failed to perform adequately in the first

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round and lost their licenses in the second. Ultimately, nine companies received approval tooperate the 300 rickshaws (Shichahai Scenic Area Management Bureau, 2011b). By mid-2011, hutong tourism in its original form was reasonably under control and thus reflecteda reasonable state of sustainability. Both approaches to governance suggested by Bramwelland Lane (2011, p. 412–414) have been used.

Features of a fourth stage of development had been in existence since at least 2006.The term that best describes the changes is product fragmentation. As originally createdby Xu Yong, “hutong tourism” meant a certain set of activities; it had a specific form.When field research began, this form was expanding because siheyuan were beginning tobe used as more than residences. A number had been bought and turned into both hotels andrestaurants. Field observation of these indicated they had a rather universal flavour of post-modern urban consumption – heritage used for private-sector profit. This transformation ofuse was happening throughout Old Beijing, not just Shichahai.

In 2008, the government embarked on a new project for the Olympics: residentialhouseholds throughout the city were allowed to bid for the ability to become “Olympichouseholds” (Guo, Zhu, Yu, & Liu, 2008). The document Criteria and Evaluation ofOlympic Homestay Families (cited in baike.baidu.com, n.d.) specified the details. The statedgoals were to introduce visitors to the history and culture of Beijing. As was the case withhutong tour companies, government established a bidding system to be the managementmechanism for selecting the households. When finished, 598 households capable of hosting1000 guests had been selected (Zhou, 2008).

This programme ended after the Olympics but, during the final stint of field researchin 2011, was being re-instituted. In a July 2011 interview, a Xicheng district governmentplanning official discussed the situation as of that month. Renamed “Beijing households forfolk traditions”, residences were in the process of being selected within the 2002-designatedconservation areas. A bidding process was again being used. Criteria for selection variedfrom the contemporary (siheyuan needed to contain western toilets, air conditioning, colourtelevision and have internet access), to the traditional (Chinese-style furniture). Importantly,would-be hosts were required to show they “loved Beijing” and knew about Beijing folk-culture characteristics. The official also noted that development goals were to spread hutongtourism across all of Old Beijing, rather than having it solely in Shichahai (eliminating the“hot–cold” spatial situation that currently existed). The official noted there would be a trialperiod of operation, to determine whether negative impacts, indicated by complaints fromneighbours, were occurring. Later in 2011, an article by Wang stated that the names of thefirst group of families had been released and the franchise programme was going ahead.A more recent article by Fu (2012) indicates that the pilot project was a success and theprogramme is being expanded. Managerial control was, in 2011, in the process of beingdevolved to neighbourhood-level organisations, which had not yet been set up.

An interpretation can be made that hutong tourism is now in the fourth stage ofdevelopment, on the basis that there is a government-endorsed product available, inaddition to the original “tour”. From the nature of this product, it seems apparent that thegovernment has now accepted that the vernacular intangible heritage, the hutong way oflife, is as important to conserve as are the neighbourhoods themselves. It is too soon toassess the sustainability of this new component of hutong tourism, however, the criteriathat have been published would seem to indicate governmental pro-activity to prevent there-emergence of negative impacts.

The example of hutong tourism can be used to generalise that sustainability of a particu-lar form of tourism will be reflexive of its nature as a commercial product. This is particularlythe case when the product evolves into new forms. For hutong tourism, rough estimates of

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sustainability have been possible during the core years of a particular stage. However, itwould be very difficult to assess sustainability during times of rapid product change.

Concluding discussion

The aim of this paper has been to make a theoretical contribution about sustainability, SDand ST. The original research objective focused on definitively answering whether SD andST are the same. Hunter (1995) and Sharpley (2000) both wrote conceptual papers thatdid not contain empirical data. This paper has been based on the case situation of Beijing’shutong tourism, enabling theoretical properties to emerge from a grounded context.

The case setting has shown that ST would be the same as SD in any empirical situationwhere tourism was the only sector using a particular resource. The development of thatresource for tourism would constitute the totality of its development, hence, if such devel-opment were deemed sustainable then ST = SD. Conversely, if tourism development werenot sustainable then there could be no possibility of SD existing.

From a single case study it is impossible to determine how often tourism is the singleuse of a resource. For Beijing’s hutong neighbourhoods, it was not. Housing and heritageconstituted other sectors to which SD considerations could be applied. The paper showedthat each of these sectors has a different relationship with SD, thus it is impossible thatST = SD in hutong neighbourhoods.

The examination of whether ST = SD led to the identification of other properties ofsustainability that constituted the discussion of the remainder of the paper. These propertieswere induced in the sense that case data was consciously used to produce generalisations.Five properties were identified. Sustainability is relative; people in different sectors do nothave the same conceptualisation of its nature. It is dynamic; ideas about its nature changeover time. Sustainability is normative; it is based on values – these will be contested, thefourth property, when resource competition occurs. Finally, sustainability is reflexive; itreflects the nature of a sector at any given stage of its development. Collectively, identifyingthese five properties brings a fully developed grounded theory of sustainability, SD and STcloser to existence. The particular case discussed here – hutong tourism – is too small foran assertion to be made that all properties have come to light. Further comparative researchis needed to expand knowledge of the number of properties, their relationship to each other,and the sub-sectors of tourism to which they apply.

The paper will conclude with a discussion of two points made by Hunter (1995) andothers. First, an inference from a multi-sector analysis is that there is nothing inherentlywrong with research on ST being “tourist-centric”. It is likely that most sectoral researchwill be sector-centric. If sector-centric research fails to develop a body of theory for thatsector, proponents will likely lose contestations with proponents of other sectors. Multi-sectoral resolutions regarding sustainability cannot be reached unless each sector has awell-defined position.

Second, Hunter made the assertion that SD is more important than ST. The researchconducted for this paper indicates this depends on the case being studied. In single-sectorsituations, when ST = SD, the two are simply the same. If tourism’s use of the resourceis deemed sustainable then this is also SD. In multi-sector situations, assessment couldgo either way depending on the relative importance of tourism vis-a-vis the other sectors.When the other sector is extractive (logging is a well-known example), the non-extractivenature of tourism would likely mean that tourism as a form of development is moreimportant (sustainable) because it would likely cause less damage. However, for Beijing’shutong neighbourhoods, Hunter’s assertion would appear correct – ameliorating the terrible

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housing shortage of the 1980s was the most important aspect of development. By the 1990s,as the housing crisis eased, prevention of over-development of housing at the expense ofheritage grew to be of equal importance. Hutong tourism, a small sector in a huge city, hasbeen the least important but by aligning with heritage values of development has punchedwell above its weight to help improve multi-sectoral balance.

Finally, the research confirms that ST can be a tool for heritage conservation (Eagles,2002, 2013). Its role as a tool can be seen in both rural/national park and urban situations.

AcknowledgementsFor assistance with interviews and translation, I am deeply indebted to Qu Ning, Wang Zhifang, MaoShuyin and Tian Jing. For translation, cultural mentoring and logistical support, I would like to thankDr Xin Chen, Professor Mingming Shen, Ding Fengxin and Xiao Zhongfa, Lu Pujiang, and HenryAcland.

Notes1. States Parties are countries which have adhered to the World Heritage Convention. They thereby

agree to identify and nominate properties on their national territory to be considered for inscriptionon the World Heritage List. When a State Party nominates a property, it gives details of how aproperty is protected and provides a management plan for its upkeep. States Parties are alsoexpected to protect the World Heritage values of the properties inscribed and are encouraged toreport periodically on their condition (http://whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/)

2. Claudia S. Karez is an Adjunct Programme Specialist in the Ecological Sciences department ofUNESCO, Montivideo, Uruguay.

Notes on contributorDr Charles Johnston lectures and supervises in the School of Hospitality and Tourism, AUT Universityin Auckland, New Zealand. He is an old backpacker who turned his love of travel into his profession.His main research themes currently focus on urban and Asian tourism, on the relationship betweentourism and sustainable development, and on tourism as a component of mobility and identity.

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