About partners for livable

4 | HERITAGE TOURISM FOR ALL
As discussed in the previous chapters, communities embarking on a cultural heritage tourism agenda most 
often confront two key challenges: 
1. How to attract visitors and the economic resources that they bring with them; and 
2. How to create a cultural heritage tourism agenda that represents the interests of everyone in the 
community.
Typically, efforts to embrace cultural heritage tourism revolve around museum and cultural centers. 
However, this narrow focus can cause communities to shortchange themselves and neglect to cultivate the 
heritage assets that already exist. More often than not, communities need not look further than their own 
backyard to celebrate their assets and promote them to visitors from near and far.
This chapter will focus on the 
importance that communities ought 
to place in celebrating everyone’s 
heritage in an effort to promote 
culture-based tourism and cultivate 
community pride and strength. 
Recent research has revealed just 
how significant the consequences 
are of increasing the bonds between 
residents and the communities that 
they call home. In a report from the 
Knight Foundation, as part of their 
“Soul of the Community” series, 
researchers attempted to measure the 
level of attachment among residents 
of a number of communities to 
the places they call home, and the 
subsequent affect that such attachment 
has on the economic strength and 
quality of life of those communities 
where attachment was high and low. What they found was that attachment matters because it predicts 
critical quality of life measures such as local GDP growth, public safety, educational achievement, and 
community aesthetics including open spaces and public parks.
The Knight Foundation report demonstrates that creating a true sense of place in a community is a sure 
way of attracting talented people, developing growth industries and achieving quality of life.