Living With Tourism in Lucerne. How People Inhabit a Tourist Place

As a tourist city, Lucerne is contested: Many different actors are inhabiting the place by their manifold practices, which are sometimes mutually enhancing, and sometimes conflicting. This article aims to better understand the touristic situation in Lucerne and, therefore, opts for a qualitative examination of the field of research. It seeks to comprehend where the problem of overtourism comes from, where conflicts, misunderstandings and friendly encounters are rooted, and finally, what learnings canbe derived of this analysis to better deal with the current situation and adapt future developments. The research approaches this endeavor threefold: First, it investigates on the people dwelling in Lucerne (Ingold, 2011; Lussault and Stock, 2010; Sheller and Urry, 2004). By enlarging the focus on the manifold actors inhabiting the city on temporal, periodical or even lasting duration, the outdated duality of the traditional host/guest relationship will be overcome. The research integrates commuters, international students, parttime residents as equally important actors as natives, long-term residents, newcomers, as well as day-trippers, weekly-holidaymakers, and regular guests. Second, it will be argued that not only the number of visitors is decisive in assessing the tourism situation of Lucerne. In contrast, the paper postulates that it is rather about social, cultural, and material practices (Schatzki, 2019; Reckwitz, 2016). It is about how actors are inhabiting a place, instead of merely the amount of people. Tourism tensions arise out of different background knowledge, cultural norms, learned understandings, and personal motivations when dwelling in a place. By investigating the practices of actual people, the predominant numeric orientated concepts of carrying capacity willbe expanded with more qualitative considerations. Third, the thesis shows how a place unfolds out of the practices of these people (Bærenholdt et al., 2017; Sheller and Urry, 2004). A tourist city, such as Lucerne, is not a fixed and determined container, which is later filled with purpose and meaning, but a fluid, dynamic and ever-changing place which is constantly negotiated, shaped, andproduced by the people dwelling in it.