Policy, Cultural Heritage and Tourismscapes. A Case Study Of Brussels

Brussels is currently facing an identity crisis, which can only partly be explained by the fact that the old national narrative –telling Brussels as the capital of Belgium- is fading away. Due to the lack of both coherence and cooperation among all the different European, Belgian and local institutional stakeholders, the new narration strategies of city imaging based on common identities are not applicable to Brussels. As a result, the existing void is not being replaced by new hegemonic regionalist or ‘European’ narratives. At first sight, the absence of so-called ‘visionary leadership’ seems to hinder the development of alternative future trajectories for the city. In this chapter, however, it is argued that this lack of both a hegemonic narrative about the city and a strong urban political regime provides the opportunity for developing more inclusive processes of constructing representations, based on cultural heritage and identities, hopefully leading to, amongst other things, more sustainable forms of tourism.status: publishe