Commodifying contested borderscapes for tourism development: Relic Iron Curtain reflections in the Germany-Czech Republic borderlands

Tourism can function as a symbolic sector to highlight policy discourses on economic and political cross-border regionalization. However, such discourses may not be shared by all tourism-related stakeholders, potentially leading to the attraction of some to the commodified borderscapes and the alienation of others whose place-based meaning is not represented in the cross-border tourism discourse. In this paper, we discuss the tourism commofication of relic Iron Curtain landscapes in the Germany-Czech Republic borderlands. We analyse how potentially contested ‘politics of memory’ could impact the viability of and the community representation in borderland tourism projects. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, socio-economic discourses in the Germany-Czech Republic borderlands have mainly highlighted the potential of cross-border integration for regional development of the borderlands. Our analysis of the two most high-profile relic borderscape projects in the area – the Iron Curtain Trail and the European Green Belt– shows that both projects are also guided by such positive reflections on the value of cross-border integration. Yet despite internal aims to facilitate community exchange and nature conservation, both projects are not univocally supported. On the one hand, local tourism managers question the long-term viability of the projects. On the other hand, the rather homogeneous cross-border discourse of the projects appears to by-pass socially sensitive and locally diverse senses of place regarding the Iron Curtain history. Since the multi-level tourism governance system of the Czech Republic is currently not fit to deal with different local place-based meanings in a participative commodification process, both the community support and the local project implementation may be questionable in the long run.status: publishe