From Landscape to Mindscape: Spatial Narration of Touristic Amsterdam

Abstract

The cultural attributes of architecture in touristic cities are vital to city image building, city branding, and rebranding, as well as generating more economic profits for sustainable urban development, and protecting cultural sustainability. However, many studies on this theme focus on the singularity of architecture referring to its stylistic or morphological definitions, lacking attention to visitors’ cultural experiences in the architectures. Considering the importance of personal experience involved in cultural activities as a process of spatial narration through which architecture makes sense to visitors and generates cultural values, the aim of this paper is to reveal the respective correlations between different types of architecture regarding the cultural experience it imparts and the non-positive dimensions of the city image. This research builds a categorization system of three cultural types of architecture, and designs a questionnaire to collect tourists’ personal opinions concerning architectures and the city image of Amsterdam’s waterfront in order to calculate such correlations statistically. The results associate architectures with ‘tourism-oriented’, ‘present/process-based’, and ‘mass’ cultural types with non-positive dimensions of city image, which leads to further discussions of ‘authenticity’, ‘identity’, and ‘mass culture’, suggesting the significance of urban cultural policies and local communities in terms of city rebranding.

1. Introduction

The significance of architecture and urban area in shaping a city’s image has been widely discussed [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. Many famous landmarks located in touristic cities, such as the Tower Bridge in London, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and the Opera House in Sydney, exist as the main spectacles of the cities for attracting tourists. Touristic cities employ innovative architectures as iconic visual elements to brand their cities as unique, unsubstitutable, and distinctive to travelers, because these pieces of architecture seldomly resemble any other built structures in the world [9,10,12]. The core purpose of city branding is to build a positive image that identifies and differentiates the city, in order to position the city in the minds of visitors. People’s attitudes and actions toward a city are also highly conditioned by a city’s image. Therefore, architecture/urban landscape is a crucial ingredient in city branding, adding to the competitiveness of the city [13,14,15,16,17].

Previous studies of the correlation between architecture and city image always views architecture as a pure spectacle, referring to its stylistic or morphological definitions. This perspective overlooks the function of architecture as a container of activities and neglects a visitor’s personal experience and subjective perception generated from the experience. Rarely does research discuss the correlation between a visitor’s perception generated from the activities taking place in architecture/urban landscape and the city image. Regarding this research gap, the notion of spatial narration is introduced in this research to interpret the causal relationship between touristic activities and the city image, and, further, to city branding in respect to a visitor’s personal experience.

Along with the growing awareness of the importance of a city’s positive image, many city leaders believe that the negative sides of a city’s image and stereotypes associated with it can outweigh the positive ones in the minds of prospective visitors. These negative thoughts deter potential visiting and create obstacles that forestall a brighter future for the city [18,19,20]. City image-related crises occur all the time. Sometimes, the negative image is the result of historical problems [19]. The De Wallen district of Amsterdam is more infamously known as the Red Light District; it is an urban area that is identified as locally and internationally significant as one of the oldest venues for visible and legal urban prostitution. Although this area used to be actively promoted as such to enhance the global image of Amsterdam as a progressive city, it is now seen as an obstacle to the desired city image that is rendered in current marketing campaigns [21]. Its evoked image and its association with soft drug use and prostitution hinders the current city marketing efforts, which primarily focus on attracting upper-scale cultural tourists [22,23]. This is a typical example to explain how the activities taking place in a certain urban area can correlate to the non-positive dimensions of a city’s image. Concerning the city marketing efforts to reverse the negative city image, prior to developing any strategies, it is more effective to first clarify the respective correlations between different types of architecture and the non-positive side of the city image regarding the types of activities. Therefore, this research, in the context of cultural tourism, aims at revealing the respective statistical correlations between architecture and the non-positive cultural dimensions of the city image, referring to the types of cultural activities. Following the examination of existing types of cultural attractions in the field of cultural tourism, Greg Richards’ framework is adopted and modified to classify architecture into three dichotomous types based on the nature of cultural activities, which are cultural function, cultural form, and cultural contents. The waterfront area of Amsterdam is chosen as the case area, considering the complex architectural status quo in this area and the city’s intention to rebrand. Cultural dimensions composing the city image of Amsterdam are classified into positive and non-positive according to the municipality’s marketing objectives. A full-structured questionnaire is conducted in the case area in order to collect cultural tourists’ opinions. The data of each individual’s thoughts on the most striking pieces of architecture/urban landscape and the best impressions of the cultural dimensions of the city’s image are collected and statistically analyzed to reveal the correlations. The results demonstrate that the type of architecture functioning as a ‘tourism-oriented’ attraction, the architecture holding ‘present/process-based’ cultural activities, and ‘mass’ cultural activities are positively correlated to the non-positive side of the city image.

This research through theoretical framework building and statistical processing reveals the correlations behind cultural types of architecture and the non-positive side of city image, and offers advice regarding the negative contributions that the three types make to assist in the building of a positive image. The results shed light on generic touristic issues in city rebranding, and help indicate the direction for protecting and revitalizing distinct and non-renewable cultural capitals, formulating urban cultural policies in terms of city repositioning, and generating new sources of income from cultural tourism, thus contributing to the urban economy and urban growth, as well as to a sustainable use of culture that is not merely subsumed to economic sustainability [24,25,26].

This paper is structured as follows. After the introduction, Section 2 reviews the previous literature and proposes a theoretical framework. Section 3 presents the study methodology, introducing the modified categorizing system for classifying architecture and the case area, proposing hypotheses, and presenting the data collection and process methods. Section 4 shows the results and interprets them. Section 5 discusses the results from the perspective of the proposed hypotheses. Section 6 draws conclusions and presents study limitations together with future research.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Significance of Architecture in City Image Building and City Branding

The intimate relationship between architecture and city image is widely mentioned in many previous studies. Many papers contemplating city image focus on its formation model through scale development [23,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41]. Culture, entertainment, infrastructure, shopping centers, safety, sport facilities, and services are frequently examined as important items composing the residents’ and tourists’ mental pictures of cities [29]. Items such as heritage and medical facilities are more frequently used in tourism studies [29]. It is observed that built structures, although discussed in various manners referring to different stakeholder’s perceived dimensions, obviously play a vital role in shaping city image. This observation is evident in diverse cases. Mitterand’s large-scale urban project, the main component of the new Paris forming the spectacular urban landscape, is crucial in that city’s image building [42], for instance. The developments of London’s Canary Wharf and New York’s Battery Park City demonstrate how architecture and urban landscape become a form of advertising for a city [43]. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, became almost instantly synonymous with the entire city, serving as a symbol of ‘regeneration’ [44]. Similar phenomena can be found in Valencia with the creation of the City of Arts and Science [12]. Architecture is utilized in these cases as a tool to build a positive image and identity for the city that is able to better meet the demands of the cities’ stakeholders, whether they are residents, business people, or visitors, in order to gain a competitive advantage [29]. Increasing the competitiveness is the aim of the marketing and promotion of the city [45]. Therefore, architecture/urban landscape can be seen as the key actor for improving city image and enhancing an identity that brands the city [45]. Therefore, it is crucial for city branding and rebranding.

2.2. Research Gap

To investigate how architecture and urban landscape is correlated with city image, many studies in this theme focus on the singularity of architecture, referring to its stylistic or morphological definitions, and seeing architecture positioned as spectacles of cities in order to solidify urban identities, which improves city images and stimulates cultural tourism [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,10,11,46]. Many well-known architects of the 1990s such as Frank Gehry and Santiago Calatrava began to create “buildings as icons of their own individuality”, and as touristic landmarks that often resemble sculptures viewed as art more than functional buildings [7]. Godfrey’s study, which identified common methods employed in positioning images of modern architecture on destination websites, also stressed this perspective in viewing architecture as pure spectacles [12]. This perspective has its limitations; it overemphasizes the form of the built environment and neglects the function and activities happening inside or around the built environment. The correlation between the urban area with the non-positive dimensions of the city image derives from a visitor’s personal perception of the activities taking place in this area, which is the consequence of their personal experience involved in the events, not the consequence of the architectural appearance [47], as happens in the red light district of Amsterdam. However, the correlation between the personal experience within architecture/urban landscape and city image has been rarely discussed.

2.3. The Notion of Spatial Narration

Regarding the research gap, the notion of spatial narration can be adopted to explain the process of how a visitor’s personal perception is generated from the subjective experience involved in the activities happening inside or around the built environment.

Spatial narration began to draw academic attention in the 1960s when diversities in regional cultures had been eroded too much to the background of the globalization of cultural capital. Architects and theorists were trying to explore approaches to repolish local cultural identities. The notion of spatial narration was introduced into architecture and urban studies to delineate the spatial discourse visitors experience—composed of fragments in a time–space continuum, generating a sense of place—forming a visitors’ perception of the architecture/urban landscape. It is believed that during this process of spatial narration, cultural and social messages can be delivered to narratees, people using the architecture, to shape their mindscape of the tangible environment.

Similar to what Bernard Tschumi announces, architecture is an amalgam of space, event, and movement [48]. His proposition highlighted the importance of events in delivering cultural and social meanings, and stressed the importance of people’s initiative experience and perception when visiting the built environment. Architecture and any built environment, during people’s movement, becomes the discourse of events as much as the discourse of space, or as Nigel Coates put it, “communication” between the built environment and human beings [49]. Tschumi’s project of the ‘Manhattan Manuscript’ argued that the personal perception of architectures ought to be formed through the connection between events, space, and movements [48]. Canter’s “visual metaphor for nature of places” stressed similar points to Tschumi’s proposition, indicating that places are composed of physical attributes, activities, and conceptions. Regarding Canter’s theory, the social, psychological, and cultural dimensions of a place can be perceived through a visitor’s personal activities to generate the visitor’s mental map and image of a place [50]. Canter’s theory has been further developed into Punter’s “components of a sense of place”, and much later Montgomery’s “policy directions to foster an urban sense of place” [51,52]. Sense of space, as a notion representing the consequence of spatial narration, explains the relationship that people have with the built environment and the ways in which they become influenced and affected by the built environment [53]. The ‘sense’ is the clarity that one piece of architecture/urban landscape can be perceived and identified [54]. According to Cai’s definition in the context of tourism, which is rooted in psychological theory, city images are perceptions about the place as reflected by the associations held in the tourist’s memory [55,56]. This definition demonstrates the causal relationship between personal perceptions and city image. Perceptions, which are the ‘sense of space’ due to spatial narration, form the city image. This emphasis on the subjective perceptions of places, from a psychoanalytical perspective, diverges from the focus on the physical form of architecture/urban landscape; rather, it draws attention to the activities happening inside and around the built environment, involving personal experience.

Among all of the factors delivered to visitors, culture, as one of the dominant factors delivered to visitors, especially cultural tourists, influences their perceptions of the cultural dimension of a place, and has been adopted extensively as a driving force in city branding or rebranding. Las Vegas, for instance, through both spatial and social practices, has shaped its cultural identity as representing “the American way to play” [57]. Rotterdam staged the ‘Cultural Capital of Europe’ event in 2001 to position Rotterdam as a cultural destination [58]. Milan endeavored to design culture into its city brand in preparation for Expo 2015 [59]. Cordoba promoted a particular Moorish Spain story to highlight the notion of ‘real Spain’ in contradistinction to the mass tourism of the Mediterranean coast, the popularity of which has begun to subside [60]. Manchester reconstructed its city image into a positive and more romantic one by developing a ‘Hollywood of the North’ tour [61]. The successes of these cases rely much on the utility of cultural activities happening within the built environment, which act as a vital process for cultural tourists to receive cultural messages and transform them into their individual mindscape of the city, i.e., city image. Therefore, to understand the correlation between architecture and the cultural dimension of a city image, it is necessary to focus on the cultural experience within an architectural structure that generates cultural values, the very important cultural attributes of architecture. Therefore, architecture is viewed as containers where cultural activities take place, rather than pure cultural spectacles themselves.

The theoretical framework concluding the literature review is shown in Figure 1, which illustrates the focus of this research: architecture/urban landscape is seen as containers where cultural activities take place, referring to the notion of spatial narration. Through personal perceptions generated from cultural activities, the cultural message can be delivered to cultural tourists, which further shapes the cultural dimensions of the city image. Since city image is a crucial ingredient in city branding and rebranding, architecture/urban landscape, involving cultural activities, are determinant in city branding and rebranding [55,62,63].

3. Methodology

To reveal correlations between architecture and the cultural dimension of city image in such a perspective simply through description is vague and broad. Therefore, the authors discuss the correlations based on the categorization of architecture in regard to cultural activities (categorization of cultural activities within the architecture) due to its rigor and comprehensiveness. Since there are rarely classifications of cultural events or personal experience in the field of architecture, knowledge of categorization from other academic fields, such as cultural tourism, should be introduced.

This section first introduces the types of cultural attractions in the field of cultural tourism and reviews the existing categories. Then, it modifies Greg Richards’ typologies and employs them as the categorizing system of cultural experiences to classify architecture in this research accordingly. Next, it introduces the case area of Amsterdam, including the reason for selecting this case, and the cultural dimensions in its city image. Afterwards, this section presents hypotheses development, and, finally, it presents the data collection and process methods.

3.1. Greg Richards’ Categorization and Its Modification

Cultural tourism is the subset of tourism concerned with a country or region’s culture. Types of cultural attractions are widely discussed in this field. Greg Richards’ typologies of cultural attractions are modified and employed in this research due to his categorizing methods concerning the nature of cultural activities, including the organization and consumption of cultural products. Existing categories of cultural attractions are reviewed and summarized in

Table 1. Existing typologies of cultural attractions.

Researcher/s	Cultural Attraction Typologies
Polácek and Aroch (1984)	Cultural and historical monuments; Artistic and cultural manifestations; Cultural and social events
Irish Tourist Board (1988)	Music; Opera; Theatre; Dance; Painting; Sculpture; Architecture; Language and literature; History; Religion
European Centre for Traditional and Regional Cultures (1989)	Archaeological sites and museums; Architecture; Art, sculpture, crafts, galleries, festivals, events; Music and dance; Drama; Language and literature study; Religious festivals, pilgrimages; Complete culture and subcultures
Hall and McArthur (1993)	Heritage attractions: Artefacts; Buildings; Sites; Townscapes; Landscapes
Munsters (1994)	Static attractions (monuments, museums, routes and theme parks); Events (cultural–historical events and art events)
Greg Richards (2001)	Dimension of ‘Form’: Past versus Present; Dimension of ‘Function’: Education versus Entertainment

as a search process for the categorization of attractions based on the criteria of cultural activities. The diversity of cultural attractions is reflected in the range of classifications that have been constructed to describe them. Along with the development of cultural tourism, some formerly distinct categories of attraction are increasingly disappearing, while some new categories have begun to emerge. The tendency of encompassing both ‘high’ and ‘mass’ culture in tourism [64] and the transforming of the definition from culture as a product to culture as a process are increasingly significant [65], for instance. Categorizations that fail to reflect a comprehensive understanding of the tendency and the transformation are not fully capable of classifying all of the cultural attractions at present. Greg Richards criticized all of the previous typologies [66,67,68,69,70] for giving an impression of the range and type of cultural attractions that was ideographic, focusing on cultural products, rather than considering their organization or their consumption by tourists. Regarding this gap and paying great attention to events happening in cultural attractions, Richards created his analytical categorizing framework, which can identify the differences and similarities of cultural attractions in terms of cultural form and cultural function by building a matrix with two trajectories, introducing the dual notions of ‘education’ versus ‘entertainment’ in the dimension of function, and ‘past’ versus ‘present’ in the dimension of form [71]. The authors choose this framework as a base to continue work on, because it classifies cultural attractions according to the nature of cultural activities, emphasizing their organization and their consumption by tourists. Greg Richards’ framework comprehensively covers the discussion about cultural function and cultural form, manifesting its superiority, yet it still lacks discussion of ‘high’ and ‘mass’ culture in the dimension of cultural substance segmenting different devotees, which the authors decide to add as a third dichotomous typology. Hence, the typologies of cultural experience based on cultural form, function, and substance are settled. The cultural function is the purpose for which architecture/urban landscape is open to the public, whether it is purely for attracting visitors or for more daily-oriented purposes; cultural form is the form of cultural activities involving the participation of visitors; and cultural substance is the content of cultural experience consumed by visitors. The three categories are interpreted respectively in the following paragraphs regarding their meanings for classifying architecture in this research.

Speaking of cultural function, its nature is unavoidably related to the function of architecture, since it is the carrier of cultural activities. Every piece of architecture or built area open to the public as a cultural attraction is designed for one or more functions. Some are designed for daily purposes or periodic events other than attracting visitors, but now attract substantial numbers of visitors, while others are designed or modified to attract visitors and are purpose-built to accommodate their needs. This distinction in architectural function leads to the differentiation in cultural function. Here, the authors do not continue employing the dual notions of ‘education’ versus ‘entertainment’ from Richards’ framework, as this pair of ideas oversimplifies the distinctions in cultural functions. This study will focus more on the initial function of the architecture or urban area, judging if it intends to attract cultural tourists or not. To summarize, architectures employed for purposes other than attracting visitors, but now attracting a substantial number of visitors who use them as leisure amenities, are attractions of ‘daily-oriented’ function; architectures designed or converted to attract visitors have a ‘tourism-oriented’ function. These two types can be subdivided further regarding their minor differentiations or transformations in functions. ‘Daily-oriented’ architectures can be subdivided into ones that were designed for everyday service and those for holding periodic or special events. ‘Tourism-oriented’ architectures can be subdivided into ones designed to attract visitors in the first place and ones designed for purposes other than that, but are now converted into tourist attractions.

Regarding cultural forms, the ‘past’ type refers to the traditional cultural experience provided largely based on heritage and other cultural products of the past, while the ‘present’ type features more contemporary types of experiences based on cultural processes. The notions of cultural as ‘product’ and cultural as ‘process’ are derived from the notions of ‘past’ and ‘present’ as synonyms, which can help interpret the nature of ‘past’ and ‘present’. The culture as ‘product’ approach originates from literary criticism, seeing culture as a product of individual or group activities to which certain meanings are attached [65]. Cultural as a process is an approach rooted in anthropology and sociology, which regards culture mainly as codes of conduct embedded in a specific social group [72], or as processes through which people make sense of themselves and their lives. Some obvious examples are language courses, art exhibitions, and art festivals. This process is the goal of cultural tourists, who seek meaning through their tourist experiences [73,74], in which sense cultural tourism is described as a process of cultural practice that explores meanings through everyday local life. To classify architecture based on the existing definitions of ‘past’ and ‘present’ cultural experience, buildings/built areas that are cultural heritages themselves or used as places for exhibiting historical cultural products with a vested cultural theme or cultural meaning should be classified as ‘past’ types; ones that are occupied by visitors to search for cultural meanings through a process, with no existing cultural themes attached, should be classified as the ‘present’ type.

The dimension of cultural substance is divided into ‘high’ and ‘mass’ culture. Mass culture is a combination of two German notions: ‘Masse’ and ‘Kultur’. ‘Masse’ refers to the non-aristocratic, uneducated portion of European society, who are generally described as poor, lower middle class, and working class. ‘Kultur’ refers to high culture, including the arts such as music and literature, all other symbolic cultural products, and style of thoughts that appeal to the well-educated portion of European society. Therefore, regarding the terminology, mass culture connotes culture products and styles of thought favored by the ‘uncultured’ majority. To categorize architecture based on these understandings, buildings/built areas that are employed to hold events of high culture, attracting well-educated visitors, are classified as ‘high culture’ types; ones that hold events of mass culture, mainly serving less-educated visitors, are classified as ‘mass culture’ types. Thus, the three typologies are interpreted in terms of their definitions of cultural experience, and are transformed as criteria classifying architecture in research (

Table 2. Categorization of Architecture.

Dimension	Typology	Connotation
Cultural Function	A1: Daily-oriented (A1-a: used for everyday service purposes; A1-b: used for holding periodic or special events)	A1a: Architecture and built areas that were designed for daily purposes other than attracting visitors, but which now attract substantial numbers of visitors who use them as leisure amenities;
		A1b: Architecture and built areas that are used to hold periodic or special events for a purpose other than attracting visitors, but which now attract substantial numbers of visitors who use them as leisure amenities
	A2: Tourism-oriented (A2-a: designed for attracting visitors in the first place; A2-b: designed for purposes other than attracting visitors, but now converted for visitor attractions)	A2a: Architecture and built areas that are designed to attract visitors and are purpose-built to accommodate their needs
		A2b: Architecture and built areas that were designed for purposes other than attracting visitors, but now are converted into a tourist attraction to accommodate visitors’ needs
Cultural Form	B1: Past/Product	B1: Architectures that have cultural heritages themselves or are used as places for exhibiting historical cultural products with a vested cultural theme or cultural meaning;
	B2: Present/Process	B2: Architectures that are occupied by visitors to search for cultural meanings through a process, with no existing cultural themes attached.
Cultural Substance	C1: High	C1: Architecture offering cultural experiences that are favored by well-educated visitors;
	C2: Mass	C2: Architecture offering cultural experiences that are favored by the ‘uncultured’ majority

).

3.2. The Case of Amsterdam Waterfront

The waterfront of Amsterdam is selected as the case area in this research, considering the city’s aim of rebranding to improve its image as a touristic city attracting upper-scale tourism through highlighting the value of cultural heritage, including architectures in this area. The characteristic urban form of Amsterdam developed in the early modern period, and its cultural offerings shaped its image of “history, heretics, and whores” in the 1960s [75]. Upon reaching the 1970s, Amsterdam’s tourism became ever more associated with cheap drink, commercial sex, and available drugs [23]. Until today, the cultural dimension of “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” is still deeply rooted in visitors’ minds, affecting the current city image [47]. To relieve this phenomenon and reposition Amsterdam to attract upper-scale cultural tourism, in contrast to the 1960s image, the Netherlands ministry of economic affairs focuses on highlighting the value of cultural heritage in the waterfront and promoting Amsterdam as a European cultural center [65]. This paper chooses cultural attractions peppered around the Canal Belt (Grachtengordel) and the riverbanks of the IJ, the waterfront of Amsterdam, as research objects, which have long been the must-sees for cultural tourists. This includes the historical canal houses, museums, and churches that have flourished since the 17th century, and the emerging metropolitan architecture demonstrating the regeneration of the waterfront. According to the heat maps published by the Municipality of Amsterdam [76] demonstrating the urban spaces where tourists densely concentrate around the Canal Belt, along with the locations of attractions within these spaces, 19 buildings and five built areas are selected regarding their publicity, accessibility, and popularity. They are categorized in three manners according to the three typologies proposed in Section 3.1 (Appendix A).

Responding to the topic of city rebranding, the determination of city image is another big concern in this research. Section 2.1 mentions that many studies on city image focus on identifying the dimensions of constructing a city image through scale development. A generic measuring system for city image can rarely be found due to the uniqueness of every single city. There are 16 official dimensions typifying Amsterdam’s profile, published in “The Making of...the city marketing of Amsterdam” by the Municipality of Amsterdam, to compose the city image of Amsterdam. Responding to the issue concerning the aspect of cultural tourism, eight dimensions are disembedded out of 16 in this paper, and are classified into positive and non-positive ones based on their descriptions and the analysis of their strengths or weaknesses determined by the municipality [47] (Appendix B). This conduct of classification aseptically aims at teasing out the non-positive facets of the city image, and through the following correlation analysis, in order to determine their correlations to certain cultural types of architecture. Hence, the correlations between architecture typologies and non-positive image facets can be tested to feature the specific cultural attributes of tangible parts in a cityscape that point toward the aspects of the city’s image for the purpose of strengthening or reversing.

3.3. Hypotheses

This subsection integrates the nature of the cultural typologies of architecture adopted for categorization into the discussion to propose the hypotheses of this paper, regarding the respective correlations between buildings/built areas and non-positive dimensions of the city image. Three typologies are discussed respectively.

Concerning Typology A, the major difference between A1 and A2 is that A2 is specifically open to the visitors for commercial reasons. This raises the widely debated concept of ‘authenticity’ and ‘nostalgia’. Regarding the architectures/urban areas of A1, which have performed daily services ever since the beginning of their existence, nostalgic cultural visitors can always easily find the traits of the past or lives outside their everyday living space, which satisfy their quest for an authentic experience [73]. However, in Type A2, since the architecture and urban areas are intentionally designed or converted to meet the needs of visitors, cultures are more often selectively reconstructed to serve the needs of the present. The traits of the past are less evident, or are reorganized, or are even barely found in this case. The architecture and urban areas of Type A2-b have been converted in history to better attract visitors, which means the trait of the past can still be found in this type in any possible form, but are just reorganized to compose a proper cultural attraction. Tourism experiences in Type A2-b might still be perceived as authentic ones. Type A2-a are purely created for attracting visitors. Barely any traits of the past can be found in this type. Nevertheless, according to Wang, people’s satisfaction with an attraction depends not on its authenticity in the literal sense, but rather on its perceived authenticity [77]. The concept of ‘existential authenticity’, in contrast to object-related authenticity, argues that tourists’ perceptions of authenticity can diverge from the objective authenticity [78]. The theory of ‘emergent authenticity’ argues that a cultural product, or a trait thereof that is at one point generally judged as contrived or inauthentic, might over the course of time become generally recognized as authentic. These two theories both conceive ‘authenticity’ as a negotiable rather than primitive concept. Based on these arguments, tourists might still have the chance to be involved in an ‘authentic experience’ when visiting attractions in Type A2-a, which generates ‘authentic feelings’ [78,79]. Therefore, the correlation between Type A2-a is difficult to hypothesize.

Hypothesis 1. 

Type A2-a is either positively correlated or not correlated to non-positive dimensions of city image; Type A2-b is not correlated to non-positive dimensions of city image.

Regarding Typology B, a significant differentiation between B1 and B2 is that B1 is attached to certain cultural themes or meanings, whereas B2 is not. Type B1, considering the diversity and complexity of existing themes and meanings and the lack of generality or overarching values in such cultural experiences, this type might not present significant correlations with either positive or non-positive images. Type B2 highlights the concept of culture as process, which expands the scope of cultural tourism to include elements such as everyday local life. Tourists are encouraged to break the bond of their own everyday life and search for local experiences in another city [74]. Therefore, the correlations between Type B2 and city images rely on the quality of local cultural practice that tourists choose to experience in the city. Here stands out the concept of ‘culture as a way of life’ in terms of the discussion of local culture. This concept, tying culture to place, also highlights the meanings and practices of ordinary people in their daily life that constitute culture and a place. Therefore, culture is perceived as a lived experience. During this era of globalization, culture involves a more continual hybridization of meaningful practices and performances in global space. Cultural products that are local are often produced within globalizing discourses. This phenomenon highlights cultural mixing and the emergence of new forms of identity. Cultures are no longer pure or locally bound; rather, they are the syncretic and hybridized products of interactions across space [80], in other words. Since this issue of local cultural practice rests highly on the condition of every single case area, differentiating from each other, it is necessary to examine the local cultural identity of the Amsterdam waterfront. Cultural hybridization in Amsterdam invented an image of ‘Netherdisney’ [81]. The meaning of everyday life in Amsterdam, essentially the sense of place, is generated by an amalgam of local, national, and global cultural products, which manifests the identities of ‘tolerance’, ‘openness’, ‘freedom’, and ‘multilingualism’, which the city endeavors to emphasize as the positive dimensions of city image. Hence, Hypothesis 2 is proposed:

Hypothesis 2. 

Type B2 is not correlated to or negatively correlated to non-positive dimensions of city image.

Discussing Typology C, the distinction between high and mass culture, having experienced substantial changes of narrowing and widening, has triggered discussion and critique ever since the origin of mass culture. Based on the case area, from a fact-based point of view, mass culture, facilitated through mass media and mass cultural products, is highly related to the deeply established cultural image of Amsterdam that was constructed back in the 1960s. This is the last cultural image that the city wants to promote, since it is the opposite of the target image for upper-scale cultural tourism. Therefore, from the perspective of the city, mass culture stays in line with the non-positive side of the city image that needs overshadowing. Hypothesis 3 is proposed accordingly:

Hypothesis 3. 

Type C2 is positively correlated to non-positive dimensions of city image.

3.4. Data Collection and Process Methods

A questionnaire was designed to collect tourists’ opinions regarding the proposed hypotheses. The “Handbook of scales in tourism and hospitality research” was consulted for normatively stating questions [82]. Apart from questions about interviewees’ demographic backgrounds, there were two main questions asking the interviewees their choices for the most impressive buildings/built areas along the Amsterdam waterfront, as well as what they felt were the notable impacts of Amsterdam’s city images. According to the interpretation of the Red Light District example in the Introduction, and the theoretical framework proposed in Section 2.3, some architecture/built areas can generate certain images or associations contributing to the non-positive side of the city image. Therefore, if a certain type of architecture/built area is perceptually very impressive for a tourist, then it will contribute to shaping that tourist’s personal image of the city. Therefore, in data processing, if a certain type of architecture/built area statistically is correlated to the non-positive dimensions of the city image determined by the municipality, it is believed that in many tourists’ perceptions, this architecture is associated with the elements of the city image that the municipality wants to recover. Among the options in these two questions were 24 selected buildings/built areas and eight cultural dimensions of city images that were mentioned in Section 3.2. They were not presented in a categorized order, but rather in random order to ensure that interviewees did not have any preconceptions when choosing the answers. Questions were set as multiple choices considering the number of options. Paper questionnaires were handed over to and recollected from tourists face-to-face at the canal cruise stops along the Canal belts, Dam square, and Museum square in August and September 2017. The tourists that were interviewed all declared that they had finished touring the waterfront area of Amsterdam. Six hundred and forty-five questionnaires were distributed, and 598 valid ones were collected, providing a response rate of 92.7%.

Parametric tests were adopted for data analysis in this paper. First, the mean score of the different architecture types was adopted to make a comparison. The score was calculated based on the number of selected items in each type, respectively. Second, the mean scores were compared within positive and non-positive types of city images. Prior to the comparison, Levene’s test was applied to assess the assumption that the variances between two certain groups were equal. The threshold probability value p was 0.05. When the resulting p-value was less than 0.05, the assumption did not hold. Subsequently, the independent t-test was adopted to assess whether the mean scores given by two stakeholder groups were significantly different. When the group variances were not assumed to be equal through Levene’s test, an adjustment was made to the degree of freedom in the independent t-test using the Welch–Satterthwaite method. The threshold probability value p (two-tailed) in the independent t-test was also 0.05. If a p-value was not less than 0.05, it indicated that there were no statistically significant differences between means.

4. Results

Table 3. Test of Significant Difference of Cultural Function (Type A) between Positive and Non-Positive City Images.

	Type	A1-a	A1-b	A2-a	A2-b
Test
Levene’s Test	F	0.055	0.927	19.993	6.069
	Sig.	0.815	0.336	0.000	0.014
Equal Variances Assumed		Y	Y	N	N
T-Test	t	1.402	−0.169	−3.101	−5.914
	df	596.0	596.0	497.1	479.9
	Sig.(2-tailed)	0.161	0.866	0.002	0.000
Mean Difference		0.136	−0.008	−0.186	−0.373
Significance of Mean Difference		N	N	Y	Y

demonstrates the comparison between positive and non-positive city images, showing that two out of four types in the category of cultural function (Type A) had significant differences in the mean scores. The two differences both occurred in Type A2—Tourism-oriented, which indicates that tourists holding different city images had different preferences when choosing impressive tourism-oriented attractions. The respondents who found architecture in Type A2 remarkable were more likely to have a non-positive view of the cultural elements of the Amsterdam city image. The trend was even more apparent for Type A2-b for the larger mean difference. Hence, Hypothesis 1 is rejected. Both Type A2-a and Type A2-b showed positive correlations with a non-positive city image, which indicates that visitors did not perceive cultural experiences in these two types of architecture as entirely authentic ones. Regarding Type A2-b, although possessing certain historical values, the cumulative commodification processes for changing the original architectural functions into cultural attractions resulted in final products that were not determined by their cultural resources, and thus cannot and did not reflect an accurate factual record of the past [83].

The comparison of cultural form (Type B) between a pair of city images is shown in

Table 4. Test of Significant Difference of Cultural Form (Type B) between Positive and Non-Positive City Images.

	Type	B1	B2
Test
Levene’s Test	F	1.559	14.846
	Sig.	0.212	0.000
Equal Variances Assumed		Y	N
T-Test	t	−1.931	−2.635
	df	596.0	523.2
	Sig.(2-tailed)	0.054	0.009
Mean Difference		−0.207	−0.224
Significance of Mean Difference		N	Y

. It is evident that Type B2—Present/Process has a significant difference in mean scores. This indicated that a cultural form representing present/process was more likely to generate non-positive images of Amsterdam in tourists’ minds. Thus, Hypothesis 2 is rejected. The inference made to propose Hypothesis 2 is also rejected. The image of ‘Netherdisney’ featuring cultural hybridization in Amsterdam was not seen as a strong city image by visitors. Therefore, the mixed cultural identity of a tourist destination as a result of cultural globalization rather repels visitors. The very local identity that tourists seek is overwhelmed by national and global culture.

Concerning the comparison of Cultural Substance (Type C) between two groups of city images, mass culture (Type C2) was attached with significantly different preferences by the two groups, as shown in

Table 5. Test of Significant Difference of Cultural Substance (Type C) between Positive and Non-Positive City Images.

	Type	C1	C2
Test
Levene’s Test	F	5.049	10.068
	Sig.	0.025	0.002
Equal Variances Assumed		N	N
T-Test	t	−2.138	−2.789
	df	429.9	494.1
	Sig.(2-tailed)	0.063	0.005
Mean Difference		−0.235	−0.197
Significance of Mean Difference		N	Y

. It can be summarized that tourists who found the places with the attribute of mass culture impressive tended to come up with an image that was opposite to the one that the municipality endeavors to promote. Hypothesis 3 is proven to be true.

5. Discussion

According to the results shown in Section 3, Type A2-a, Type A2-b, Type B2, and Type C2 were all proven to be correlated to non-positive dimensions of city image, which means that these cultural types of architecture are associated with the weak aspect of city image. Again, it is noteworthy that the judgment of positivity and non-positivity of the city image in this case study was integrally based on the current situation and the future target of the city image, using the perspective of sustainable cultural tourism and urban development. The criteria of judgment rested on the grounds of the long-term interests of the city rather than the preferences of the tourists, in other words. These confirmed correlations between cultural types of architecture and non-positive elements of city image reveal the hidden facts that a cultural experience lacking objective authenticity, local identity, or the distribution of mass culture is associated with non-positive dimensions constituting a city image. Issues of ‘authenticity’, ‘identity’, and ‘mass culture’ are discussed in the following paragraphs regarding their important roles in sustainable cultural tourism development and urban growth.

Regarding the touristic urban space, some architecture open specifically to visitors as cultural attractions are designed as cultural products meeting the needs of visitors, which present a ‘staged authentic’ appearance [84]. Although the concepts of ‘existential authenticity’ or ‘perceived authenticity’, and ‘emergent authenticity’ diverge from the concept of ‘object-related authenticity’, they indicate the possibility of ‘staged authentic’ places offering cultural experiences perceived as authentic ones. However, visitors who are sophisticated and knowledgeable can penetrate this appearance to reject the ‘staged authenticity’, since they care very much about the objective authenticity of attractions. Seen from the survey results in Amsterdam, the tendency to apply strict criteria on objective authenticity is significant, meaning that a prominent proportion of visitors were not satisfied with contrived objective authenticity since they did not receive many authentic feelings from it. Therefore, architecture designed or modified purposely for attracting visitors and profit-making are associated with non-positive dimensions of city image. This result was also established by Hewison, who cautioned about the long-term consequences of commodifying history. The preservation process, such as modifying the original functions of cultural heritages into other ones purely serving the tourists, might be shaped to meet political and economic, rather than cultural ends, and thus threaten the sustainability of cultural tourism [85]. Responding to the cautions, Greg Richards argued that postmodern forms of tourism, with their concerns for authenticity, have come to ensure the qualities of heritage tourism assets as a guarantee of the sustainability of those assets and the tourism that they generate [86]. Therefore, cultural tourists’ desire for objective authenticity nowadays should be encouraged in contrast to the ‘commodified history’ or ‘staged authenticity’.

Identity is an essence that is signified through signs of taste, beliefs, attitudes, and lifestyles, built from points of similarity and difference [87]. The concept of identity keeps evolving along with the process of globalization, cultural hybridization, and the advent of global culture. The processes of globalization suggest that culture should be less understood as a matter of locations and roots and more as hybrid and harmonized cultural routes in global space. Global culture is a chaos culture that in principle flows with no clear limits or single determinations. Chris Barker observed that culture now should be seen as both ‘in-place’ and as a flowing stream of disembedded meanings and practices, with local culture being a ‘knot’ in the global flows of culture [80]. Globalization and global cultural flows are better comprehended as a series of overlapping, overdetermined, complex, and chaotic conditions. The local identity, under this circumstance, is a mixture or an unavoidable articulation of multiple, shifting, and fragmented identities transformed from other places in the world. Hence, a place is now constructed by global forces through the movement of cultural elements from one location to another, which impinges dreadfully on the local identity of a place that was formerly considered as solely natural, true, and pure. Taking Amsterdam as an example, the identity resulting from cultural hybridization impairs the city image. Tourists still seek the original local signs of taste, beliefs, attitudes, and lifestyles that are different from the complex and chaotic modern ones. Regarding this issue, some scholars highlight the potential significance of local communities in the sustainable development of tourism, since locals can identify, clarify, and advocate their valuing of place, thus producing and distributing tourism at the local level. Subsequently, tourists can experience the place and the way of life of local cultures. Anna Leask argued that the maintenance of specific cultural identities and practices often only can be achieved through the involvement of those from the local population [88]. This strategy is believed to provide a much greater chance of resisting the global imperatives of capital intensification, against national international and socioeconomic norms, to ensure the sustainability of local cultural tourism development [89,90,91,92,93].

Mass and high culture are both cultures that function to enrich and beautify daily life, which express values, standards of tastes and aesthetics, serving different devotees with respective cultural products, both flooding the cultural tourism market in every touristic city, similar to the waterfront of Amsterdam. Compared to the long history of high culture, mass culture had not existed until daily life became divided into periods of work and free time, particularly among the poor. The critique of mass culture began in the 19th century, worrying about leisure behavior in general, from the popularity of alcohol and illicit sex to the passivity of spectator sports, films, and television viewing. The fears were that with increasing leisure time, the more intensified use of mass culture would lead to boredom, discontent, and possibly even social chaos in everyday life. Since the 1930s onward, the term ‘mass culture’ has been developed by both conservative literary critics and Marxist theorists in a pejorative sense to suggest the inferiority of a commodity-based capitalist culture as inauthentic, manipulative, and unsatisfying, in contrast to the authenticity claimed by high culture [87]. Due to its inadequate form and production aiming at maximizing profits through purchase, and controlled by capitalist corporations, mass culture is seen as superficial and unsatisfying. The whole process of producing, distributing, and consuming mass culture reflects cultural imperialism and the globalization of cultural capital, lacking the attention to originality or the celebration of innovation, which subjects the use of culture to economic benefits, sacrificing the sustainability of cultural development in the long run [24]. However, it is not wise to eliminate the products of mass culture tourism arbitrarily; as Mia Larson found in the case of Twilight, some mass culture phenomenon cannot be prevented. The cities will have to manage it in one way or another. Concerning mature destinations such as Amsterdam, it is particularly important to stimulate the tourist segment who come for mass cultural products to experience the core values of the destination [94].

Similar to Amsterdam, cities such as London, Glasgow, and Bilbao all face the similar contest between values of cultures representing different classes, races, and genders [95,96,97] as a result of the globalization of cultural capital. Local cultures are inevitably facing the threat of being too commercialized or being overwhelmed by the invasion of others, and are unavoidably reconstructed in new ways [92]. Alongside the attention to the potential significance of local communities [89,90,91,92,93], the intervention of urban cultural policies in terms of resisting too much commodification of the local culture is also urgent. García claimed that the introduction of urban cultural policies has been far slower than the trend toward commodifying urban culture [98]. Joar Skrede also argued that urban cultural policies, in terms of city rebranding, as a sustainability concept, should mitigate some of the imbalance in favor of economic considerations in the creative city thesis, and contribute to urban sustainability by curbing some of the less palatable consequences resulting from urban development [24].

6. Conclusions

Concerning the concept of sustainability, the cultural attributes of tangible aspects in touristic cities need attention in relation to the aim of city rebranding, for improving the city image and attracting more cultural tourists, generating more new sources of incomes and job opportunities, for sustainable urban development, as well as sustainably protecting and revitalizing local cultures. Regarding the research gap lacking discussions about the correlations between the cultural attributes of architectures and city images from the perspective of personal cultural experience, the aim of this research was to statistically reveal the correlations between architecture in different types of cultural experience and the non-positive dimensions of the city image as indicators for city rebranding. This paper built a categorizing system consisting of three cultural typologies of architecture regarding the elements of cultural function, form, and content, based on the discussion of cultural experience and the modification and translation of Greg Richards’ framework of cultural attractions into an architectural context. A questionnaire was designed to collect tourists’ opinions in the case area regarding the impressive architecture and impressive cultural dimensions of the city image, and calculate the respective correlations between cultural types of architecture and non-positive aspects of the city image. The results of this research associated architecture as ‘tourism-oriented’, ‘present/process-based’, and ‘mass’ cultural types with non-positive dimensions of city images, which led to further discussions of ‘authenticity’, ‘identity’, and ‘mass culture’, and their influences on tourists’ cultural experiences. These discussions underlined that in the background of globalization, local cultures are under the threat of severe commodification or are being overwhelmed by other cultural contents, including mass culture. It is suggested that in terms of city rebranding, urban cultural policies should alleviate the imbalance inclined to economic ends, inhibiting some inadequate consequences resulting from urban development for the sustainability of urban development. Urban cultural policies also ought to highlight the potential significance of local communities in terms of identifying, clarifying, and advocating their valuing of place, producing and distributing tourism at the local level, and resisting the global imperatives of capital intensification for cultural sustainability.

This paper, in its theoretical framework, by introducing the notion of spatial narration, drew attention to tourists’ personal perception of places from an intangible perspective, emphasizing the importance of cultural activities in delivering cultural values, which coincides with Laurajane Smith and Emma Waterton’s emphasis on the intangibility of cultural heritage [99]. Regarding methodology, this paper proposed a categorizing system of three typologies regarding cultural attributes of architecture. Concerning results, this paper contributes theoretically and practically to the understanding of negative image formation and the future direction of city rebranding regarding the cultural aspect. Since culture is announced as ‘the Fourth Pillar of Sustainability’, with an essential role established in public planning, or even the central pillar that is fully integrated into the economic, social, and environmental pillars, the cultural value of architecture and its appeal to cultural tourists is crucial for long-term sustainable urban development [100,101]. This study also has several limitations. First, the buildings and built areas in the research were selected within the heat map published by the municipality showing urban spaces where tourists densely concentrate around the Canal Belt. It is possible that not all of the relevant buildings/built areas were included in the list. Second, cultural elements delineating Amsterdam were observed within 16 facets employed by the municipality to exclusively profile the city, which raises the question of whether additional dimensions also relate to the cultural profile of the case area. Third, the data collection took place only in one city. There is a possibility that correlations revealed in the current results are more valid and relevant only for this city. Future research should test the correlation validity among tourists visiting other cities that are similarly well-globalized.