An Area of Hope and Endless Resilience - Dissertation Example

Cultural tourism is a genre of special interest tourism based on the search for and participation in new and deep cultural experiences, whether aesthetic, intellectual, emotional, or psychological" (948). The question to be answered is whether or not this is the ultimate benefit to the inhabitants - in particular those with origins overseas, now living in crowded conditions at the southern end of Brick Lane and its environs or on the social housing estates nearby.   According to a UNESCO report on the effects of tourism, the effects may be economically positive but:- This approach, however, reduces the cultural heritage and the environmental assets to an economic commodity minimizing or sometimes completely ignoring their socio-cultural values.

Ask people to mention important sites in London and they will quickly come up with a long list – Big Ben, The Houses of Parliament, the Tower, Buckingham Palace, and all the rest. But of course, this is a false picture as far as Londoners are concerned.   It really consists not of a string of tourists sites but is made up of millions of ordinary people trying to exist cheek by jowl with the tourists, the icons, and amidst the ensuing crush, Crowded buses, high prices, when all they want to do is cope and perhaps find happiness and even success for themselves, their families, and those they care about.

What is important for them is not tourist sites, but home, family, security, who they are, and where they are going. Many of these people live in Whitechapel, and many hundreds in Brick Lane and the surrounding streets. In 1986, according to the Labour party, Brick Lane at that time was:- a community of working-class and industrious people: a multi-ethnic community, a historic place which for over 3 centuries has harbored both refugees and immigrants.  The area has been described as a microcosm of London’s shifting ethnicity, but in fact, this section of the greater city has usually been filled in the main by large groups of one particular belief system and the ethnic community at any one time, rather than a general mix, despite the present-day presence of samples of such diverse cultures as those of Jamaica, and more others.