Cultural tourism, resignification of heritage public space as a place brand and territorialization of the Zócalo-Alameda Central-Plaza de la República corridor

Abstract

Introduction: The practices carried out by tourists within the public heritage space of the Zócalo-Alameda Central-Plaza de la República Corridor are part of their processes of territorialization, appropriation, museification and resignification. These practices promote cultural tourism by building place brands that contribute to the exploitation of these collective heritage assets. Methodology: To analyze the effects of these interrelations, a transdisciplinary methodology was implemented where the logic of the included third party is applied to interpret the relationships of this corridor, with the symbolic, aesthetic and economic dimensions, by observing and ethnographizing it. Results: This place as a tourist attraction demands an interpretation of all territorial intervention, since its impacts result in the domestication of the tangible and intangible cultural heritage as a result of selective modernization. Discussion: The production of places as spaces for tourist consumption generate desirable and undesirable phenomena in public heritage spaces, whose effects must be interpreted to understand their territorialization. Conclusions: A heritage public space is a space practiced, symbolized and emotionalized by tourism, which magnifies its role as a place mark within the territory. Thus, this emblem will be re-semanticized with a utilitarian character, but also by other deeper meanings, to account for its essence.