Journal Article

Cities in the experience economy: the rise and the future of urban leisure formats

Zmyslony, Piotr, Wędrowicz, Karolina Anna

2019

Overview

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to discuss the rise and the future of urban leisure format (ULF), i.e. local seasonal short-lived and repeatable small-scale place-time-based staging urban leisure experiences which become the focus of recreation and tourism development in many cities. It aims to analyse the structure of the ULF by identifying its main features and also to propose the future developments of the concept.Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on the experience economy principles. It develops the models for structured experiences/experienscape by adding the analogy with television programme formats to propose the general logic of constructing, organising and packetizing urban leisure experiences that are multiplied effectively to other urban time-spaces.FindingsThe ULF’s future potential lies in its ability to adopt local components, i.e. people and urban resources, to global trends using a structured experiences/experience logic which makes the ULF formattable, i.e. with the capacity to get informally standardised, then repeated and adapted to other cities’ contexts.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper provides a conceptual framework for formatting the leisure events and places under the framework of the structured experience, will be carefully adapted to the micro-local level, i.e. community activities sphere. The ULF is a theoretical concept and needs empirical research to verify its validity.Practical implicationsThe ULF provides urban managers with a framework for replicating, multiplying and adapting urban leisure events and sites within the structured experiences (SE) designing framework.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the scientific discussion on the experience economy by introducing the ULF concept which can be adapted to various urban conditions.

• Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing Limited,Emerald Publishing
• Subject: city tourism / Consumer behavior / Consumers / Consumption / experience economy / experienscape / Leisure / Opportunity costs / structured experiences concept / trends / urban leisure / urban tourism