School of Architecture and Construction Management
Architecture’s Role in Urban Tourism
Phil Gruen’s work explores the efforts of American cities to use architecture as a catalyst for attracting visitors and reviving urban economies. His study examines the tourist industry’s promotion of architecture as “cultural tourism,” which typically obscures less positive effects of the city’s evolving built environment.
Gruen seeks support for a survey of tourism in New
Orleans, Chicago, New York, Seattle, Boston, Washington,
D.C., and San Francisco. His project evaluates whether
urban tours ignore alternative stories of the built
environment in favor of laudatory presentations. His work
is informed by a deep commitment to the public good and a
desire to incorporate the multiple histories vital for
generating urban sustainability.
Gruen’s doctoral dissertation explores the
push-and-pull between presentation and the tourist
encounter in the late-nineteenth-century urban American
West. He is published in a Routledge anthology and in the
Journal of the West, and has presented at many national
and international conferences.
Contact Information
Phil Gruen
Assistant Professor of Architectural History and
Theory
School of Architecture and Construction Management
Washington State University
PO Box 642220
Pullman, WA 99164-2220
Telephone: 509-335-2309
E-mail: jpgruen@acm.wsu.edu
Arts, Humanities, Culture, and
Design
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