School of Architecture and Construction Management
Phil Gruen
Architecture’s Role in Urban Tourism
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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.
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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
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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
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