A cartographic approach to sustaining urban places through festivals as intangible cultural heritage

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Melis, C orcid iconORCID: 0000-0001-8033-8404 and Chambers, D (2026) A cartographic approach to sustaining urban places through festivals as intangible cultural heritage. Journal of Sustainable Tourism. pp. 1-21. ISSN 0966-9582

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Abstract

This study draws on Deleuze and Guattari’s principle of cartography to examine how urban places can be sustained through festivals as forms of intangible cultural heritage (ICH). To do so, we conceptualize festivals as maps that generate multiple connections between human and more-than-human worlds. We show that festivals are shaped by unstable, heterogeneous relations among bodies, discourses, and materialities that simultaneously de-territorialize and re-territorialize urban places. This understanding of festivals as fluid and living challenges neoliberal framings of ICH as static inheritance to be safeguarded and preserved - framings that may paradoxically undermine the sustainability of ICH itself along with the urban places in which ICH is enacted. Inspired by post-qualitative inquiry, we use two urban festivals in Sardinia, Italy, as exemplars to show how a cartographic approach to understanding ICH, through festivals, can inform urban policy and planning for more sustainable futures.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: 1503 Business and Management; 1506 Tourism; 1604 Human Geography; Sport, Leisure & Tourism; 3508 Tourism; 4406 Human geography
Subjects: G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GN Anthropology
G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GV Recreation Leisure
H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races
Divisions: Liverpool Business School
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Date of acceptance: 28 September 2026
Date of first compliant Open Access: 13 October 2026
Date Deposited: 13 Oct 2026 08:25
Last Modified: 13 Oct 2026 08:25
DOI or ID number: 10.1080/09669582.2026.2742935
URI: https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/29656
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