As a tourism form relying on the material and cultural heritages of regional industrial activities, industrial heritage tourism is deeply affected by the spatial layout, production and organization pattern of industrial activities. Industrial geography has also become an important discipline basis for the practices and researches of industrial heritage tourism on the resources distribution, development mode, and spatial organization. Based on the study of spatial layout features of state industrial heritage projects in China, this paper demonstrates the main factors influencing the distribution of industrial heritage. This paper argues that the industrial location theory studies the spatial layout and scientific mechanism of industrial activities from the perspective of theory and practice, which can provide theoretical support for understanding and analyzing the spatial layout of industrial heritage. Industrial sector geography focuses on the study of the production and spatial distribution characteristics, production organization mode and location characteristics of different industrial sectors, which can provide a theoretical basis for understanding the resource form and development mode of industrial heritage. Regional industrial geography, which focuses on the close relationship between industrial development and regional socio-economic elements and spatial organization, will provide an important theoretical basis for the research on the value mining, development and protection mode of industrial heritage, as well as the interactive relationship between industrial heritage development and urban and regional development. Finally, from the perspective of industrial geography theory and method innovation, this paper put forward four scientific questions to be concerned of industrial heritage tourism research as follows: focusing on the research on the spatial distribution of industrial heritage tourism resources and its influencing factors, studying the tourism developing mode of industrial heritage resources based on the characteristics of regional industrial development, paying attention to the interaction between industrial form of industrial heritage tourism and regional economic development; and researching integrated development mechanism of industrial heritage tourism resources and regional tourism industry.

Industrial heritage, known as “nostalgic landscape”, is the core resource and important foundation for the development of industrial tourism. How to choose a suitable sustainable development model for industrial heritage tourism and make industrial heritage “live” through tourism has become an urgent issue in the sustainable development of industrial heritage. This paper takes five batches of industrial heritage released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology as the research objects, and studies the spatial distribution of industrial heritage in China, the influencing factors of industrial heritage tourism development and the sustainable development model of industrial heritage tourism. The study found that: (1) The industrial heritage exhibits a significant agglomeration in space, and the agglomeration centers mainly evolve between the urban agglomerations of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta and Chengdu-Chongqing, agglomerating southwest towards northeast. The spatial distribution of cold and hot spots of the industrial heritage displays a clear core-edge structure centered on Jiangsu, Henan, and Shaanxi. The cold spots are mainly distributed in Tibet and Xinjiang in the west, and Guangdong and Hainan in the east. (2) The results of geographic detectors show that the main influencing factors of industrial heritage tourism development are tourism resource endowment, tourism development level, cultural industry development level and online attention of industrial tourism. The ranking of the explanatory power of the four main influencing factors is: cultural industry development level>tourism resource endowment>tourism development level>industrial tourism network attention. (3) Based on the detection results of the influencing factors of industrial heritage tourism development, we refined four sustainable development models: ecologicalization, urbanization, industrialization and networking.

Industrial heritage has become an increasingly attractive new tourism resource with its unique tourism value, and it is an important basis for scientific guidance of industrial heritage inheritance and utilization to build an index system for industrial heritage tourism value assessment. Based on the literature analysis, we propose a framework of components and index system for industrial heritage tourism value assessment, and we use 22 national industrial heritages in Northeast China as an example for measurement and verification. The results show that: (1) Industrial heritage tourism value assessment components include inherent value, market value, and environmental factors; inherent value is the intrinsic value of industrial heritage, market value is the external tourism development value, environmental factors are the constraints of tourism development, and the components interact with each other. (2) Industrial heritage tourism value assessment index system includes 3 criterion layers of inherent value, market value, and environmental factors and 14 specific indicators such as recreation value, location degree, and pollution degree. The industrial heritage tourism value is obtained through the expert evaluation method, entropy method, and comprehensive index method. (3) The 22 national industrial heritage tourism values in Northeast China are relatively consistent with the current situation and actual situation of the industrial heritage development. The index system follows the concept and connotation of industrial heritage as a tourism resource, and highlights its tourism value. It is significant to provide theoretical support for the formulation of national industrial heritage tourism value assessment standards and provide decision-making reference for the timing and grade arrangement of industrial heritage tourism development and utilization.

Place meaning reflects “the value and significance of the environment to the individual”. The transformation of industrial heritage sites into tourist destination brings about the change of the original place meaning. This paper takes the Beamish Museum as the research object and uses tourists’ comments from Tripadvisor as the research text. Informed by the constructive grounded theory, the research adopts the coding technique to identify the dimensions of the place meaning of the industrial heritage site, and to construct the dimension model of the place meaning. The study found that the place meaning of industrial heritage sites is formed from three interactive levels of “self”, “society” and “environment”, and the place meaning is composed of inherent material meaning, instrumental significance, social and cultural meaning and identity expressive meaning from the outside to the inside. This paper constructs the model of place meaning of industrial heritage sites and provides support for the theoretical research and managerial practices of industrial heritage sites in the future.

In the current industrial heritage movement, heritages have gradually become a new type of consumer enclave or monumental industrial holy site that is dis-embedded from the development of heritage communities. The community is the primary environment of a heritage, and the emotional relationship between the community and a heritage's history, memory, knowledge and identity constitutes an important challenge to the conservation, utilization and sustainable development of a heritage. From the theoretical perspective of traumatic memory, based on a comprehensive analysis of factory records of state-owned large-scale industrial enterprises, network texts, and interview texts of workers, this paper aims to reveal the mechanism of traumatic memory affecting community identity and heritage conservation in Tiexi District of Shenyang. It is found that the lack of understanding of the heritage’s emotional value in the process of industrial heritage conservation and the lack of interaction with the community are reasons for the community to treat the industrial heritage as a foreign culture. Influenced by the environment, body and cultural trauma, the community forms the traumatic memory of the heritage, which makes the meaning of the heritage site reconstructed and become a “love-hate” painful place. As an important factor affecting community industrial cultural identity, traumatic memory will limit community participation and action in heritage conservation. This paper argues that the contradictory and detrimental features of industrial heritage should be recognized, and envisaged, presented and responded to; We should value the identity of community as the primary environment of heritage and rebuild the relationship between community and heritage; Through oral history, witness literature, collective narration, tourism exhibition and other ways, trauma can be declared and fully explained, so as to establish the connection between the past and the present, thus the “victims” can depart from the memory dilemma and form a heritage identity. This will help the industrial heritage grow into the common heritage of the society, and achieve the sustainable development of heritage conservation and utilization through the collaboration of community and power, capital, and professional knowledge.

Women workers are important participants in industrial production and have a significant impact on industrial production and society life. The value of women workers is the integral element for meaning reconstruction and value expression of industrial heritage usage in tourism development. In this research, data of media information and visitors’ comments of four representative textile museums were collected, then they were used to explore the display features of female workers’ value in the industrial heritage tourism by comparing the information presented at the input and output ends of display and interpretation system. The research found that information transmission of female workers in the textile museum is very limited, indicating the lack of female role, the shortage of content, the simplicity of display forms with the major impacting factors from the static narrative system, the lack of personal awareness and gender perspective, and the limitation of technologies. The significance of heritage lies in value expression and transmission. In this process of constructing the presentation and interpretation of industrial heritages, a tempo dimension should be considered; in respect of content, special value regarding female workers should be further minded; meanwhile, the life scenarios of female workers should be restored, and effects of interaction and participation should be strengthened, with the purpose of showing the contribution of women to the core value of industrial heritage in a general yet authentic manner. As an explorative study on the presentation and interpretation of industrial heritage, this paper advocates scholars and practitioners to value the industrial heritage’s presentation and interpretation and to concern the female group in the development of tourism products.

Hollowing-out phenomena such as population loss and space idleness in traditional industrial cities are a worldwide issue. Based on literature analysis and field investigation, this paper summarizes the practical experience of Japan’s largest industrial zone-Hokkaido Sorachi Industrial Area, which uses industrial heritage tourism to combat with the challenge of hollowing out: applying the theory of “attraction-feedback” to guide the development of heritage tourism and overall revitalization plan of the hollowed-out industrial zone; creating industrial heritage tourist attractions to enhance the attractiveness of hollowed industrial areas and promote economic recovery; organizing industrial heritage-themed art activities and various resettlement projects to slow down the trend of population hollowing in shrinking industrial areas; excavating and shaping industrial cultural characteristics to promote community and tourists’ cultural identity to the hollowed industrial zone; inviting tourists to participate in the environmental transformation to promote the urban renewal of the hollowed industrial zone. This paper argued that, with the improvement of industrialization and the transformation of industrial technology, the number of hollow-out areas such as China’s old industrial bases and resource-exhausted cities continues to increase. In this regard, it is necessary to gather multiple forces to speed up the identification of industrial heritage and the construction of the system, and scientifically formulate the renewal planning of hollowed industrial areas; determine the theme and development mode of industrial heritage tourism development according to local conditions, enhance the attractiveness of the holloweded industrial zone to promote economic recovery; pay attention to the excavation of local cultural characteristics, innovate industrial heritage tourism projects, and continuously strengthen the cultural identity and cohesion of the hollowed industrial zone, to promote the protection, renewal and utilization of the heritage in hollow-out industrial areas.