Tourism, territory and transition: Heritage spatialization in Uzbekistan

Purpose This study examines the transformation of Uzbekistan’s tourism geography between 2010 and 2024, emphasizing the shift from rapid spatial expansion to strategic consolidation around heritage cities such as Samarkand, Bukhara, and Tashkent. It investigates how tourism functions as a spatial instrument of governance, identity construction, and economic diversification in a post-Soviet context. Methods: Using longitudinal visitor data, economic indicators, and spatial mapping generated through R and Python, the study analyzes evolving tourist flows, destination hierarchies, and the spatial concentration of tourism investments across Uzbekistan’s regions. Results: Findings show that while the number of officially recognized destinations plateaued after 2016, tourist arrivals and receipts continued to increase, marking a transition from territorial expansion to qualitative consolidation. Tourism has evolved into a form of spatial storytelling that reinforces the visibility of core heritage centers while reproducing symbolic and infrastructural inequalities across the periphery. Implications: Beyond Uzbekistan, the findings offer insights for emerging tourism economies aiming to balance heritage valorization with regional inclusion, providing adaptable guidance for equitable destination planning aligned with SDGs 8, 9, and 11. By extending core–periphery theory to a post-socialist tourism context, the study reframes tourism as a territorial governance project that links cultural heritage, spatial inequality, and statecraft. It demonstrates that spatial inequality is not merely an economic outcome but a deliberate product of narrative and institutional governance.