The Production of Tourism Space Through Urban Waterfront Night Cruise: A Foucauldian Lens

ABSTRACT Urban waterfronts represent significant but limited tourism spaces within a city. Based on Foucault's thesis of power and heterotopia, this paper explores a mechanism for producing heterotopic space in tourism, contributing a critical examination of urban waterfront tourism. The Guangzhou Pearl River night cruise is employed as a case study. A ‘text‐social space’ practical framework is proposed. Two key findings are drawn. Firstly, this case has witnessed the production of an urban‐tourism heterotopia, meeting all six Foucauldian criteria. Secondly, this paper demonstrates and emphasises the exclusive and agentive roles of tourism space discourse in urban waterfront (re)development, and argues that the interaction of two systems of power‐knowledge (tourism and the urban) increases their respective field of operations.