Towards a regenerative shift in tourism: applying a regenerative conceptual framework toward swimmable urban rivers

Regenerative tourism is a transformational approach to healing relationships between tourism, places and communities. Several urban rivers are being made swimmable (again) to mitigate against negative climate effects, promote urban health and liveability and contribute to the city’s tourism potential. This paper examines the application of a regenerative tourism conceptual framework (RTCF) to the Swimmable Birrarung/Yarra River (SB2030) initiative in Narrm, Melbourne, Australia and the dynamics among the key initiative stakeholders. Swimming is applied to catalyse regenerative transformations of the city’s main waterway. Tourism’s contributions to regenerating the river and its community are examined. The RTCF is tested for the development and implementation of a transdisciplinary action research project involving the river, civil society, academic, Indigenous, business, and government actors. Analysis of the SB2030 initiative shows that extractive approaches dominate tourism’s approach to the river but also that tourism can play a critical role in supporting the regenerative development of the river and its community. Rather than a type of tourism, it positions tourism’s core purpose as a contributor to the regeneration of social-ecological systems. Evidently, other sectors must create conditions suitable for tourism to support the multi-systems urban river regeneration impetus. This paper contributes to the discursive developments of regenerative tourism applications and informs urban regenerative development transformations.