COVID-19パンデミックとオーバーツーリズム

──東京都台東区の計量調査から──

抄録

　COVID-19 struck at the very essence of what makes a city a city: concentration, fluidity, and diversity. Due to its historical background, the Ueno district, with its high mobility and diverse urban resources, had been attracting domestic and foreign tourists by taking advantage of these characteristics; following COVID-19, however, one could say, inbound tourists had truly “evaporated”. The author conducted an online survey of 600 residents in Taito Ward, which includes Ueno, to measure their awareness of tourism in the ward after the pandemic. The results show that the majority of respondents, on the one hand, expect the number of domestic and foreign tourists to increase again after the pandemic, and support Taito Ward’s tourism promotion policies, and on the other, welcome the decrease in the number of people on the busiest streets and in the flow of guests in private accommodations in residential areas—the group with these seemingly contradictory attitudes is the largest, accounting for more than 40% of the total number of respondents, and has a high level of both community awareness and participation. The results strongly suggest the need to not only revive tourism in Taito Ward after the pandemic but also tackle the problem of overtourism observed before the pandemic, which was overburdening specific areas.