Heritage Impact Assessment and Spatial Governance of Northern Anhui from the Perspective of Culture-Tourism Integration

Northern Anhui constitutes a vital component of Anhui’s regional coordinated development and represents a less-developed region requiring focused attention under the high-quality development strategy of the Yangtze River Delta. Endowed with abundant historical resources, culture-tourism integration serves as an effective pathway for comprehensive and high-quality socioeconomic development across the region. Nevertheless, its historical values exhibit latent features embedded within territorial space. Such values underpin local culture-tourism integration through inherent historical genes and geographical similarities. Clarifying the mutual fit between values and territorial space and scientifically facilitating the formation of the Spatial Pattern of Culture-Tourism Integration form the core research issue of this study. Based on the philosophy of coordinated conservation and development, this study adopts the HIA approach, expands the connotation of values, takes “historical space” as the assessment object, and uses the dual evaluations of territorial spatial planning as the source of impacts. The MCR Model is embedded to innovate the HIA framework, identify potential spaces and facilitate the formation of the Spatial Pattern of Culture-Tourism Integration. The results reveal obvious differentiation of impacts within the Spatial Pattern of Culture-Tourism Integration of Northern Anhui. High-potential areas and moderate-potential areas are dominated by positive impacts. These areas can rely on trunk transport routes, including high-speed railways and expressways and link adjacent cities and towns to form an inward-oriented spatial structure. Low-potential areas and marginal-potential areas are dominated by negative impacts; in particular, water systems present notable conflicts with corridors within the Spatial Pattern of Culture-Tourism Integration. Drawing on the assessment findings, this study develops differentiated spatial governance mechanisms and strategies, and implements hierarchical control for corresponding control segments, so as to foster the synergistic improvement of economic, social, ecological and cultural values in Northern Anhui.