Cultural capital as living heritage infrastructure: rethinking heritage tourism in secondary cities

Heritage tourism research has largely framed cultural value through designation-driven and branding-oriented approaches that privilege globally visible destinations and capital cities, often overlooking secondary cities. This study aims to rethink how cultural capital is conceptualized and mobilized in heritage tourism, with a focus on Trabzon, a secondary city aspiring to become the Cultural Capital of the Turkic World. It develops a conceptual framework that reconceptualizes cultural capital as living heritage infrastructure–a relational and embedded process sustained through everyday practices, historical layering, and social relations. Methodologically, the study adopts a conceptual and interpretive approach, synthesizing insights from critical heritage studies, urban cultural theory, and tourism scholarship, and illustrating the framework through the case of Trabzon, Türkiye. The analysis demonstrates that cultural value does not depend solely on formal recognition or institutional visibility, but on how cultural life is sustained and aligned with local contexts. It also highlights the risks of commodification, simplification, and visibility-driven governance associated with designation-oriented approaches. The paper contributes a transferable conceptual lens for examining heritage tourism in secondary cities and advances an ethical approach to cultural capital leadership centered on stewardship, continuity, and community embeddedness, with both theoretical and practical implications.