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Paper short abstract

This paper explores how Konin, a Polish post-mining region, turns industrial scars like its "Turquoise Lakes" into tourist assets. This reclamation narrative offers a compelling tourism model for the Anthropocene, moving beyond the classic "man vs. nature" conflict

Paper long abstract

This paper offers a counter-narrative to the "man vs. nature" trope prevalent in luxury and adventure tourism branding. Moving beyond the ideal of a primeval, untouched wilderness that must be "braved" or "overcome," this research examines the tourism strategy of Konin, a post-industrial region in central Poland shaped by decades of lignite mining. Here, the central story is not one of conquering nature, but of its deliberate, anthropogenic reclamation.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and analysis of promotional materials, I argue that the region reframes its relationship with the environment by transforming industrial scars into key tourist assets. The iconic "Turquoise Lakes"—pit mines flooded with water of a startling, chemically-induced color—are marketed not as wild, but as post-natural spectacles of recovery and rebirth. This narrative of "repairing" the landscape offers a compelling alternative for tourism in the Anthropocene, one that replaces the adversarial binary with a story of complex co-creation.

The paper will further explore the sensory aesthetics of this manufactured landscape. While the appeal is overwhelmingly visual, rooted in the sublime yet unsettling beauty of the turquoise water, it also offers a unique haptic and auditive experience: the transition from an industrial past to a recreational present. By analyzing how this post-extraction landscape is framed, this paper contributes to the panel’s discussion on how new, more symbiotic stories about human-nature entanglements can be forged and commodified, moving beyond the romanticized wilderness to embrace the aesthetics of the Anthropocene itself.