Tourists in the spatial structures of a big Polish city: Development of an uncontrolled patchwork or concentric spheres?

•Tourists are one of the influential factors changing spatial structure of the city.•We examine tourist behaviour in the city and their motivations.•We conduct experiment with GPS registration of tourist movement.•Tourist behaviour reflects city socio-spatial structure.•Model is created showing tourist spatial structure of the big Polish city.

The popular thesis about the development of a postmodern city under the impact of tourist traffic emphasises the patchwork character of those processes. The research is intended to test its validity for one of the Polish Cities – Poznan.The aims are: to recognise which of city areas are ignored by tourists and which are selected by them, to identify in what way spatial structures of the city develop in terms of urban tourism, to create a model mapping a polish city, using Poznań as an example, in terms of tourists' activity and possible scenarios of its development. Presented research shows concentration of tourists' attraction in the city, tourists' behaviour and their motivation. Places that build this tourist structure can be classified according to their functions and spatial arrangement. Authors distinguish “induction spots”, “gates to the city”, “anchor spots, “bridges”, “undiscovered places”.