From Scenic Enclaves to Community Fields: Ice-Snow Tourism and Urban-Rural Integration in Inner Mongolia, China

Ice–snow tourism has become an important development strategy in northern China, but its contribution to urban-rural integration remains uneven. Taking Inner Mongolia as a comparative qualitative case, this study examines how ice-snow tourism can move beyond enclave-oriented development and support inclusive regional development. The analysis draws on policy and planning documents, official reports, media materials, and published secondary studies, and compares Hulunbuir and Tongliao through four common dimensions: space, economy, governance, and culture. On this basis, the paper develops a community-field perspective and connects it with an institution–space–human/land coupling lens. The findings show clear differences in developmental tendency rather than two pure types. Hulunbuir exhibits stronger event-led agglomeration, urban service concentration, and branding capacity, but weaker community benefit capture. Tongliao shows stronger village-level benefit retention, collective participation, and cultural subjectivity, but faces limits in scale linkage and resilience. The paper argues that ice-snow tourism should not be understood as a simple trade-off between efficiency and equity. Instead, a coordinated “pole-community-network” pathway is needed to connect regional growth poles, community-centered governance, and networked collaboration across urban and rural nodes. The study contributes to tourism-led regional development research by clarifying how the community field mediates spatial organization, benefit sharing, and local agency in cold-resource regions.