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This article presents a case study of the tourist experience of the city of Brisbane in Australia. It considers the issue of creativity and its associated meanings: how it is conveyed by the press, tourist guides, cultural institutions, and even some aspects of the urban public space. Semiotic and pragmatic approaches to the tourist experience are used to shed light on how public policies are made visible and tangible in the urban public space and help produce a creative esthetic. Tourists experience a transformed city, a univocal perspective of change deprived of historical context. While urban development tends to do away with the conflictual aspect of public space—and above all its history— it may well resurface in traditional aspects of tourism such as guided tours.