Visit York has been inviting one and all to 'wrap yourself up nice and toasty warm in York this Christmas'. If you want to know what's wrong with this, then simply take a moment to imagine wrapping yourself up in Manchester, London or Glasgow.

Doesn't work, does it? And it doesn't work because each of those cities mean too many different things, they are too complex to act as a cosy duvet of a place. In contrast, York is in constant danger of becoming simply the 'bustling ancient streets' visitors 'discover' on their hunt for the 'perfect Christmas gift' before collapsing in front of a pub fire, their shopping bag-indented fingers clasping a nice Yorkshire pint.

Now I'm as much a fan of ancient streets, pubs, beer and shopping as the next person/York resident but dangers lurk here. At the same time as Visit York is boosting the city's tourist economy, the city council, rhetorically at least, regularly states its commitment to the city being 'inclusive' and 'fair'.

The current Labour administration has continued the 'York Without Walls' initiative which specifically asks 'Is enough being done to make the best use of our assets for everyone's benefit?' In the last 18 months, York city council enrolled, among others, The Spirit Level academics Professor Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett as well as Archbishop Sentamu to run a Fairness Commission which reported in September last year.

Yet the current use of York's history and heritage as 'an asset' is in danger of actively generating exclusivity and unfairness. At worst York's historic streets just become an aestheticised film set for tourist snaps or, beyond the mini-break, as a 2011 Bing report found, for a place to set up home.

This conjuring up of York as just lovely then paves the cobbled way to a horrendous cocktail – noted by the Fairness Commission – of minimum-waged and seasonal employment plus extremely high rent/house prices. Leading to the widely noted 'two cities' problem with Archbishop Sentamu stating in this introduction to the Fairness Commission report, 'while two fifths of York residents are relatively well off and live in the best 20% of places in the country, around 13,000 of their neighbours live in the most deprived 20%'. With the recent changes in Local Housing Allowance, the mixture of low wages and unaffordable housing puts almost all homes out of reach for people drawing housing benefit. Many of whom will be, as is well noted in this paper, working the very minimum wage jobs which keep York feeling all historic and cosy.

The Fairness Commission made a number of recommendations, including to make York a living wage city and to address housing inequalities – both are crucial. Yet will these changes have the space to grow unless the cultural politics of York's cosy image isn't taken on too?

This has all been a round about way for me to introduce a group I'm part of – York's Alternative History – and our forthcoming event York: Luddites 2013 - this Saturday, 19 January 2013. It is possible to make York a cosy duvet-place because its public history is formed by a relatively comfortable and settled narrative. The city invites you to move through the Romans to Vikings to railways to chocolate with relative ease via its key museums/heritage attractions.

It is true that Clifford's Tower represents a more unhappy history which is addressed and is kept alive by local activists around Holocaust Memorial Day. Equally York's historic poverty is often mentioned – usually through evoking Seebohm Rowntree's report. However, in its public histories, these negatives very often salved pretty close on by happier tales of benevolence by Quaker employers (at Rowntrees or Terrys). Even now, to be more picky about the Fairness Commission's tone, poverty is imagined as most likely solved by our elected officials rather than change being actively fought for by those directly affected.

But there is much more to York than Romans-Vikings-railways-chocolate. Last summer, local historian Paul Furness led us on a walk of the city highlighting histories of which most of us and our neighbours were pretty ignorant. Many of these were tales of radicalism and resistance and you can hear more about them from Paul himself in this associated Guardian Northerner post. However, on 19th January we will be focusing on York's role as a judicial centre of Yorkshire and the trial at York Castle of 66 alleged West Riding Luddites and the subsequent execution by hanging of 17 of their number. The day's events will begin at 1pm with a series of talks exploring the Luddites cause and legacy from different perspectives at Guildhall:

The speakers are: Alan Brooke (Huddersfield Local History Society), Malcolm Chase (University of Leeds) and and Katrina Navickas (University of Hertfordshire). We will then hold a commemoration at the site of the executions (3.45 St Helen's Square/4pm York Castle).

Some of the friends and family of the executed wore white armbands in mourning on the day of the Luddite executions, and we'll do the same on Saturday. With the exception of a small case in the Castle Museum, this is a history ignored. No events commemorating the Luddite executions would have happened without York's Alternative History – you can't help feeling it's a history which doesn't quite fit.

Yet isn't there an opportunity here? By bringing into the public eye histories rarely highlighted we can stretch perceptions of 'York' which might in turn actively create space for the living wage and affordable housing agendas outlined in the Fairness Commission (and, we hope, much more ambitious claims too). Moreover, such alternative histories point to the people of York's roles in creating change themselves rather than being merely the grateful recipients of 'their freedom' from monarchs (as last year's York 800 celebrations captioned it) or of reasonable employment conditions by their employers (as the Rowntree narrative so often publicly goes).

By being less cosily tied to its historic beauty and eiderdown history and much more publicly connected to its rich, radical but also complex pasts, York will create for itself the room it needs to be a place for life and living and not just for Christmas.

Helen Graham is a member of York's Alternative History and University Research Fellow in Tangible and Intangible heritage, University of Leeds Contact her at h.graham@leeds.ac.uk

Now check out Helen Paul Furness's companion Guardian Northerner piece on four radical sites in York, here.