Geographies of tourism development and planning

ABSTRACT

Development and planning have long been a focus of tourism geographers. Although the ideas of development and planning are complex and challenging to define and study, there is a strong agreement on the academic and societal relevance of their research in tourism geographies: tourism is a growth industry which requires holistic and future-oriented planning measures that minimize the negative externalities of tourism and guide the industry's growth towards a development path. A brief overview of early phases and current directions of development and planning approaches in geographical tourism research shows how traditional approaches are still relevant. There is, however, a need to recognize distinct contextual and historical dimensions around the geographies of tourism development and planning in versatile research contexts. These historic and contextual elements influence the present and future characteristics and power relations of tourism in place and can help us to understand how tourism works with localities and localities with tourism.     

Modern Seaweed Harvesting and Gathering in Scotland: The Legal and Ecological Context*

This paper reviews the legal and ecological implications of seaweed harvesting in Scotland, in the context of current attention to potential approaches for its future regulation. Definitions of the different forms of seaweed removal are provided. It is believed that small-scale harvesting is sustainable provided that certain guidance is followed. Renewed harvesting of the wrack Ascophyllum nodosum is of only minor concern that can be addressed by a low level of monitoring. Recent interest in commercial harvesting of the kelp Laminaria hyperborea, however, has considerable implications for the environment that are examined, and phased development of this industry is suggested, with progression informed and guided by monitoring.     

Linking Gentrification and Labour Market Precarity in the Contemporary City: A Framework for Analysis

The interplay between intensifying labour market precarity and gentrification constitutes a hitherto under‐researched topic in the fields of labour and urban geography. To rectify this lacuna, we argue that gentrification and labour flexibilisation are both socio‐spatial manifestations of capital's efforts to confront crises of accumulation. Distinguishing between what we call “weak” and “strong” links between them, and drawing upon the concepts of “gentrification‐supporting” and “gentrification‐fostered” labour flexibility, we outline a framework for connecting gentrification and precarity. This allows us to make links between the restructuring of the built environment and the reorganisation of work in the post‐industrial city; it also allows us to show how workers, through their agency, can shape rent gaps in the contemporary city.     

Social sustainability of urban regeneration led by industrial land redevelopment in Taiwan

Abandoned industrial sites, usually contaminated by hazardous substances, create social injustice in the surrounding communities. Redevelopment of industrial land has brought prospects of sustainable development to the communities that live in and around them. This research is to identify the critical factors facilitating urban regeneration and particularly social sustainability in Kaohsiung, an industrial city of Taiwan which experienced deindustrialization in recent decades, resulting in several abandoned industrial sites and decay of the adjacent urban communities. Two different industrial land redevelopment projects were examined; (1) Jhongdou Wetland Park, which focuses on environmental sustainability, and (2) Pier-2 Art Centre, which focuses on economic sustainability. Measured by the social sustainability indicators developed by the Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development and through findings from a questionnaire survey of community members, this study found that the redevelopment project of the Pier-2 Art Centre has a higher level of social sustainability than the Jhongdou Wetland Park, performing better in six out of nine themes. Critical dimensions resulting in the better performance in social sustainability of the Pier-2 Art Centre included rental affordability, heritage conservation, community image, cultural activity, community association, public space, local organization and higher accessibility to facility.     

The arc of autonomy in Georgia's Ajara

Drawing on the case study of Georgia's Ajara region, this paper makes the argument for foregrounding autonomy as a strategy used by states for managing diverse territories. Particularly salient to the concept of autonomy is its flexibility as a spatial fix, one which can be variously deployed depending on the form of political relations between center and periphery. Empirically, we draw from a set of 22 interviews conducted in Tbilisi and Ajara's capital of Batumi to trace the arc of autonomy in the republic through its Soviet and post-Soviet history. Established on cultural grounds, the form of Ajara's autonomy has subsequently been institutional, instrumental, and nominal. The republic today maintains its autonomous status, though its competences are delimited from Tbilisi; rather, this status serves as a model for the future—albeit unlikely—reincorporation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia into the Georgian state. In conclusion, the paper endorses greater engagement with autonomies that fall short of conflict and separatism but nonetheless provide valuable insights into the suite of strategies that states employ in the management of territory. Autonomies are possibly entering a new, more unstable period of centralizing pressures that will challenge their original purpose and perhaps also regional peace and stability.     

跨国公司地方嵌入新视角:基于地方劳工市场的研究进展与理论思考

20世纪90年代以来,跨国公司地方嵌入研究相对聚焦于资本密集型或技术密集型企业,而需要大量非熟练工人的劳动密集型跨国企业并未引起足够关注,建立在产业联系、技术外溢、社会网络等核心概念基础上的跨国公司地方嵌入分析框架很显然不能很好地解释劳动密集型跨国公司地方嵌入的理论与实践问题。在劳工地理学、新经济地理学等学科背景下,基于全球生产网络、关系嵌入、空间修复等核心概念,研究分别从劳工能动性的空间尺度、跨国公司地方嵌入的劳工要素、劳工管控对跨国公司的地方嵌入、区域劳工景观的空间修复等视角出发,系统梳理相关研究进展并提出未来主要研究议题,包括如何识别劳工供需因素对跨国公司地方嵌入的影响机制,如何剖析特殊劳工管控体制下劳工空间实践与能动性的关系,如何刻画跨国公司地方嵌入对区域劳工经济地理景观的影响,如何总结跨国公司地方嵌入与区域发展的战略耦合模式等。     

Sustainability as Empty Signifier: Its Rise,Fall, and Radical Potential

Until recently, the concept of “sustainability” appeared to occupy a central position in the politics of many Western democracies. Following the 2008 financial crisis, however, sustainability has been relegated to a position of secondary or tertiary significance. This article considers the rise and fall of sustainability through the theoretical lens of Ernesto Laclau, considering whether it may be seen as an example of an “empty signifier”. Through detailed engagement with Laclau's work, as well as both theoretical and empirical studies of the concept of sustainability, I argue that sustainability signifies the multiple failures of dominant discourses to recognise “the future” as a meaningful category. After examining the historical conditions under which sustainability was able to operate in this way, I go on to argue that the global financial crisis and neoliberalism more broadly have interrupted our capacity to think about the future, undermining the significance of sustainability, at least temporarily.     

Community sustainability and resilience: similarities,differences and indicators

Sustainability has been a core conceptual framework for community development since the approach was popularized in 1987, although in its essence it reflects a long history of environmental conservation reactions to industrialization. Resilience, as a framework for understanding and approaching community development, emerged more gradually out of ecological studies in the 1980s, but has only recently, since the mid-2000s, emerged as a focus of public interest as a way of responding and adapting to the planet's growing anthropogenic changes. For many, sustainability and resilience are slightly nuanced perspectives on the same phenomenon. For others, however, there are distinct differences between them, with sustainability's conservation goals being in opposition to the adaptation goals of resilience. Two major reasons for these confusions are (1) both concepts are defined and used in many different ways to achieve a variety of political goals that may not reflect their core definitions, and (2) both concepts share similar goals and some common approaches, such as a focus on climate change and seeking a balance between humans and nature. Returning to the core definitions of conservation and adaptation helps to clarify their similarities and differences, as well as to articulate indicators for understanding how each applies to community tourism development. Indicators from research in rural Taiwan tourism communities were therefore based on responses to the questions: What does the community want to conserve and how do they want to do it (sustainability)? What do they want to change and how do they want to do it (resilience)? Preliminary results suggest that the new ideal community is the one that is both sustainable and resilient.     

Energy geographies: thinking critically about energy issues in the classroom

Energy issues are becoming increasingly common subjects of instruction in undergraduate- and graduate-level classrooms across a variety of disciplines. The interdisciplinary character of energy studies provides geographers with a great opportunity to present different applied and theoretical approaches to help students conceptualize energy issues from a critical perspective. This article presents a class intervention as an example of how to incorporate geographic concepts and political economic theory into the classroom to help students understand the social, political, economic, and environmental implications of energy production, distribution, and consumption at multiple scales from a critical perspective.     

Coffee,Fair Trade,and the Commodification of Morality

The goals of the fair trade movement include guaranteeing a reasonable income for rural farmers in the Global South, building democratic institutions and gender equality, and promoting environmental sustainability. Proponents claim that consumers, through their buying choices, can counter the negative externalities created by neoliberal reforms of the past three decades. The question is, whether a market-oriented solution can address market-created ills, or whether fair trade is a marketing strategy to increase the profit margin of agencies along the commodity chain? This article examines how these questions have been addressed by the books under review.