Tourism planning and place making: place-making or placemaking?

ABSTRACT

Tourism destination planning and marketing are fundamentally place making actions intended to shape the image and imageability of a place. Place making is an innate human behavior, ranging from the organic and unplanned actions of individuals, defined here as ‘place-making,’ to planned and intentional global theming by governments and tourism authorities, defined here as ‘placemaking.’ Place-making and placemaking are ends on a continuum of options, with most places have a mix of local and global elements. These elements also range from the tangible (base in urban design) to the intangible (peoplescapes and imaginations). The tools of place making are essentially the same for both organic place-making and planned placemaking, but the intentions and outcomes can vary enormously. Tourism development, as an economic activity, almost always has a neoliberal planned placemaking agenda. Organic place-making emerges through individual agency, which if allowed to proceed, will make its imprint even in a heavily master planned tourism landscape. An understanding of place-making and placemaking gives insight into research questions on the political economy of tourism and the roles of hosts and guest in co-producing tourism places. Examining the elements of place making in a tourism landscape can more clearly identify how different worldview perspectives have contribute over time to the making of tourism places, and thereby assist in planning for the future development of destination communities.     

Improving the use of history by the international humanitarian sector

Abstract

This article challenges the often implicit assumption by historians working on humanitarian history that their work is being read and used by present-day humanitarian workers. Key characteristics of the modern-day humanitarian sector are highlighted, including the unpredictable and often inadequate levels of funding, stressful working conditions and high staff turnover. The article argues that, to a significant degree, the humanitarian sector is ahistorical and locked into a state of ‘perpetual present’. Two principal obstacles to the greater use of historical knowledge within the present-day humanitarian sector are identified as being the limited accessibility of the available literature on humanitarian history and the perceptions that the work of humanitarian historians is of limited relevance. The paper concludes by describing recent initiatives including the planned humanitarianhistory.org website which is intended to improve the accessibility of the available literature and facilitate engagement and co-production between historians and humanitarian workers.     

Productive tensions—engaging geography students in participatory action research with communities

This study discusses the benefits and challenges of an undergraduate module on participatory geographies, involving students in co-producing research with community partners. The module challenges the knowledge production model predominant in Geography curricula. We argue that it develops students' skills and understanding through engaging them intellectually, socially and emotionally outside the university. As a student, two community partners and a professor, we offer our perspectives on the opportunities and conflicts that arose. We do not gloss over tensions in achieving the module's diverse aims, but suggest that these are productive for teaching, learning, research and the needs of community organizations.     

Co-Producing Mobilities: negotiating geographical knowledge in a conference session on the move

In an experimental session entitled Co-Producing Mobilities held at the 2014 Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers Annual Conference, 20 mobility scholars travelled around London on foot, by bus and by Tube to investigate how mobilities could be considered co-produced. In this paper, 18 participants reflect on this collaborative experiment and on how it influenced their thinking about mobilities, geographical knowledge and pedagogy. Contributions cast light on the function of conferences and the multiple forms of pedagogy they enable, and provide guiding resources for those now wanting to continue such experiments.     

Engagement and Management: Developing a Monitoring System for Open-air Rock Art in the UK and Ireland

ABSTRACT

Neolithic and Early Bronze Age rock carvings in the United Kingdom and Ireland represent an internationally unique rock art tradition as it is, to the best of our knowledge, the only wholly abstract global rock art tradition. This heritage resource is, however, under threat from an array of factors, such as increasing population densities and agricultural intensity. In this paper, we report on the Condition Assessment Risk Evaluation (CARE) project that had as one of its primary objectives the co-production of a user-friendly, non-invasive condition assessment risk evaluation Toolkit for gathering and organising information essential for the long-term conservation of open-air rock art. We describe the public involvement CARE process through co-experience participatory focus groups, which evaluated the Toolkit, concluding that we can have confidence in the results obtained from the public. Furthermore, the variables that form part of the Toolkit and related management recommendations are presented.     

Writing Political Forests

In this essay, we highlight the intellectual context that shaped our initial conceptualisation of political forests as dynamic spaces and political ecologies, and how our fieldwork and comparative approach shaped our subsequent elaboration of the concept and its empirical manifestations. Of particular significance was our emphasis on incorporated/relational comparison and our multiscale analysis. These approaches allowed us to locate subjects and processes in specific field sites within an emergent global forestry network produced through multiscale interactions and movements within and among colonial and FAO forestry empires. We revisit the key processes through which we learned to see common and contrasting mechanisms that have made forests inherently political in our six research sites in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, linking these “classic” mechanisms to concepts in wide use today. These concepts include understanding political forests as co-produced, the significance of expertise in their reproduction, and the interactions between politics and the lively materialities of political forests. Among other conclusions, we suggest that the political forest is being replaced by what could be called “political conservation”, which has its own knowledge networks and expertise that displace but also build on political forestry. Finally, we reflect on how these ideas are being further developed by the authors in this symposium, whom we gratefully acknowledge for demonstrating that the politicisation of forests continues to be significant today.     

Who Shapes the Politics of Expertise? Co-Production and Authoritative Knowledge in Thailand's Political Forests

Expert environmental knowledge has often been described as a governmental rationality that reduces political debate and facilitates state control. In this paper, I argue instead that this line of reasoning simplifies how knowledge gains political authority, especially when expertise is shared and left unchallenged by diverse actors, including those in conflict with each other. Using the framework of co-production from Science and Technology Studies (STS), I apply this argument to conflicts over the supposed watershed functions of forests in Thailand, where simplified narratives about the impacts of land use on water supply are used as justifications for territorialisation and restrictions on forest land. In particular, I focus on local resistance to the proposed Kaeng Sua Ten dam in northern Thailand in order to demonstrate how protestors have deliberately reproduced formal expertise to empower themselves, but by so doing also reinforcing simplified visions of watershed science and community culture. I argue that exposing the co-production of authoritative knowledge and visions of social order offer greater opportunities for understanding the role of expertise as a political force than analysing competing assemblages based on oppositions of state-led expert knowledge and traditional local practices.     

The Chinese–Korean co-production pact: collaborative encounters and the accelerating expansion of Chinese cinema

Official film co-production treaties are designed by policymakers to stimulate a range of collaborations, technology transfers, and joint funding initiatives in the industry. Since July 2004, the Chinese government has used this top-down approach to cultural diplomacy as a symbolic tool for advancing Chinese cinema and opening the domestic market to a host of willing international partners. Korean filmmakers in particular have exploited the (often informal) opportunities presented, engaging in vigorous cooperation with Chinese colleagues across all sectors of the production ecosystem. The continuing flow of Chinese–Korean transnational film encounters, underpinned by influential personal networks, resulted in the signing of a formal China–Korea co-production agreement in July 2014. To examine the efficacy of this policy intervention, this article analyzes the diversity of film collaboration that preceded this agreement and its impact on transnational filmmaking in China. It investigates the strategies used in the remaking of Korean auteur Lee Man Hee’s 1966 melodrama Late Autumn (2010), technical innovation in the VFX-heavy Mr. Go (2013), and the making of mega-distributor CJ E&M’s romance drama A Wedding Invitation (2013) to illustrate how Korean firms and practitioners are expanding the commercial entertainment boundaries of Chinese cinema. In so doing, it also reveals how Chinese film companies are enabling the Korean film industry to internationalize its approach to overseas markets beyond the kind of conspicuous policy initiatives tailored for a globalized cultural economy.     

3D heritage visualisation and the negotiation of authenticity: the ACCORD project*

This article examines the question of authenticity in relation to 3D visualisation of historic objects and monuments. Much of the literature locates their authenticity in the accuracy of the data and/or the realism of the resulting models. Yet critics argue that 3D visualisations undermine the experience of authenticity, disrupting people’s access to the materiality, biography and aura of their historic counterparts. The ACCORD project takes questions of authenticity and 3D visualisation into a new arena – that of community heritage practice – and uses rapid ethnographic methods to examine whether and how such visualisations acquire authenticity. The results demonstrate that subtle forms of migration and borrowing occur between the original and the digital, creating new forms of authenticity associated with the digital object. Likewise, the creation of digital models mediates the authenticity and status of their original counterparts through the networks of relations in which they are embedded. The current pre-occupation with the binary question of whether 3D digital models are authentic or not obscures the wider work that such objects do in respect to the cultural politics of ownership, attachment, place-making and regeneration. The article both advances theoretical debates and has important implications for heritage visualisation practice.     

Strategic spatial planning – a missed opportunity to facilitate district heating systems based on excess heat

ABSTRACT

Strategic spatial planning is important for developing long-term visions and strategies towards regional and local sustainability. This paper explores if and how strategic spatial planning could be useful for overcoming some barriers related to new sustainable ways of heating residential areas, using district heating systems based on industrial excess heat. This longitudinal study builds on interviews with municipal and private actors in six Swedish municipalities. It highlights that important barriers can be overcome by influencing the design and location of residential districts and industrial activities. Further, it identifies missed opportunities in local spatial planning practice as stakeholders are involved late in the planning when much is set, leaving little space for stakeholders to have an impact. Consequently, there might be a lack of knowledge and expertise in how such issues could enhance planning. Strategic spatial planning could facilitate conditions for excess heat-based systems of district heating as it implies a broader systems perspective which could enhance a broader planning scope. Plan programs could bring about more strategic spatial planning processes as these require early stakeholder involvement. If taking stakeholder involvement one step further to stakeholder collaboration or co-production, an even broader planning scope would be achieved.