The production of tourism space: A case study of the space-place dialectics in contemporary tourism promotion

Abstract

Place identities have become contested subjects in contemporary tourism place promotion. The growing importance of difference and uniqueness in an increasingly competitive global tourism environment has made it more pressing than ever that tourism places brand globally recognisable, yet locally unique, place identities. A tension exists between this need to be globally recognisable and locally unique, however. Risks of increasing homogenisation and of alienation of local residents have led to increasing calls for the inclusion of local residents' values in tourism place promotion. The realities of the international tourism marketing context, by contrast, necessitate the creation and maintenance of internationally competitive, demand-oriented place products.

This tension inherent in place making leads to a more fundamental theoretical question at the heart of the structure-agency debate in the social sciences generally and the space-place debate in geography in particular: how best to conceptualise the relationship between structure and agency in general and in contemporary tourism-based place making in particular?

In this thesis, I explore and compare two different theoretical attempts to conceptualise this structure-agency relationship using two case studies of tourism place making in Queenstown and Glenorchy in the South Island of New Zealand. I explore both Lefebvre's (1991a) The Production of Space and two spatial applications of Habermas' critical theory (critical regionalism and communicative planning theory) in order to establish how they contribute to an understanding of the tension inherent in place making evidenced in the Queenstown and Glenorchy case studies. I conclude by suggesting that a synthesis of Lefebvrian understandings of power and material spatial practice with the normative, guiding stance drawn from critical theory may provide direction for the design of planning tools that support the development of critical versions of local place identity.