[Versión en español abajo] Eco-housing is often assumed to cost more to build than conventional housing. The main way in which eco-construction costs are reduced is through self-build, but this does not help most people. Instead there is a need to reconceive the costs of eco-building and develop more radical alternatives for building low cost […]
via Building more affordable eco-housing worldwide — ECO-HOMES + COMMUNITIES
A tourism region is a geographical region that has been designated by the state or tourism managing authority as having common cultural or environmental characteristics. These regions are often named after the historical region or current administrative and geographical regions. Others have names created specifically for tourism purposes. The names highlight positive qualities of the area and suggest a wholesome tourism experience to visitors. Countries, states, provinces, and other administrative regions are often carved up into tourism regions. In addition to drawing the attention of potential tourists, these tourism regions often provide tourists who are otherwise unfamiliar with an area with a manageable number of options.
Some of the more famous tourism regions based on historical or current administrative regions include Tuscany in Italy and Yucatán in Mexico. Famous examples of regions created by a government or tourism bureau include the United Kingdom’s Lake District and California’s Wine Country in the United States.
Historically, tourism regions developed in areas widely considered to be of historical, cultural, or natural importance such as the Niagara Falls region of New York and Canada, the Lake District of England, the French Riviera and the Italian Riviera. Others developed around specific attractions such as a major city, i.e. Paris, or a monument such as the Pyramids of Giza. Tourist regions have existed for thousands of years for relaxation and leisure as well as for religious expression. For example,the ancient Romans visited the hot springs of Bath in Roman Britain while Santiago de Compostela was a site of mass Christian pilgrimage supported by a major medieval tourism industry that provided travelers with accommodations along their pilgrimage route.
Governments around the globe have attempted to maximize tourism potential by creating tourism regions. This process consists of dividing their territories into discrete tourism regions in such a way that every inch of that country, state, or region is given an attractive name, provided with advertising, and basic tourism infrastructure such as signage. Some traditionally heavily visited countries such as France have implemented this strategy to encourage tourists who would normally only spend time in more famous areas such as Paris and the French Riviera to venture out into designated tourism regions such as the Western Loire Valley and Franche-Comté. The first of these is a more recently constructed region, while Franche-Comté has been a distinct political and cultural region since the Middle Ages.
Source(s): Wikipedia
Date: 22 November 2018
Location: Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Western Australia
Australia and Asia have a long history of connection that is increasingly recognised to pre‐date colonialism. Yet, in many mainstream discourses ‘Asia’ continues to be placed geographically and culturally removed from Australia. The recent release of ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ reminds us about the complexities in representing Asians and Asia, and that representations of Asia have intensely global and local impacts, especially in this age of digital media.
This inaugural symposium of the Perth Asian Australian Studies Research Network asks: ‘Where’s your Asia?’ Encouraging papers from all disciplines that focus on Asian Australian studies, it asks: From which real and imagined and virtual and creative places do you approach ‘Asia’? Is the ‘Asia’ in Australia still ‘out there’, ‘in here’, ‘next door’, already here or always arriving? Where does Australia end and Asia begin? And who represents, defines, (re)directs…
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Most research in Tourism geography has been inductive, aiming to generalize models of tourism structures and flows on the bases of detailed quantitative analyses. They focus on tourist travel, origin place ,destination flows, and the spatial structures of tourism destination areas .
Evolutionary models
have examined the development of tourism spaces through time, especially resorts, and the most widely known of these is Butler’s (1980) resort life cycle. In recognition of the limitations of aggregate analyses of macrotourism flows and structures, tourism geographers have embraced behavioralism, aiming to understand the decision-making and (spatial) behavior of tourists.
The political economy of tourism
Political economy is a study of production and trade and their links with custom, government and law. It is the study and use of how economic theory and methods influence and develop different social and economic systems, such as capitalism, socialism and communism; it also analyzes how state policy is made and operated.
Political economy decides the shape of tourism in regions and broadly draws on structuralist theories. Much of the work in this field has been concerned with issues such as the commercialization of culture and of place, and the particularities of tourism product and consumption. Studies use case studies which range from tourism dependency in less developed countries to urban and rural regeneration in developed economies.
Cultural interpretations
Tourism geographers have a longstanding interest in the notion of place, and in the way in which tourism is both shaped by and shapes places.Tourism is an encounter between people, and between people and space . Cultural tourism geography emphasizes that knowledge is fluid and is reshaped by practices which enhances our understanding of tourist destination . Culture is the main pulling force for tourists often. Culture is one of the main determinants of National and International Tourism Demand.
