Social Capital,Tourism and Regional Development: SPCC as a Basis for Innovation and Sustainability

Traditional views of regional development have focused on economic factors and potential innovation in technical and resource exploitation processes. Similarly, regional tourism development is usually couched in economic terms, such as number of jobs and increasing land values. This approach usually ignores the social and community aspects of tourism development; thus an alternative view argues that the community needs to be factored into our planning and development strategies to balance the traditional economic view. It is argued in this paper that fostering innovation in regional development is much more than a process of community consultation. Rather, what needs to be factored in is SPCC – social, political and cultural capital. This works in both directions; tourism development depends on a level of social, political and cultural capital in order to be a successful regional development tool (even in economic terms) while at the same time tourism development can be undertaken in a way that contributes to SPCC in the region. The paper outlines the key concepts of social capital, political capital and cultural capital. It does so within the context of regional tourism development and the concepts of systems of innovation and sustainable development.     

Improved road accessibility and indirect development effects: evidence from rural Philippines

This paper develops earlier conceptual frameworks and methods for analyzing the indirect development effects of improved road accessibility. The creation of economic opportunity and response to economic opportunity are the two concepts used in the theoretical framework, while time-series data, a road accessibility inventory, and a multi-criteria analysis were the methods used to analyse the indirect effects among households and household firms. A weakness of many impact studies is that they merely chart aggregate economic development. The method employed here includes access to resources by various groups and therefore enables the focus to shift from mere aggregate economic development to also encompass equitable and sustainable social development. The study focused on a rural Philippine fishing community, previously characterized by poor transport conditions and poor accessibility to major markets. It found that the benefits of the road improvement were considerable and benefited a great majority of the population in the fishing community. In addition to the extensive direct effects of the improved road, a number of complementary factors led to substantial indirect effects. These included: abundance of harvested resource in the community; a potential for technical innovations that increased production and productivity; available investment to support this increased production; abundant demand for this increased production in the market region (the market widened in spatial terms and prices were maintained).     

Towards a holistic framework for road safety in Australia

Current road safety programs and thinking in Australia are constructed within a paradigm that tends to accept existing cultural arrangements. Such programs therefore, favour symptomatic solutions and technical and/or physical solutions as a way forward. Fundamental redesign of cultural arrangements is necessary in order to challenge the “culture of speed”. Our research is developing a holistic, social ecological model for reconnecting road safety with communities that value quality of life and slower ways of being. Improving road safety through reduction in the volume and speed of motorised traffic is integrally related to enhancing health and fitness, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and improving neighbourhood planning and community cohesion. In this regard, community-based travel behaviour change initiatives are deserving of much greater attention in the road safety area. As well as these changes at the personal and community scale, policy changes to urban and transport planning that address the broader issues of sustainability in an era of climate change and peak oil can also be linked to improvements in road safety.     

Planning for sustainable accessibility: The implementation challenge

The ‘Network City’ planning strategy espouses sustainable accessibility. The aim is to re-orient the existing urban structure by focussing development at places with high accessibility in order to support an effective public and private transport system. The implementation phase calls for changes to planning practices: the need for public transport planning and development change to be mutually supportive; the need for road network planning and road design to place land use-transport integration as the core objective rather than traffic efficiency and for the need to stage development according to planned population and employment targets. This must take place within a new participatory approach. All this requires planners to gain new skills. To achieve this the system of planning must remain strong.     

Community-Based Ecotourism Development on the Periphery of Belize

In addition to ecological interests, the sustainability debate among scholars is concerned with grassroots tourism development in terms of participatory planning and the spreading of economic benefits between more sectors of society. This paper examines these issues in the context of community-based ecotourism development on the southern periphery of Belize. The Toledo Ecotourism Association and its activities are described within the context of peripheral development and sustainability. It is argued that sustainable tourism initiatives in developing countries can be conceptualised and operationalised at a very smallscale, improve the lives of residents, provide enjoyment for tourists, and protect the natural and cultural environments. The paper also argues that peripheral locations and their characteristics can be instrumental in promoting local control of small-scale tourism.     

The relevance of the tangible and intangible social impacts of tourism on selected South African communities

Most tourism social impact studies emphasise tangible social impacts such as economic improvement. In developing countries such as South Africa, a small percentage of tangible benefits filter down to community level. This creates a problem as various studies revealed the importance of community support for the sustainability of the tourism industry. Therefore it was important to explore the role of both the tangible and the intangible social impacts of tourism. Communities with established tourism industries (Clarens, Soweto and Jeffreys Bay) formed part of the quantitative research. Through exploratory factor analyses, 31 social impact statements could be categorised into four tangible and two intangible impacts. The tangible factor Economic improvement obtained a low rating, meaning that it was not directly experienced by residents, while the intangible factor Community pride and upliftment obtained the highest rating among all factors. This, together with the fact that community members continue their support for the tourism industry, is a novel find, indicating the significant role of intangible social impacts in fostering community support. This finding shows the importance of incorporating intangible social impacts into tourism planning in developing countries. Contributions are made towards social impact research methodology and literature.     

Using triangulation to assess a suite of tools to measure community severance

There is a lack of tools to identify and measure community severance caused by large roads and motorised traffic, despite the evidence of its negative impacts on local communities. This paper reports the development of a suite of tools to measure and value community severance, undertaken as a part of the Street Mobility and Network Accessibility research project. The tools include participatory mapping, spatial analysis, a video survey, street audits, a health and neighbourhood mobility survey, and a valuation tool based on a stated preference survey. They were tested in the area around Finchley Road, a busy arterial road in North London. The study found that Finchley Road is an unpleasant place for pedestrians due to high traffic levels, air and noise pollution, and the lack and poor quality of pedestrian crossing facilities. This has a negative impact on the mobility and accessibility of local residents and, to some extent, on their health and wellbeing. The analysis showed coherence between the findings from the different measurement tools applied individually, but also revealed interconnections between factors which contribute to severance, demonstrating that overall the suite is reliable for assessing community severance in urban areas. Overall, the paper provides a multidisciplinary approach to developing standardised methods to measure a negative impact of transport that is still relatively unknown.     

Community Participation in Tourism Planning and Development in the Historic City of York,England

This paper examines two potentially contradictory trends in tourism planning in cities; the emphasis on partnership and public participation. Public–private sector partnerships are part of the post-Fordist planning orthodoxy in the UK and involve a coalition of local and non-local agents and particularly elite groups. These partnerships are often one step removed from urban government and raise issues about accountability and local democracy. The tourism literature on community tourism development and community involvement is underdeveloped in the context of urban tourism. Nonetheless, evidence suggests that local urban social movements can be influential in the development process and that planners and developers need to embrace these interests if sustainable tourism products are to be developed. The considerable growth in cultural and heritage tourism and recreational shopping has created tensions within tourist historic cities, which may be amenable to resolution through public participation. In York, heightened civic awareness of the role of tourism in the local economy and the intensification of competition for investment/consumption, demands a re-evaluation of its tourism strategy. These participatory policies are far removed from the more radical models of public participation but may be all that is achievable in a competitive climate dominated by entrepreneurial city management.     

Informal,essential and embedded: Transport strategies in remote Sarawak

Transport is a main concern for people living in rural and remote communities around the world, where the absence of affordable and reliable transport often prevents access to education, health services and employment opportunities. In Sarawak, a state of Malaysia on the island of Borneo, many rural villages experience acute transport poverty. For their basic transport needs, people here rely on informal transport systems based on local social and cultural networks, which provide essential mobility.We apply Polanyi's concept of social embeddedness to explore mobility in this region, people's efforts to develop regional models of entrepreneurship but also the relative marginalisation of remote communities in terms of development and infrastructure provision and the resulting friction between local people, the companies involved in regional resource extraction activities and local government. Based on data collected between 2015 and 2017, we frame informal transport in this region as a form of Indigenous entrepreneurship that can help local communities achieve wider social and economic inclusion. Our research points to a more social type of entrepreneurship and economic practice, in which social relationships and community responsibilities play an important role. Our qualitative approach, including ethnographic methods such as semi-structured interviews and participant observation, underpins the groundedness of our data in the every-day experiences of the people who took part in the research.     

Host community attitudes toward tourism and cultural tourism development: the case of the Lewes District,southern England

Increasingly research is being conducted on host community attitudes toward tourism. However, few studies have been conducted at a regional level and none have examined the attitudes of the host community towards both tourism and cultural tourism development. This paper outlines a study conducted in the Lewes District of southern England and notes that although residents are generally supportive of tourism development and cultural tourism development, there are differences in opinion concerning the perceived economic and social benefits. In particular, levels of income and proximity to the tourist centre were major influencing factors. Conclusions and recommendations are made concerning the need for tourism planners to distribute the benefits more widely and to engage residents from different socio‐economic groups and localities in tourism planning and development activities. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Empowering young people through participatory film: a postmethodological approach

Children and young people’s voices have often been neglected in tourism research, and this is particularly the case when exploring tourism from the host community’s perspective. The lack of children and young people in tourism research has been attributed to the slow engagement and adoption of alternative and critical methodologies which open up new and fresh ways of interpreting reality. The paper aims to explore the potential for participatory film to uncover the perspectives of marginalised members of the community such as children and young people. We also discuss the use of participatory film as an epistemic philosophy, and as a post-disciplinary form of methodology (or ‘postmethodology’) which is ideologically grounded. The findings suggest that children and young people feel strongly about their community and display feelings of anger and frustration towards tourists who are perceived to not respect the community and the environment. The methodological contribution of this paper lies in the use of an innovative and voice-generative participatory visual method to empower young people to actively participate in tourism research.     

The case of Paratransit - ‘Trotro’ service data as a credible location addressing of road networks in Ghana

Road networks are by far the largest mobility infrastructure in Sub-Sahara Africa, and are key to providing access to economic and social opportunities. Yet the majority of road networks in Ghana and other countries in Sub-Sahara Africa are not geographically referenced, to facilitate their uses for road maintenance and management, transport planning, emergency services, disaster cases, logistics, tourism and other location based services. Consequently, this study takes advantage of paratransit service and the location of landmarks to provide location addressing of road networks in Ghana. The paratransit service, popularly known as Trotro in Ghana is a local transit system that uses an automobile to move people and goods along a prescribed travel route on a road network, with locally known stops where people get on and off the vehicle. The Trotro service is popular in Ghana, yet there is no critical investigation demonstrating its spatial coverage, relevance as a credible location addressing for road networks, or as a comprehensive location data for location based services. This study provides evidence for this case, and investigates the spatial coverage of road networks used by the Trotro vehicles, and the mapping of their service stops together with landmarks in the Asokore Mampong Municipality (AMM) of Ashanti region in Ghana. It was found that the location data from both Trotro service and landmarks covered about 86% of the entire road network in AMM; providing a large coverage of the road network and greater geographic detail. A service area estimation undertaken using the generated location data shows a high geographic accessibility, with travel distances as low as 160 m from any location to the nearest Trotro service or landmark covering about 80% of the road networks. These results show the capability of the generated location data to tackle the problem of spatially unreferenced road networks, and to significantly improve their effective uses. The popularity of paratransit in Sub-Sahara Africa means that this study can be adapted to other countries where the majority of the road networks are not spatially referenced.     

Britain’s national railway network: fit for purpose in the 21st century?

The case for developing railway networks rests on a mix of economic, social and environmental factors. A crucial factor is the relationship between the network and developing patterns of urban form and policy intentions with regard to securing modal shift from road to rail as part of the search for greater environmental sustainability. This article explores these relationships in contemporary Britain in the context of the recent attempt to privatise the railway network. It concludes that although there are serious shortcomings in the current situation, there is a case for further development of the network, but that this is now a matter for public sector leadership.     

An empirical procedure for enhancing the impact of road investments

The importance of ‘needs based planning’ is increasingly being recognised by road authorities. Such planning entails allocation of resources to explicitly account for the requirements of the community well into the future. Accomplishing what the community requires of a road system, at least at a level desired by them and ensuring regional equity in meeting community requirements, are two issues that are at the fore-front of needs based planning. This paper demonstrates that, in order to achieve these planning objectives it is necessary to adopt a procedure that can identify road investment proposals with the maximum ability to cost-effectively generate what the community perceive as gain in value to them due to road investment. Using data collected for Western Australia, the paper illustrates that generating investment proposals by commonly used approaches—including conventional multi-criteria analysis—cannot satisfactorily address these issues.     

City resident attitudes to proposed tourism development and its impacts on the community

Much of the literature on community attitudes to tourism development relates to rural areas in developing countries while urban environments in developed countries and pre‐development scenarios have been neglected. The paper is concerned with resident attitudes to tourism development proposals and their perceived impacts in the Worsley area of the city of Salford, England. The results show that the community is divided on the issue of support for tourism development based on the perceived benefits and costs of tourism and that the anticipated negative environmental consequences are significantly more influential than positive economic or social impacts. The theoretical contribution and practical implications of the findings are discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Charting the coast: spatial planning for tourism using public participation GIS

Coastal tourism continues to experience sustained growth on a global scale, leading to concerns regarding socio-cultural, economic and environmental impacts. To-date, the explicit integration of tourism development with coastal management has lagged behind more traditional planning concerns, presenting an opportunity and challenge for managers. Spatial planning using public participation geographical information systems (PPGIS) offers one solution for integration that is cognisant of the centrality of place in tourism. PPGIS was used to document spatially explicit data on place values, activities and development preferences along the remote, Aboriginal-managed Port Smith (Purnturrpurnturr) coastline in Western Australia. The research was developed and implemented as a collaborative partnership between Aboriginal custodians and University researchers. Ninety-seven questionnaires containing participatory mapping were conducted with residents and visitors. The participatory mapping approach successfully identified areas of potential conflict and allows tourism planners and managers to implement spatial planning that explicitly recognises and accounts for visitor values and preferences. Tourism, as well as marine spatial planning, can be enhanced by a holistic approach that considers both tangible and intangible socio-spatial data. Such an approach is likely to foster a more nuanced appreciation of what is valued in the landscape, providing greater insights to support sustainable long-term planning.     

The formulation and evaluation of transport route planning alternatives: a spatial decision support system for the Via Baltica project,Poland

Transport planning plays an undeniably key role in the economic growth of any region. However, when done heedlessly this planning can be detrimental to the biophysical and social environment of the region. In transport route planning generally one or a few alternative routes are proposed, usually representing the interest of the proponent. If required, an environmental impact assessment is carried out on these alternatives. Although, EIA and SEA are meant to be effective in taking informed decisions about the proposed route, these alternatives – the heart of impact assessment – are themselves devised in a subjective and non-spatial manner.Such an approach may easily overlook routes, which could otherwise have been more suitable. A planning system that directly takes into account environmental and socio-economic considerations in selecting alternative routes facilitates sustainable development. This paper presents a holistic and coherent spatial multi-criteria network analysis method for the generation of optimal routing alternatives under different policy visions, in a network of existing roads.The presented methodology was case-tested for the highly contested 340 km portion of the Via Baltica corridor in Poland, a part of the trans-European transport network (TEN-T) program. The methodology shows its ability to serve as a versatile effect-based decision support system for transport route planning at a strategically higher level of planning, particularly for (geographically) large-scale investment schemes.     

Rural Residents' Perceptions Toward Tourism Development: a Study from Iran

This paper focuses on the identification and explanation of rural residents' perceptions toward the impacts of tourism development and their grouping with respect to these attitudes. Data from 262 households are used in the empirical analysis. Because of emerging stages of tourism development in the study area, most residents expressed a quite strong support for tourism development, although some social and environmental concern was expressed. The results revealed that respondents most value economic objectives, but the community was not homogeneous in its views. Education, gender, age, income, employment and a high degree of community attachment were found to be the major factors affecting the attitudes of residents. Findings of this study indicate that local people value the tourism in ways consistent with the social exchange theory. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

中国高速铁路路网规划研究

从国民经济、区域城镇一体化及可持续发展角度，论述发展高速铁路是中国经济社会又好又快发展的必然选择；在此基础上，介绍了中国高速铁路网规划战略目标、布局方案，并分析了中国发展高速铁路的环境条件。     

Provincetown queer: paradoxes of ‘identity,space, and place’†

Provincetown, MA, located at the tip of Cape Cod, has transitioned over the twentieth century from a predominantly Portuguese fishing village to a magnet for gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals and queers, both as tourists and year-rounders. Newcomers have fostered change – economically, socially, and culturally – to which the town's predominantly straight old-timers have responded with a libertarian, generally accepting stance. Accommodation to newcomers – both ‘good gays’ and ‘sexual rebels’ – with its attendant social and cultural challenges, has not been without conflict. Today, economic gentrification and an influx of workers of color test the community's resolve to maintain and promote a culture of diversity and acceptance, as members cope with ever-more challenging economic issues, including escalating housing, and living costs. Provincetowners also confront other troubling demographic changes, especially declining school enrolments caused by the so-called ‘straight flight’ and an ever-increasing number of households without children, reflecting the transition to a GLBTQ majority. Today Provincetowners retain an edgy, risqué lifestyle, where community decisions are negotiated through small-town democratic institutions, and where citizens intersect across social, economic, and cultural divides. This paper examines Provincetown as a laboratory to interrogate how citizens accommodate others, as they grapple with uncertainties inherent in a predominantly seasonal – and diverse – tourist economy.