Easy and Hard Sustainability: Sustainable Tourism and Sustainable Cities

While almost everything I research and write about is tourism related, the classes that I actually teach at Northern Arizona University are mostly not tourism related, but are in urban and regional planning.  I have a master degree in urban planning and am a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners.  I also follow email lists for practicing planners, academic planners and tourism academics.

I try to bring my urban planning background to my tourism work, with my book Understanding and Managing Tourism Impacts: An Integrated Approach (Routledge, 2009) being the place where I have done that the most.  There is also a commentary that I wrote in 2007 on planning theory and tourism planning that you can download from the link below.  This blog post is based on that commentary, which was updated in a keynote presentation that I gave a few months ago at a conference on "Sustainable Urban Tourism" that was held in Hong Kong (2012) and which is also linked below.

My personal opinion is that urban planners have a much better understanding of the breadth of issues related to sustainable development than do tourism people.  In tourism, the main focus of sustainable development is on green certifications.  This checklist approach is what planners call a "functional" or "tame" problem. They tend to have clear goals, quantifiable results, and are not threatening in their implementation.  They are the easy challenges of sustainability, and include low carbon energy use, water conservation, waste recycling, open space protection, and low impact building practices.

There is, as you might suspect, another group of sustainable development problems that are much harder to resolve.  Planners refer to these as "substantive" or "wicked" problems, and they tend to involve vague goals, subjective attitudes, and political decisions that threaten particular interest groups.  Examples of wicked sustainability issues that relate to tourism development include changing human behavior to improve air and water quality, increasing quality of life opportunities and political empowerment for low income communities, and protecting living cultures without destroying their sense of place through commodification and museumization.

Urban planners have developed tools to use with communities to address wicked problems.  These mostly center on citizen participation techniques, and there are many substantive approaches that may be employed.  A big difference between tourism and urban planning, of course, is that tourism tends to be more private sector and business oriented, while urban planning tends to be more public welfare oriented. 

However, these orientations are not exclusive, as tourism is often seen as an economic development opportunity for both private businesses and communities in general, as well as having potential positive impacts on environmental and cultural conservation.  Just how tourism can do that in a truly sustainable manner, beyond the easy sustainability of green certifications, requires a greater awareness on the part of tourism industry leaders and managers, as well as many tourism researchers, of how this is  being done in disciplines outside of tourism itself.

References:

Lew, Alan A. (2007) Tourism Planning and Traditional Urban Planning Theory: Planners as Agents of Social Change. Leisure/Loisir: Journal of the Canadian Association of Leisure Studies 31(2):383-392. (pre-publication version)


Lew, Alan A. (2012) Planning Theory, Sustainable Cities and Sustainable Tourism. Keynote presenation at the Sustainable Tourism in Urban Environments Conference, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 20-22 April 2012. DRAFT Pre-Conference Working Copy (.pdf)

Urban Planning and Design Tools for Tourism

As a member of the American Planning Association, I get their monthly magazine, Planning. I came across a couple of lists in recent issues of Planning that I think has application to those of plan tourism at the community and place level.

What Makes a Great Neighborhood?

1. Has a variety of functional attributes that contribute to a resident's day-to-day living (residential, commercial, or mixed uses).
2. Accommodated multimodal transportation (pedestrians, bicyclists, drivers).
3. Has design and architectural features that are visually interesting.
4. Encourages human contact and social activities.
5. Promots community involvement and maintains a secure environment.
6. Promotes sustainability and responds to climatic demands.
7. Has a memorable character.
   
   (Hinshaw, Mark. "Great Neighborhoods", Planning, Jan 2008: 6-11; list on p. 8)
   

Characteristics of a Great Street

1. Provides orientation to its users and connects well to the larger pattern of ways.
2. Balances the competing needs of the street -- driving, transit, walking, cycling, servicing, parking, drop-offs, etc.
3. Fits the topography and capitalizes on natural features.
4. Is lined with a variety of interesting activities and uses that create a varies streetscape.
5. Has urban design or architectural features that are exemplary.
6. Relates well it its bordering uses -- allows for continuous activity, doesn't displace pedestrians to provide access to bordering uses.
7. Encourages human contact and social activities.
8. Employs hardscape and/or landscape to great effect.
9. Promotes safety of pedestrians and vehicles and promotes use over the 24-hour day.
10. Promotes sustainability through minimizing runoff, reusing warer, ensuring groundwater quality, minimizing heat islands, and responding to climatic demands.
11. Is well maintained and capable of being maintained without excessive costs.
12. Has memorable character.
    
    (Knack, Ruth Eckdish. "Dan Burden's Sidewalk-Level Fiew of the World", Planning, Jan 2008: 14-17; list on p.16)
    Also: Tempe, Arizona's Mill Street was awarded one the 10 Great Street designations by the American Planning Association in 2008 - click here for the story.
    

Security Index for Public Spaces

• Features Encouraging Use

1. Signs announcing "public space"
2. Public ownership of management
3. Restroom availablity
4. Diversity of seating types
5. Various microclimates
6. Lighting to encourage nighttime use
7. Small-scale food vendors
8. Art, cultural, or visual enhancement
9. Entrance accessibility
10. Orientation accessibility

• Features Controlling Use

1. Visible sets of rules posted
2. Subjective or judgment rules posted
3. In a business Improvement District (BID)
4. Security cameras
5. Secondary security personnel
6. Design to imply appropriate use
7. Presence of sponsor or advertisement
8. Areas of restrictd or conditional use
9. Constrained hours of operation
   
   (Ewing, Reid. "Security of public Spaces: New Measures Are Reliable, But Are They Valid?", Planning, July 2007: 55)