Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
there is still a need to recognise the magnitude and effect of recreational and tourist use
because of the timing, scale, resource impact and implication of each use. But ultimately
each use is a consumption of resources and space in relation to the user's discretionary
leisure time and income. According to Shaw and Williams (1994), there are a range of
issues to consider in relation to this debate. For example, in many countries, use of the
countryside is a popular pastime (e.g. in 1990 the Countryside Commission found that 75
per cent of the population of England visited the countryside) and in such studies there is
a clear attempt to avoid simplistic classifications of what constitutes tourist and
recreationalist use. Shaw and Williams (1994) prefer to use a more culturally determined
definition to show that the use of rural landscapes for tourist and recreational purposes is
conditioned by a wide range of social, economic and cultural meanings which affect the
host area. Cultural definitions of urban and rural areas highlight not only the intrinsic
qualities of the countryside which is significantly different from urban areas, but also the
interpretation that 'there is nothing that is inherent in any part of the country-side that
makes it a recreational resource' (Shaw and Williams 1994:223). This recognises that
there is a search for new meaning in a research context. In fact Butler et al. (1998) would
concur with this since:
One of the major elements of change in rural areas has been the changes
within recreation and tourism. Until the last two decades or so,
recreational and tourist activities in rural areas were mostly related closely
to the rural character of the setting.
They were primarily activities which were different to those engaged in
urban centers…. They could be characterised, at the risk of generalisation,
by the following terms: relaxing, passive, nostalgic, traditional, low
technological, and mostly non-competitive.
(Butler et al. 1998:8)
But in recent years this has been affected by changes to the meaning and use of rural
environments, where the setting is no longer a passive component. Yet there is some
support for not focusing on the rural setting; as Patmore (1983:122) argued, 'there is no
sharp discontinuity between urban and rural resources for recreation but rather a complete
continuum from local park to remote mountain park'. If one maintains such an argument,
to a certain extent, it makes the geographer's role in classifying tourism and recreational
environments and their uses for specific reasons and purposes rather meaningless if they
are part of no more than a simple continuum of recreational and tourism resources,
thereby denying new attempts to understand what motivates users to seek and consume
such resources in a cultural context. To overcome this difficulty, Shaw and Williams
(1994:224) prefer to view 'rural areas as highly esteemed as locales for leisure and
tourism' and their use is heavily contingent upon particular factors, especially social
access, and the politics of countryside ownership. Yet these contingencies may only
really be fully understood in the context of the developed world, according to Shaw and
Williams (1994), by considering three critical concepts used by geographers: the rural
opportunity spectrum, accessibility and time-space budgets. However, prior to any
discussion of such key concepts, it is pertinent to consider the historical dimension to
tourism and recreational pursuits in rural environments, since historical geographers
