Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
A community approach emphasises the social and political context within which
tourism occurs and advocates greater local control over the development process.
Geographers have also been active in this area, as it builds upon a strong urban and
regional planning tradition that is concerned with being relevant to community needs.
The best known exemplar of this approach is the work of Murphy (1985, 1988; Murphy
and Murphy 2004), although a community development approach is also influential in
developing country destinations as well as in the developed world (Singh et al. 2003).
A community approach to tourism planning is an attempt to formulate a bottom-up
form of planning, which emphasises development in the community rather than
development of the community. Under this approach, residents, not tourists, are regarded
as the focal point of the tourism planning exercise, and the community, which is often
equated with a region of local government, is usually used as the basic planning unit.
Nevertheless, substantial difficulties will arise in attempting to implement the concept of
community planning in tourist destinations. As Dowling (1993:53) noted, 'research into
community attitudes towards tourism is reasonably well developed, although
incorporation of such views into the planning process is far less common'. For example,
J.Jenkins (1993) identified seven impediments to incorporating public participation in
tourism planning:
• the public generally has difficulty in comprehending complex and technical planning
issues
• the public is not always aware of or understands the decision-making process
• the difficulty in attaining and maintaining representativeness in the decision-making
process
• the apathy of citizens
• the increased costs in terms of staff and money
• the prolonging of the decision-making process
• adverse effects on the efficiency of decision-making.
One notable exception here is the research reported by Page and Lawton (1997) which
sought to incorporate residents' views as part of the planning process for tourism in a
local area.
As the above discussion indicates, one of the major difficulties in implementing a
community approach to tourism planning is the political nature of the planning process.
Community planning implies a high degree of public participation in the planning
process. However, public participation implies that the local community will have a
degree of control over the planning and decision-making process. Therefore, a
community approach to tourism planning implies that there will be a need for partnership
in, or community control of, the tourism development process.
Yet power is not evenly distributed within a community, and some groups and
individuals will therefore have the ability to exert greater influence over the planning
process than others (Hall and Jenkins 1995). Therefore, in some circumstances, the level
of public involvement in tourism planning may be more accurately described as a form of
tokenism in which decisions or the direction of decisions have already been prescribed by
government. Communities rarely have the opportunity to say 'no' (Hall 1995).
Nevertheless, as Murphy (1985:153) argued: 'If tourism is to become the successful and
self-perpetuating industry many have advocated, it needs to be planned and managed as a
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