Tourscapes

Abstract

Harvey’s assessment of the Lefebvrian concept of the Right to the City is that it is a communal right, shared by association with the community around the urban project. How might this idea translate to a small island nation, recently transformed from being a rural society, headlong into a post-urban, spatially chaotic coagulation of small cities, suburbs, and landscapes of tourism consumption, or ‘Tourscapes’?
Existing and emerging Tourscapes can be mapped and analysed, at different but simultaneous scales, related to their local, city or regional importance, and the meanings of these in the visual and spatial order can be reviewed. This work will propose exploratory scenarios for addressing tourism related spatial practice, using Irish Case Study examples, and also will investigate how communal rights to Tourscapes could be claimed or exercised, for use by the broad community around the analysis, management, control and proposition of spatial form.