Enhancing Local Community’s Involvement and Empowerment through Practicing Cittaslow: Experiences from Goolwa, South Australia

Eerang Park,Sangkyun Kim

doi:10.1051/shsconf/20141201044

Abstract

This study attempted to investigate how and the extent to which Cittaslow philosophy and practice enhanced local community’s involvement and empowerment in relation to tourism development from the sustainability’s perspective. As an empirical study, a series of in-depth interviews with key stakeholders including local government, local business, and local community’s members were conducted in Goolwa, the first Australian accredited Cittaslow town since 2007, located in South Australia. The results indicated that to a greater extent the accreditation and practice of Cittaslow philosophy in Goolwa increased a stronger and more effective collaboration amongst local community, business and residents as an essential element for achieving sustainability in tourism development. Not only did it encourage the local community’s participation in decision making process from the beginning of tourism development, but also revitalised the locality and sense of place of Goolwa through promoting local specialities and produces, in particular food and wine products. The results also suggested that psychological and social aspects of local community’s empowerment have been significantly enhanced after the establishment of Cittaslow. Yet, the economic empowerment of the local community was less experienced.

Highlights

The concept of ‘Cittaslow’, the so-called ‘slow city movement’, had an inspiration from the Slow Food movement which began in Italy in 1986, with an urgent need for an attempt to counteract an increasingly fast way of life in contemporary society being characterised as ‘McDonaldisation of society’ [1,2,3]
The precondition for recruiting interviewees was that they should have been involved in tourism business and lived in Goolwa long enough to be able to comment on the influence of Cittaslow on the local community involvement and empowerment by reflecting and comparing their own experiences between prior to and post of the adoption of Cittaslow
Prior to the adaptation and accreditation of Cittaslow in Goolwa, the local community perceived that their involvement in tourism planning and development was scarce

Summary

Introduction

The concept of ‘Cittaslow’, the so-called ‘slow city movement’, had an inspiration from the Slow Food movement which began in Italy in 1986, with an urgent need for an attempt to counteract an increasingly fast way of life in contemporary society being characterised as ‘McDonaldisation of society’ [1,2,3]. Given the fact that both Cittaslow and sustainable tourism development concepts pursue socio-cultural, economic and environmental well-being of locals and visitors, these two concepts are deemed to share the core value and principles. Previous studies suggested that Cittaslow helps reduce the harmful effects of globalisation and sustain place identity by preserving its sense of place or local distinctiveness, which is essential part of. Cittaslow is a relatively new phenomenon, and it has not been discussed a great deal in the sustainable tourism context with a few exceptions [3,6].

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Results

Conclusion