Geographically-referenced planning strategies to resolve potential conflict between environmental values and commercial interests in tourism development in environmentally sensitive areas

Abstract

This paper addresses the need for the careful husbanding of resources in wilderness and remote areas, particularly those areas and resources which have potential to support a tourism industry. It is usual for discussions of this matter to concentrate attention on the concept of carrying capacity and its usefulness in the planning of environmentally sensitive areas. However, this and similar techniques and concepts primarily address the analysis of the problem. The discussion in this paper focuses more on the subsequent stage of the planning process in which strategic solutions are posed to the planning problems of such areas. A significant part of the planning problem is the need to harness and balance the competing ideologies of conservation and entrepreneurship (i.e. tourism industry pragmatism). One means of tackling this matter is with the adoption of spatial systems frameworks, geographically-referenced and derived from basic principles of geometry. In this paper, there is a brief examination of the basic geometrical principles of points, lines and areas which underpin spatial frameworks, and a review of selected “patterns” which have been derived to explain or afford some means of planning control of the spatial processes of tourism development. The discussion is exploratory, but it advocates the adoption of this planning means to resolve the potential conflict between environmental values and commercial interests.