Producing Rural Recreation Spaces: Representation and Place Identity

Abstract

Rural spaces in New Zealand have tended to be associated with rugged wildness, agricultural productivity and the mastery of landscape through the (masculine) pioneering spirit. Such images are perpetuated in ‘Dairyland’, an interactive visitor centre located near Hawera, a rural service town in South Taranaki. The created environment that comprises the Dairyland experience is a function of the symbolic representations of ‘authentic’ images of pastoral production and the actions of the owners and managers of the site. This landscape of leisure reinforces taken-forgranted constructs of rural space and simultaneously creates meanings of place which connect the company which owns the site with local place identity. Public debate surrounding the use of Dairyland for tourist information services suggests such ‘powerful’ representations of space may be resisted. The complex and contested nature of the production of this particular leisure space indicates the necessity for further research into how such representations are read and given meaning by different groups of users.