Abstract
This research examines the impact of the tourism industry on spatial inequality in the Dead Sea region in terms of income, employment and changes in urban forms. The research assumes that this inequality results from the Dead Sea Development Zone (DSDZ) creation and focuses on the local level of urban analysis with the case study of a small Jordanian village Sweimeh, Quantitative data is used in this study for exploring these changes, uncovering persistent and obvious patterns of land use and exhibiting perspectives for the landscape, while satellite images offer extensive advantages over verified maps. The qualitative analysis combines field observations, a structured questionnaire survey with 270 randomly selected households and semi-structured interviews with 30 purposively selected participants. The results of the research showed that the DSDZ creates spatial inequality between the hotel touristic district and the village due to the high level of place-based development differences associated with urban characteristics, such as infrastructure and services provision. The results revealed that there has been a notable increase in population and area of Sweimeh as well as the locals' income. The population doubled from 2054 in 1994 to 4448 in 2019, the area has increased from 0.15 km2 to 4.40 km2, and the share of jobs in the tourism sector and businesses in the village jumped from 10% to 50% in the same period. This study is important since urbanization and spatial management programs received little attention in the DSDZ development agendas. At the academic level, the findings of this research help to establish an assessment tool for testing the socio-economic impact of tourism development on disadvantaged local communities
Highlights
The Dead Sea (DS) is a lagoon located between Jordan, Israel, and the West Bank Authority (Fig. 1)
The research assumes that this inequality results from the Dead Sea Development Zone (DSDZ) creation and focuses on the local level of urban analysis with the case study of a small Jordanian village Sweimeh, Quantitative data is used in this study for exploring these changes, uncovering persistent and obvious patterns of land use and exhibiting perspectives for the landscape, while satellite images offer extensive advantages over verified maps
The results of the research showed that the DSDZ creates spatial inequality between the hotel touristic district and the village due to the high level of place-based development differences associated with urban characteristics, such as infrastructure and services provision
Summary
The Dead Sea (DS) is a lagoon located between Jordan, Israel, and the West Bank Authority (Fig. 1) It attracts thousands of local and international tourists and is one of the main Jordanian tourist destinations. Major attractions of the DS include its mineral-rich, reputedly therapeutic hypersaline waters, the year-round warm climate, and historical and cultural heritage. To serve these attractions there are thousands of hotel rooms around the DS on the Jordanian and Israeli coasts, with thousands more proposed after the Treaty of Peace (1994) between Jordan and Israel, which had a positive impact on the tourism industry of the Dead Sea Region (Friends of the Earth Middle East [FoEME], 1998). In 2009 the Dead Sea Development Zone (DSDZ) was created to facilitate a safe touristic hub between Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority
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