Small Coastal Settlement Research Articles

Adaptation to climate change in small island settlements

Adaptation to climate change in small island settlements poses unique issues of access, cost, governance and cultural, historical, and ecological preservation. There is a need therefore to focus research efforts on these small coastal settlements in order to assist and support their communities to develop and implement adaptation. This article is an initial attempt to evaluate and categorise these issues for island settlements, based on case studies and general perspectives on adaptation. Six island settlement case studies are used from around the world: Cocos Islands (Australian territory); Shishmaref, USA; Broad Channel, USA; Samsø, Denmark; Ciutadella de Menorca, Spain; and Port Vila, Vanuatu. This article describes and assesses impacts, adaptations, and capacity within each of the six case studies, and outlines the relationship of the Sustainable Development Goals system to small coastal settlements in general.

(In)significantly Soviet: the heritage of Teriberka

ABSTRACT Though the presence of the past rightly may be argued to be conditional everywhere, its truth rests heavier on some places. Teriberka is such a place, a small coastal settlement on the Kola peninsula. Once a prosperous Soviet fishing harbour it now epitomizes the depression and despair on the post-Soviet Russian periphery. Though post-Soviet seems quite misplaced here, because Soviet is still conspicuously present in Teriberka. Omnipresent, in fact, through its tenacious albeit ruining material legacy. Thus, for those who live here Soviet is not an optional past, a voluntary ‘something’ you may or may not be attentive to; it is Teriberka - the very world you are being in. How does this condition inflict upon understandings of heritage and significance? Is significance necessarily a voluntary attribute of humanly assigned value or may it be differently conceived, as something enacted and experienced rather than ascribed? Exploring these issues in relation to Teriberka’s ruining socialist past, the paper more generally is a commentary on the experience of living with a past considered far too insignificant to be assigned value as heritage but which still is so immensely significant that it impacts on nearly every aspect of life.

Transformations for Resilient Rural Futures: The Case of Kaikōura, Aotearoa-New Zealand

On 14 November 2016, a magnitude (Mw) 7.8 earthquake struck the small coastal settlement of Kaikōura, Aotearoa-New Zealand. With an economy based on tourism, agriculture, and fishing, Kaikōura was immediately faced with significant logistical, economic, and social challenges caused by damage to critical infrastructure and lifelines, essential to its main industries. Massive landslips cut off road and rail access, stranding hundreds of tourists, and halting the collection, processing and distribution of agricultural products. At the coast, the seabed rose two metres, limiting harbour-access to high tide, with implications for whale watching tours and commercial fisheries. Throughout the region there was significant damage to homes, businesses, and farmland, leaving owners and residents facing an uncertain future. This paper uses qualitative case study analysis to explore post-quake transformations in a rural context. The aim is to gain insight into the distinctive dynamics of disaster response mechanisms, focusing on two initiatives that have emerged in direct response to the disaster. The first examines the ways in which agriculture, food harvesting, production and distribution are being reimagined with the potential to enhance regional food security. The second examines the rescaling of power in decision-making processes following the disaster, specifically examining the ways in which rural actors are leveraging networks to meet their needs and the consequences of that repositioning on rural (and national) governance arrangements. In these and other ways, the local economy is being revitalised, and regional resilience enhanced through diversification, capitalising not on the disaster but the region’s natural, social, and cultural capital. Drawing on insights and experience of local stakeholders, policy- and decision-makers, and community representatives we highlight the diverse ways in which these endeavours are an attempt to create something new, revealing also the barriers which needed to be overcome to reshape local livelihoods. Results reveal that the process of transformation as part of rural recovery must be grounded in the lived reality of local residents and their understanding of place, incorporating and building on regional social, environmental, and economic characteristics. In this, the need to respond rapidly to realise opportunities must be balanced with the community-centric approach, with greater recognition given to the contested nature of the decisions to be made. Insights from the case examples can inform preparedness and recovery planning elsewhere, and provide a rich, real-time example of the ways in which disasters can create opportunities for reimagining resilient futures.

Kalaalimernit: the Greenlandic taste for local foods in a globalised world

ABSTRACTIn recent years, a decline in the consumption of local foods (kalaalimernit) can be observed in Greenland. However, its appreciation and symbolisation is increasing andkalaalimernitare a powerful contemporary symbol for being Greenlandic. The present article argues thatkalaalimernit, as a specifically Greenlandic taste, are suited to marking and maintaining a cultural boundary in relation to the Danish people living in the country, a boundary constructed through identity politics. As the empirical findings from fieldwork conducted in the Greenlandic capital Nuuk and the small coastal settlement Oqaatsut demonstrate, this construction is subject to social change. Greenlanders advocate two different narrative patterns regarding howkalaalimernitare to be understood that stem from contemporary definitional struggles over what kind of cultural boundary is deemed important to demarcate. The struggle illustrates two different perceptions of Greenland as either an indigenous people and/or a small Nordic nation.

‘True History’ in Wabula, Buton Island

Wabula is a small coastal settlement in the south of Buton Island, Southeast Sulawesi Province, Indonesia. Its residents are at the periphery of contemporary Butonese society, which focuses on the district capital of Bau-Bau, immediately adjacent to an historic walled precinct widely represented as the centre of a Butonese kingdom and sultanate that existed from the fourteenth century until 1960. Locally published accounts of the realm's history scarcely refer to Wabula. However, Wabula people narrate a unique account of Buton in which Wabula has a leading role as the place of origin of the Butonese kingdom. In Wabula the account is known as ‘True History’. This paper describes this historical narrative focusing on a local trek that takes place as part of Wabula's annual cycle of agricultural-calendric rituals. The paper reflects on the manner in which context is inseparable from embedding historical narrative in the spatial and temporal character of the Wabula social world.

A rising tide lifts all boats? A preliminary investigation into the impact of rising New Zealand coastal property prices on small communities

Since the early 2000s, property values have escalated in many coastal areas in New Zealand. While the mainstream media see the increasing property values as a positive economic development, Australian research suggests that migration to coastal settlements and increasing property values in those settlements is a more complex phenomenon and warrants close attention. The Australian research reveals significant social and cultural shifts occurring as well as the more widely discussed ecological impacts. In order to find out more about the social impacts of recent rapid property price increases on previously slow growing and comparatively inexpensive settlements, exploratory research involving interviews with key informants in six small coastal settlements was carried out in 2004. The study demonstrates the importance of micro‐level research to complement macro‐level analysis of development patterns and contributes to the emergent international literature on nonmetropolitan development trends since the 1990s. It highlights the need for more co‐ordinated and integrated development of the small settlements based on a comprehensive assessment of current and future social, economic, and environmental impacts of development.

Aktivitetspladser fra Ertebølletid

Aktivitetspladser fra Ertebølletid

Making heritage in an Australian coastal tourist resort: Constructing a cultural landscape through a comparative narrative

The concept of cultural landscape embodies a dynamic understanding of history, in which past, present and future are seamlessly connected. This paper, drawn from a larger research project investigating the integration of tourism in small coastal settlements, introduces a multi‐method research strategy for interpreting cultural landscapes of tourism. The case study of a well‐known resort area on the east coast of Australia demonstrates the dynamic relationship between patterns in the landscape narrative and patterns in the built environment of small coastal settlements. In Noosa, a distinctive built form has evolved in parallel with the narrative of the place as a relaxed but stylish resort village dominated by nature. Both the narrative and physical landscape have been shaped by local and external processes of constant comparison and contrast with well known Australian and international coastal resorts. The paper illustrates how recurring themes in the local dialogue of place have flowed between key urban design/planning decisions, ephemeral tourism literature, publications, and the perceptions of residents, tourists and key informants as reported in focused conversational interviews.

Interpreting the cultural landscape for tourism development

Increasing awareness of the resource value of place distinctiveness coincides with concern that tourism can erode the special qualities that attract tourists to particular destinations. This paper, drawn from a larger research project investigating the integration of tourism in small coastal settlements, introduces a multimethod research strategy for interpreting cultural landscapes of tourism. The case study of a well-known resort area on the east coast of Australia demonstrates the dynamic relationship between patterns in the landscape narrative and patterns in the built environment of small coastal settlements. In Noosa, a distinctive built form has evolved in parallel with the narrative of the place as a relaxed but stylish resort village dominated by nature. Both the narrative and physical landscape have been shaped by a local process of constant comparison and contrast with well-known Australian and international coastal resorts. In particular, the paper illustrates how recurring themes in the local dialogue of place have flowed between key urban design/planning documents, ephemeral tourism literature, publications, and the perceptions of residents, tourists and key informants as reported in focused conversational interviews.

The role of root-mean-square error in the geo-transformation of images in GIS

ABSTRACT There is growing interest in the use of images in GIS applications. This paper examines the role of root-mean-square error in assessing the accuracy of digitisation and image–to–world transformation, The study employed Arc/Info software, using an aerial photograph of a small coastal settlement as the base image. The transformed image was overlayed onto a calibrated digital cadastre of the town to evaluate (visually) the geometric integrity of the image rectification. While not dismissing the relevance of rms error in the statistical appraisal of data quality in GIS, the study failed to confirm a workable association between rms error and the quality of image transformation. No apparent improvement in the quality of image transformation was achieved as a result of reducing rms error directly, by eliminating the control points with high residual error.

Mikre Vigla: a Bronze Age Settlement on Naxos

The results of a surface survey of the site are described. Mikre Vigla was a small coastal settlement, occupied from EC I or II until some time in LC III (perhaps the equivalent of mid-LHIIIC). There is a minimal amount of later material, of Geometric to Frankish date. The closest external relations in the Bronze Age, as indicated by the pottery, seem to have been with Melos, and Protopalatial Crete. Apart from building remains, pottery and some domestic and other objects (two fragments of marble artefacts, obsidian, painted plaster), the finds include an important series of small terracotta figurines, unique in the Cyclades. Some of these seem to be Early Cycladic, others related to Cretan pieces, mainly of the Protopalatial period.

The Semiotics of Andean Terracing

When Francisco Pizzarro and his band of conquistadors traveled through the Andes in 1535, Sancho, secretary to Pizzarro, noted that “between Tumbes and Cuzco [a distance of 1500 kilometers] all the mountain fields (montañas agrias) are made in the guise of stairways of stone (escalones de piedras).” Although the statement is an exaggeration, the remains of terraces and other stepped structures are still found throughout the Andean region of South America. The Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire halted construction of these monumental public works and marked the end of an architectural/agricultural tradition that had originated with the earliest small coastal settlements of the Preceramic Period VI (2500–1800 B.C.). “Patas,” as the stepped terraces are called by the indigenous Quechua-speaking population, are dominant elements of Precolumbian architecture. The word “pata” refers to an agricultural or architectural terrace on a slope constructed of stone and filled with layers of soil; it is also a suffix added to words to describe their edges (i.e., ñawinpata = eyelid, and mayupata = riverbank).

“man the fisher”: salmon fishing and the expression of community in a rural Irish settlement

This paper analyzes the significance of the summer salmon fishery of Teelin, a small coastal settlement in county Donegal, Ireland. Although not of great economic importance to most Teelin families, the salmon pursuit is the subject of considerable cultural attention, providing a source of communal and personal identity. An explanation for the disproportionate cultural strength of the fishery is sought in its contribution to the maintenance of the local community as a bounded social entity in a region where historical disincorporations have made the existence and nature of such communities problematic. The ways in which the interactional and experiential aspects of this fishery contribute to Teelin's “local culture” are examined as a sample case of the relation between any such socially definitive activity and the structure of a local system of social relations or ideology. [community, European ethnography, maritime anthropology, Ireland, ideology]

Ecological effects of sewage discharge in the marine environment.

In has always been faced with the problem of getting rid of the waste he proves. Our palaeolithic and neolithic ancestors who subsisted on oysters and other ellfish in small coastal settlements simply threw the waste shells out of their ck doors to form kitchen middens which are now of great interest to the archaeogist. In medieval times sewage and domestic waste was thrown into the streets ere it flowed along open channels. Rats were plentiful and provided food for edatory birds such as the kite which were then common. In the nineteenth ntury, the system of sewers and water carriage evolved which did not produce many problems while the populations served remained scattered or reasonably hall, but which gave rise to pollution of rivers and streams as the size of towns sew. The problems produced were mainly inland and terrestrial however; little the marine environment was affected apart from estuaries within the boundaries or close to large cities such as London. The problem in inland waters became so serious however that a series of Royal Commissions was set up in the nineteenth century to report on methods of sewa treatment. The last of these Commissions, that on Sewage Disposal which report during the first fifteen years of this century, may be said to have initiated model attitudes to pollution control in inland waters.