Designing Limits: Tourism + Public Space

Rachel Neeson / 2002

Public Space
Barcelona, Venice, Australia

This is a focussed study of the relationship between tourism and public space; a surprisingly unexplored yet critical question for urban places globally. It offers productive ways of looking at the impact of tourism on public space through the examination of a series of European case studies and, in turn, to develop an approach to spatial intervention as related to tourism and place making in Australia.

The tourist centres of Mallorca, Palma De Mallorca and Barcelona, Sagrada Familia, in Spain, the Fondamenta Santa Lucia ,Venice and Uluru, Central Australia are studied to identify their constraints or limits – congestion, spatial contestation, environmental depletion – and associated impacts on the tourist experience.

This study adopts the attitude of the post-tourist, that neither rejects nor celebrates tourism but that recognises conflicts and searches for ways in which to construct environments that support the necessary range of activities.

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