owners and outsider fast food and chain store companies.

In most places the latter

groups have been gaining ground over time, with changes in the landscape that are
both quantifiable and visible.

Cultural Landscapes

More recently, geographic research on tourism landscapes has shifted in scope and
scale from the macro-analysis of symbolic landscapes to the micro-analysis of town and
resort landscapes. This is somewhat of a return to classification and morphology studies,
but with a greater emphasis on the symbolic nature of place features in the local com-
munities. This cultural perspective stresses the distinctive physical and material nature
of places, along with their social and cultural meaning and symbolism. One outcome of
this shift is that many of the new landscape geography studies in recent years have dis-
covered the unexpected importance of leisure and tourism in the everyday landscape.
Cultural meanings are inherent in the landscapes of our built environments, and in
how we value and treat our natural surroundings. They visually illustrate the relation-
ships between social structures and local cultures and between the larger society and
the individual. Various approaches have been used to interpret tourism development,
tourism economics and tourism psychology through their imprint on the landscape.
There is no question that the landscapes of tourism in any place will change as tourist
markets change, creating new opportunities for entrepreneurs to pursue, and for stu-
dents of tourism to study. The speed and form of how local communities respond, and
how they manage their political-economy and long-term cultural interests, are a major
focus of interdisciplinary research on the landscapes of tourism, recreation and leisure.

1.8 OVERVIEW OF THIS BOOK

This chapter introduced basic geography and tourism concepts and themes that
relate to discussions of the regional sections. The remainder of the book is divided
into four chapters, each of which includes several regional and subregional sections.
The traditional approach to regional geography begins with physical geography (geo-
morphology, climatology and biogeography) and then covers human geography (his-
torical, cultural, economic and political).
This book takes this basic regional geography approach, beginning each region’s sec-
tion by describing the natural features and their geographic variations. These discussions
form the basis for describing the supply of nature-based tourist attractions and consid-
erations, including opportunities and challenges, for their development and visitation.
The same approach is taken with the human geography of each region. Each region sec-
tion identifies major cultural subregions, their historical development and their contem-
porary development issues, particularly as these are relate to tourism. This discussion
includes development of the cultural tourism supply in each region and its subregions.
In addition to the basic foundations of physical and human geography and nature-
based and culture-based tourism supply, special issue topics are discussed in each of
the sections. These topics are related to the major tourist attractions and tourism
issues that the regions face. The approach used in this book provides readers with a

44 W O R L D G E O G R A P H Y O F T R AV E L A N D T O U R I S M