In our age, especially in the last decade Tourism has been seen as a 'saviour' for many of the rural communities. This was due primarily to the low investment requirements of the industry. Tourism gave communities a chance to grow, mainly economically, with what they already have and hopefully increase their general quality of life. Saying that, we should mention that QofL has no one definitive explanation as to what it is since it differs from community to community, even from an individual to another. However, in most cases in the past more than the recent, QofL has been associated with the economic well being of the subjects. This led inevitably to the opening up of communities to the outside investors and entrepreneurs in the hope for a growing economic wheel. The more tourists(visitors), the more money coming in, which was great news. Or so they thought. Many communities and regions started to copy each other and borrow economic growth models from each other.
While the economic impacts of the industry were more visible, especially in tourism literature, other impacts started to surface gradually at first and then rapidly. Socio-cultural and environmental impacts became threatening to communities and its people to the point that due to this erosion, some also lost their economic benefits as well. One of the things Long and Nuckolls point out in their article is that tourism is the most intimate of all industries. It requires the residents to play 'host' to the 'guests' (visitors), even if they want to or not. Same idea was put forward in Reid et al (2001), "In rural communities, all residents are part of the tourism product, whether or not they want to be, simply by virtue of living there."
By the threat of losing communities, the industry has tended to finding approaches for sustainable growth. Various models for planning for tourism development has been drafted, created and sometimes implemented, such as I have discussed in the previous post, to turn this tourism machine, working at the expense of the community (McLaughlin, et al., 1991), into operating in more of a community-minded state. Reading both Long & Nuckolls(1994) and also Reid et al. (2001), two similar ideas stuck in my mind on rural community development that both the articles articulated on.
The idea, of 'a' Leader and the idea, of having a broader cross section of community involvement.
In Long & Nucksoll's paper, the authors immediately talk about the importance of the emergence of 'one single individual'. This is necessary to even start the cause. Such importance has been also given by Reid et al (2001) by calling that one person the 'Catalyst'. In order for anything to happen there should be a catalyst who is to going to 'champion' the cause as Dave Robinson says (2011 and many years before that.) However one difference in writing was very intriguing for me. In Reid et al (2001), there is over emphasizing of 'having the community as the priority in your mind' as if they have suffered so much from this 'personal interest first' attitude. It is almost a warning, a caution signal appearing in many pages of the Manual (Reid et al. 2001).
Both articles also explain how increasing the representation of the general public from all diverse areas of the community is very crucial to effective community planning. In the end, they are the owners of the estate and most impacted by its impacts, especially negative ones. In order to gather more information, all parties who are going to be impacted should be better known. More information means that planners and the planning committee can calculate the consequences of any step in furthering the tourism product. So they can make better choices that will affect most of the community if not all. (never all).
The aim of having a community minded leader and a higher representation of the general public is to create a more overall, all round, better sustained community growth. Otherwise it is a few entrepreneurial leaders pulling the economy towards their own business sector, which is creating an unhealthy imbalance in the community. This can also drive people out of their traditional occupations in order to get a job that is making them more money. 'Social change follows. Economy, once seemed getting stronger, gets weaker and weaker because the growth that made traditional jobs come to a halt has now met the demand and itself came to a halt and is working over the capacity. Wages drop, people are laid off and they become poorer. They do not have their culture to hold on to anymore. One by one they fall into the bottles of alcohol and drown.' This is one theory that can come true with inadequate or one sided community planning.
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