Following the planetary urbanisation hypothesis and the suggestions of the extended urbanisation framework, this paper advances two theoretical theses: I) it proposes to interpret the creation of protected areas (PAs) as a form of urbanisation of wilderness, and II) it analyses tourism as an extractive metabolic flow._x000D_
The creation of a PA implies the transformation of the governance of a territory according to new criteria. Contemporary criteria establish, following what has been called neo-liberal conservation, that PAs must be an instrument of sustainable growth – i.e. geared to tourism – for the regions concerned. A PA allows an area to become more attractive for tourism, to profile itself with a new label – i.e. to integrate it more functionally into the urban network. The functional integration (through ecological services and tourism) into the urban network means that PAs are a vector of urbanisation._x000D_
In this perspective, tourism can be interpreted as an extractive industry. A PA is the result of a transformation of the relationship between the local community and the environment – through new governance that imposes more limits on human activities. The tourism that PAs feed on is an industry that transforms the environment – like other extractive industries -, more specifically by rendering it static. Tourists, by paying to keep the landscape static, actually favour a disneyfication of the protected area and its inhabitants. This is an operationalisation of a peripheral area, imposing a certain way of life on its inhabitants, in order to guarantee a tourist and economic flow from urban dwellers._x000D_
Interpreting tourism as an extractive industry, as an urbanisation and commodification of the wilderness, allows for a better understanding of the power relations involved in the changes of territorial governance linked to the creation of a protected area._x000D_

Mosè Cometta
Università della Svizzera italiana – Institute of Urban and Landscape Studies

 
ID Abstract: 188