Vulnerability in the use of city territory by tourists

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Vulnerability in the use of city territory by
tourists

• Marília Steinberger and Neio Campos
• Programa de Pós-Graduação em Geografia e Centro
  de Excelência em Turismo
• (Graduate Program in Geography and Center of
  Excellence in Tourism)
• Universidade de Brasília
• University of Brasília

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• The objective of this study is to discuss
  vulnerability in the use of city territory by
  tourists, taking small cities in Central Brazil
  Region, still little known as tourist objects, as
  empirical reference.

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• The understanding of tourism as territorial use
  differs from the traditional approaches that
  consider it a phenomenon, system or empirical
  practice.
• Therefore, the analysis of tourism as the use of
  city territory leads to the adoption of the
  Brazilian geographer Milton Santoss contribution
  about the relationship between geographic space
  and used territory as the basic theoretical axis,
  which allows for the reflection on who uses the
  territory and how they use it.

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• Residents, hotel entrepreneurs, travel agents,
  local governments and also tourists, who have
  special emphasis in this paper, form the set of
  main social agents responsible for the
  appropriation of the city for tourist use.
• The way these agents experience tourism in the
  city generates greater or smaller vulnerability.
  Thus, vulnerability will be adopted in this study
  as a complementary theoretical axis.

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• Such understanding allows for the consideration
  of vulnerability of tourist use of city territory
  both in its negative and its positive aspects,
  since it does not represent only the recognition
  of threats and risks, but also the capability of
  responding to them.

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• A short time ago discussions about tourism in
  Brazil were limited to the coast.
• In the present paper we are referring to tourism
  in the countryside, specifically in the Central
  Brazil Region, which encompasses the Federal
  District and the states of Goiás and Tocantins,
  bringing three examples of small cities.

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• This paper is organized in three sections
• Brief review of spatial theory in order to base
  the idea that tourism is a territorial use and
  understand the vulnerability associated with it.
• The way Geography can contribute to the
  understanding of the notion of vulnerability
  applied to tourism.
• Examples of cities where incipient tourism can
  bring both threats/risks and opportunities/respons
  es.

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1. TOURISM AS TERRITORIAL USE

• Milton Santoss theory not only allows for basing
  the idea that tourism is a use of city territory,
  but mainly to emphasize that city territory used
  by tourism needs to be taking into account that
  space and territory cannot be dissociated.
• The author clearly demonstrates the relationship
  between space and territory
• ... geographic space is defined as the union of
  object systems and action systems that cannot be
  dissociated, and their hybrid forms, the
  techniques which indicate how the territory is
  used how, where, by whom, why, what for ... to
  apprehend territorial constitution, according to
  its uses ... enables one to think the territory
  as an actor and not only as a stage, that is, the
  territory in its active role (Santos Silveira,
  200111).

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• When it is proposed that tourism should be
  understood as territorial use, it is not enough
  to realize that tourism takes place in the
  territory. Experiencing tourism means an
  appropriation of territory, which results from
  the intention to use the territory for tourist
  purposes.
• This territorial use does not take place over a
  tabula rasa, but over a historical taking place
  which represents the building up of diverse
  temporalities, appropriated by tourist use.
• In other words, we could ask ourselves what the
  social agents are doing when they promote
  tourism. They are appropriating natural and
  artificial geographic objects and giving them a
  new meaning a tourist meaning.

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• Such agents, responsible for effecting tourist
  use, interfere in socio-spatial dynamics. Each
  one of them has a specific share of participation
  in this process.
• Among them, tourists are the ones who consolidate
  such dynamic because their actions, singularized
  by their movements, engender a new spatial and
  demographic mobility which does not take place in
  the used territory as a whole.
• Tourist actions are selective and take place in
  certain fractions of territory. The city is a
  fraction of used territory that has extensively
  been encompassing tourism. The way tourists
  appropriate it generates greater or smaller
  vulnerability.

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2. TOURISM VULNERABILITY AND TOURISTS
VULNERABILITY

• Milton Santoss spatial theory, when working with
  the ideas of superior and inferior circuits,
  citizenship and slow men, makes it possible to
  deepen the geographic dimension of the notion of
  vulnerability as well as to relate it to tourism
  and tourists.

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• Tourism as the citys territorial use tackles
  both circuits.
• It tackles the superior circuit when tourists
  appropriate technological modernization of hotel
  complexes and international airways, as well as
  online-sold tourist packages.
• The inferior circuit is evident in the
  relationships with the local receiver communities
  which, on the one hand, benefit from the creation
  of job and income opportunities and, on the other
  hand, see their culture and values being
  threatened by the relatively expressive presence
  of tourists from different parts of the world,
  which demonstrates the vulnerability intrinsic to
  tourism.

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• In general, tourists are considered active
  agents, who appropriate city territory and its
  surroundings in a predatory way, whereas
  residents are considered passive agents.
• In fact, it is important to argue that none of
  the two ways of thinking is correct.
• Residents should not be seen only as passive
  agents of tourist activity since their capacity
  to respond to risks does not take place in
  individual terms, but in organized groups,
  exercising citizenship which becomes concrete in
  the territory.

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• Concerning the idea of slow men, Milton Santos
  states that cities are the place where the weak
  may exist because, as the stage of all capital
  and work activities, the city may attract and
  host multitudes of poor people expelled from
  other places.
• According to him, the presence of poor people
  enhances and enriches socio-spatial diversity.
• He asserts that this is the citys future and
  concludes that in the cities, the time that
  rules, or will rule, is the time of slow men,
  that is, the power belongs to the slow because
  they escape rational totalitarianism, which is
  an adventure excluded to the rich and middle
  classes (Santos, 1996).

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• There is room, then, to question how slow men
  take part in tourism, speculating about what they
  win or lose with tourism and what their
  relationship with tourists is.
• Even though tourism has become more and more a
  mass activity, slow men have always been present
  as workers in this sector, winning jobs and
  income.
• The losses, however, are mainly related to
  prejudice against these mens visibility in the
  city territory.
• In general, tourists are shown only the richest
  and most beautiful parts of the city, whereas the
  territory occupied by slow men is hidden.

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3. THREATS AND RESPONSES TO VULNERABILITY
RESULTING FROM TOURISM IN CENTRAL BRAZIL REGION

• The choice of the cities of Colinas do Sul,
  Cavalcante and Alto Paraíso is justified by the
  incipient presence of tourist activity and by the
  pressure that these cities have been going under
  on the part of tourists.
• It is assumed that a probable increase in this
  activity will make it possible to simultaneously
  analyze risks and opportunities in a moment which
  is still propitious to intervention that may
  trigger future responses.
• We understand that risks are related to the
  decisions to promote the intensification of
  tourist activity in these cities, while
  opportunities are related to the decisions to
  prioritize actions capable of minimizing these
  risks.

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• Tourism in Colinas do Sul, after the lake at the
  Usina Hidrelétrica de Serra da Mesa (Serra da
  Mesa Hydroelectric Plant) was created, takes
  place spontaneously.
• In this sense, it is fundamental to raise
  awareness of the need for articulation between
  the community, entrepreneurs and public powers so
  as to hamper three manifestations of
  vulnerability that have been observed by the
  increase in the number of tourists pressure of
  some land owners to delimit lots in the
  expectation of estate valuing, demographic
  pressure over sanitation infrastructure and
  environmental pressure.
• As examples of the capability of responding in
  order to minimize such vulnerability are
  campaigns of environmental education and the
  construction of a Tourists Care Center.

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• Cavalcante is peculiar for the presence of
  Quilombo of Kalungas, who descend from slaves who
  lived in isolation until the beginning of the
  1980s and, nowadays, are officially owners of an
  area of over 237,000 hectares, 70 to 80 per cent
  of which have been invaded by land grabbers,
  which reveals strong pressure over land
  occupation, configuring vulnerability.
• Kalungas start to accept tourism as an
  alternative economic activity, more specifically
  ecotourism, due to the concentration of natural
  attractions (waterfalls) in their territory, and
  cultural tourism due to the preservation of
  secular religious traditions.
• There is a disproportion between tourist
  potential and load capacity of natural and
  cultural attractions, another manifestation of
  vulnerability.
• In order to minimize such vulnerabilities, the
  following are suggested the adoption of a
  participative tourist plan the implementation of
  guided tours so as to avoid aggressions to
  nature the definition of environmental
  protection areas and ecological parks.

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• The third and final empirical reference of
  tourist cities in Central Brazil Region is Alto
  Paraíso, São Jorge village specifically, located
  at the entrance of Parque Nacional da Chapada dos
  Veadeiros (Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park),
  the destination of esoteric people attracted by
  the mysticism in the place.
• The analysis of the environmental transformations
  generated by rapid and intense implementation of
  tourism brings along the following risks
  devaluation of local culture degradation and
  segregation of public areas invaded by tourists
  exclusion of the native population in the process
  of economic growth real estate speculation and
  increase in the cost of living.
• Responses to the risks mentioned above are the
  foundation of ASJOR (Associação de Moradores de
  São Jorge São Jorge Residents Association) and
  of a community radio station.

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IN THE GUISE OF CONCLUSION

• This paper defended the idea that only actions
  shared by social agents may minimize
  vulnerability of tourism over city territory.
• Based on a global paradox, by John Naisbitt,
  whose text says minor protagonists, contrary to
  what has been thought, are the ones who make
  decisions, in the case of tourism, tourists and
  residents are considered minor protagonists that
  are active agents. Such consideration which does
  not imply dispensing with the fundamental
  presence of the State and enterprises as major
  protagonists.

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