Part I Urban Rural Linkages
1 Discussing RuralâUrban Tourism: A Review of the Literature
MARIKA GON*
Università degli Studi di Udine, Italy and Katholische UniversitÀt EichstÀtt Ingolstadt, Germany
Introduction
Relations between urban and rural areas have a long tradition in academic research (Tacoli, 1998). Evidence confirms that urbanârural interdependencies have been influenced by opposite positions of anti-urban and pro-urban approaches (Davoudi and Stead, 2002). After many years of binary divide between rural and urban areas, the past two decades have witnessed unprecedented urbanârural connections (Potter and Unwin, 1995). The debate about urbanârural linkages has gained fresh prominence, with many authors arguing that both urban and rural places benefit from interlinked relationships and that urbanârural cooperation provides solutions to socio-economic and environmental problems in a more sustainable perspective (Tacoli, 1998; Beesley, 2010). This literature has been echoed by international institutions, governments and research centres, which called for stronger rural and urban relations, integrated policies and inclusive governance to support sustainable development, competitiveness in both rural and urban areas (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2013) and address poverty reduction (Global Monitoring Report, 2013) and world inequalities (World Bank, 2006). Furthermore, the use of new terms, such as urbrural, rurbance, rurbanity and re-urbanity, together with the experiences of âurbanizing the rural and ruralizing the urbanâ like city farms and farmersâ markets, confirm the need for further research in supporting unconventional planning and management approaches.
In agreement with the historical tendency of the debate, rural tourism and urban tourism have developed independently from each other, within the broader tourism literature. The attempt to link rural and urban tourism has registered limited consensus among scholars. However, people travel to different places all the time, moving to and across rural, urban and fringe areas. The flow of visitors affects urbanârural interactions in terms of the transfer of income, exchange of experiences, knowledge and cultural values (Van Leeuwen, 2015). The studies that can be found in the literature discuss urbanârural and tourism relations according to three different perspectives: tourism literature; geographyâspatial analysis studies; and social sciences and development. Tourism literature focuses mainly on the comparison of tourism related issues within urban and rural contexts, investigating differences, similarities and implications. Geographers pay attention to urbanârural spaces and, together with tourism geographers, study particular forms of tourism that take place in the fringe, exurbs and urbanârural continuum. Multidisciplinary approaches rooted in social sciences, regional development and environmental planning address tourism, and related issues, as a specific type of urbanârural linkage. According to Weaver (2005), on one side, urbanârural relations and places have been studied by social sciences, geography, development and environmental disciplines with little attention paid to tourism topics and, on the other side, tourism literature has produced limited research in urbanârural interconnection and spaces.
The present chapter aims to provide an overview of the most relevant publications discussing the urbanârural and tourism relationship by combining the benefits of both traditional and systematic reviews of the literature published in the past 40 years. This contribution will, first, investigate the existing academic contributions that focus on tourism and ruralâurban; and second, present and organize the results, highlighting gaps and addressing further research development, thus contributing to the academic debate.
It is important to make clear that the order of the words âurbanâruralâ or âruralâurbanâ employed in this chapter is not intended to have any significance in terms of relevance, dominance or supremacy of one area over the other (Copus, 2013).
UrbanâRural Relations and Tourism in the Literature
Although urbanization, industrialization and agriculture still compete for land use, people, employment and natural resources, urban and rural economies are mutually interconnected and depend on each other (Bulderberga, 2011). The boundaries between concrete urban centres and extreme rural places have become blurred, in favour of a larger continuum and stronger interdependencies (Irwin et al., 2010). Some authors clearly state that the urbanârural dichotomy of past times no longer exists (Schaeffer et al., 2012). Scholars agree that both urban and rural places benefit from urbanârural relationships (Van Leeuwen, 2015), cities and countryside are interlinked parts of regional and national economy, and that an urbanârural approach provides solutions to address common socio-economic and environmental problems in a more sustainable perspective (Tacoli, 1998). However, to date, there is a limited body of academic research focusing on urbanârural linkages (Caffyn and Dahlström, 2005) and rural and urban relationships have been discussed mainly by economics, geography, social sciences and development studies (Davoudi and Stead, 2002).
Studies on urbanârural interactions have recognized the complexity and multidimensionality of this concept. Urbanârural linkages imply both an understanding of places (i.e. boundaries, locations of urban, rural and urbanârural spaces) and type of connections (i.e. flows, networks, visible, invisible) (KĆ«le, 2014). More recently, the literature has referred to urbanârural relations in terms of structural relations and functional relations (Zonneveld and Stead, 2007). On the one hand structural relations emerge by the âway the physical environment is constituted and shapedâ (Zonneveld and Stead, 2007, p. 422) and they focus on land and resource availability within urban, rural and urbanârural spaces, such as fringe, exurbs, peripheries, suburbs and urbanârural continuums. On the other hand, functional relations refer mainly to physical and socio-economic connections, visible and invisible flows of people, capital and financial transfers, movements of goods, natural resources, information and technology, administrative and service provision that move backward and forward between rural and urban areas (Preston, 1975). Funnell (1988) underlined the need to understand the social political and economic conditions that create the urbanârural interactions.
While there are studies on specific types of linkages between rural and urban areas, such as employment, commuting, land use and migration, there are few academic theories on urbanârural relationships (Zonneveld and Stead, 2007) and there seems to be a general lack of clarity about the nature of these interactions (Caffyn and Dahlstrom, 2005). Furthermore, the debate is complicated by the variety of definitions on rural and urban areas used in the different geographical areas of the world (Davoudi and Stead, 2002). The contributions, listed below, present an international overview of the main theoretical perspectives, empirical realities and political positions over the past 20 years of urbanârural relations debate. Potter and Unwin published in 1995 one of the first works on urbanârural interactions in the developing world, followed by Tacoli, in 1998, who introduced a guide to the literature of ruralâurban interaction in Africa, Asia and South America.
Davoudi and Stead (2002) presented an introduction and brief history of urbanârural relationships, with a focus on British and European contexts. The urbanârural dynamics in Europe have received growing analytical and political attention since the year 2000, within spatial strategies and territorial development plans. Several programmes, policy documents and funding projects (e.g. ESDP, SPESP, ESPON, INTEREG, Territorial Agenda and RURBAN) were developed to promote cooperation between urban and rural places, as a means to achieve social, political and economic integration and cohesion among the European countries. Zonneveld and Stead (2007), together with Copus (2013), portrayed the evolution, over the past 25 years, of urbanârural relationships within European policy, arguing the difference between urbanârural relationships (related to functional linkages) and urbanârural partnerships (the policy dimension of these relationships) (OECD, 2013).
Lin (2001) and Li (2011) published two contributions on urbanârural interaction in China, presenting a literature review, historical scenario and case studies within the Chinese context. Although discussing different geographical, historical, cultural, socio-economic and political contexts, the overall studies highlight that urbanârural interactions have constantly increased, all over the world. The reasons can be found in labour-saving technological progress, reduction in transport costs, rising house incomes (Irwin et al., 2010), higher population mobility, the circulation of information and goods, and widespread information and communication technologies (Kule, 2014). Nevertheless, in many developing countries, the relationship between urban and rural areas is still characterized by a strong dualism. The publications underline the need for an integrated urbanârural strategy that involves planners, policy makers and stakeholder interactions based on a multilevel governance, in a winâwin strategy to provide benefits for urban, rural and fringe areas.
Tourism, as a cross-disciplinary subject (Tribe, 1997), is likely to take an important stake in urbanârural relationships. Namely, tourism is based on people travelling within territories and across boundaries, staying outside their usual environment (UNWTO, 1995). The flow of people generates the movement of related resources, visible and invisible, such as the transfer of knowledge, experiences, competences and income, contributing to overall urbanârural interactions (Van Leeuwen, 2015), although the relevance of the topic literature has partly dealt with the urbanârural discussion (Weaver, 2005). Few exceptions can be found in the literature where tourism has been analysed either as an urbanârural linkage or as a specific phenomenon taking place in urbanârural spaces.
In one of the first studies on urban and rural connections, conducted in the West Midlands, a metropolitan county in England, Nadin and Stead (2000) identified tourism and recreational activities as one of the urbanârural linkages whose movement of people, goods, services, money, information, knowledge and innovation takes place in both urban and rural directions, backwards and forwards, driving new economic activities in both areas (Fig. 1.1). Zonneveld and Stead (2007) agree on the fact that the âconcept of urban-rural relations covers a broad spectrum of interactions, ranging for example from leisure and tourism to transport and communication, from labour markets and employment to food and drink, from education and training to services and facilitiesâ (p. 441).
Furthermore, tourism, leisure and recreation have been recognized as one of the urbanârural interaction sub-types within the OECD classification (Copus, 2013). The European development strategy, aiming to balance the development between urban and rural areas, has promoted urbanârural functional linkages and partnerships. In the OECD publication (2013) some empirical cases on partnerships in tourism are presented, where firms, public institutions and other associations cooperated to offer integrated tourist services and products related to agriculture and the landscape (e.g. Wine and Flavours Route in Emilia-Romagna, Italy), culture and heritage, inland and coastal areas (e.g. product unions in Emilia-Romagna, Italy), and promoting the whole territory based on mutual dependence and interconnections. Most urbanârural interactions, especially in the tourism sector, are shaped by physical proximity as much as by organizational proximity (Copus, 2013), which expands the concept from an Euclidean geographical localization towards a wider network of socio-economic relations, between firms and different actors, as well as other forms of institutional collaboration.
Particular forms of touris...