Regional and Urban Design Committee

Why resort town residents hate the tourists

  • 1.  Why resort town residents hate the tourists

    Posted 03-06-2015 04:29 PM
    This message has been cross posted to the following Discussion Forums: Committee on the Environment and Regional and Urban Design Committee .
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    Why Resort Town Residents Love to Hate Visitors 

    The City of Annapolis for the Ward One Sector Plan taught me that the world of a tourist town divides into the three distinct views of residents, businesses and visitors. That was thirty years ago and as I learned last week, it still holds true. In fact, there are academic studies about the love-hate relationship of residents and tourists, a bit less is typically said about the businesses who, depending on their nature, live off one or both other groups.
    Slogan on a lamp post in Bradenton Beach

    The nuisances coming from tourists and the endangered character of communities, the carrying capacity of the land, the roadways and the ecologies of resorts are debated from Ocean City MD to Key West Florida, from Portland, Maine to Cardiff by the Sea, California and from Veil, Colorado to Deep Creek Lake, Maryland.
    The effect that mass demand can kill the attributes that people came for in the first place is well known not only in tourism. It played out in American suburbs over the last seven decades. With relentless urbanization and population growth across the globe, the quest for the unspoiled retreats, the original character and the good old times of yesteryear becomes ever more self defeating but is not likely to abate any time soon, nor are the battles between those who "discovered" a treasured place first and those who want to join the joy later.
    It is becoming increasingly challenging to provide access to the most desirable places and spaces, while also protecting them (Cordell 1999)
    Of course, with those global drivers the effect is not limited to North America but unfolds worldwide, yet, countries like the US with weak land use laws and a high priority on property rights have a harder time to control or manage such trends.
    Postcard

    I got a pretty intimate view of this condition thanks to a weeklong Advisory Service for ULI on behalf of the three incorporated Florida towns of Bradenton Beach, Holmes Beach and Anna Maria, all located on the resort island of Anna Maria (AMI), Florida, located in the southern parts of Tampa Bay just south of Tampa. Motto: "Welcome to Paradise without an Attitude".

    The hammer in the land use control tool box is, of course, zoning, usually a matter of local jurisdictions. (Home Rule). In 2011 the State of Florida handed its resort towns a special handicap in form of House Bill 883 which essentially turned the hammer into a sponge by forbidding cities and towns to enact zoning or regulation specific to vacation rentals. Many called this a frontal assault on Home Rule, a principle which is typically....
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    Klaus Philipsen FAIA
    Archplan Inc. Philipsen Architects
    Baltimore MD
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