Chapter 2: Leisure and The Built Environment
2.3 Leisure as Pilgrimage for Pleasure
2.3.1 Displacement of Leisure and Tourism Activities
In our minds, the term "tourism" connotes travel to exotic locations, but modernization has also widened and dispersed our social circles. Fewer people now spend their entire life in their birth nation or even a particular section of it. It is becoming common for people to live, work, and play in a variety of locations across a wide range of geographic distances.(D. R. Williams & Kaltenborn, 1999, p. 214) According to the
"postmodern" discourse on tourism, many people believe that tourists are drawn mainly to the unusual and authentic, and that they rarely interact with the real features of their destinations.
Contrary to popular perception, modern tourism is more mundane and involves intricate patterns of social and spatial interaction that cannot simply be reduced to a shallow, disconnected relationship as depicted by "gazing" tourists on a quest for authenticity. Academic interpretations of leisure and tourism are typically less commodified, colonial, and packaged than they appear to be. It's not uncommon for people to set up and maintain a second house while on vacation, but this practice is often overlooked because it is so common. (UKEssays, 2019)
In today's fractured and postmodern world, it frequently appears that tourists are trying to restore a sense of true location or identity. Many people think of tourism in terms of a nomadic and constant journey, but this is not the case. Instead, the very word
"home" connotes a sense of being a permanent resident of a location and making a commitment to it.(D. R. Williams & Kaltenborn, 1999, p. 215) Because vacation house guests are simultaneously tourists and residents of their cottage location, cottaging is a unique context in which individuals interact, learn about, and modify their surroundings.
Identity and Sense of place in Modern Leisure and Tourism
Modernity possesses an excess of meaning and no meaning at all: The foreboding generated out of the sense of social space imploding in upon us translates into a crisis of identity. Who are we and what space/place do we belong?" (Harvey, 1996) In research on community, home, migration, and tourism, outdated preconceptions about a geographically rooted subject are mirrored in this dilemma. People's migration has been viewed as a unique and transient phenomenon that can be studied under the titles of refugee to tourist migration and tourism to refugee migration. An important geographic feature of leisure activities is to understand how people in different cultural contexts utilize leisure and travel to form identity, provide meaning to their lives, and connect with place. Today, movement and circulation are the norm rather than the exception.
our desire to be rooted in a stable and coherent personal and social past, and our insatiable desire for economic, experiential, and intellectual growth that destroys both the physical and social landscapes of our past, and our emotional links with those lost worlds; our desperate allegiances to ethnic, national, class, and sexual groups which we hope will give us a firm "identity,"
and the internationalization of everyday life - of our clothes and household goods, our books and music, our ideas and fantasies - that spreads all our identities all over the map; our desire for clear and solid values to live by, and our desire to embrace the limitless possibilities of modern life and experience that obliterate all values. (Sack, 1997, p. 6)
Leisure has emerged as a replacement for traditional sources of meaning in the face of the melting and profanation of those sources. The paradox of meaning is exacerbated by the same factors that drive materialism and mass tourism as forms of leisure. The burden of finding meaning in a meaningless world is symbolized by the enhanced freedom or capacity to seek out and express one's individuality through leisure.(D. R. Williams & Kaltenborn, 1999, p. 218) When there are less restrictions on how and what to chose, the self is both liberated and burdened by having more leisure time to explore the ever-expanding possibilities available to them. As much flexibility as people have in choosing how they spend their time, the market-driven methods of production
and consumption often restrict their personal appropriation of life's meanings and options.
Consequently, leisure and tourism might be perceived as authentic, customized and strengthening one's sense of self, or as increasingly manufactured, commodified, and confusing.
The shifting form of time-space relationships is an important geographic aspect of modernity that has a direct impact on both the freedom and burden of identity and the expansion of leisure and tourism. Modernity is characterized by an ever-increasing rate of transaction, movement, and communication. Small communities and traditions are replaced by massive, impersonal institutions as a result of modernity. When a person is deprived of the psychological support and sense of safety that are typically provided in more traditional settings, it can make them feel abandoned and alone.
There is a popular belief that the uneasiness associated with space-time compression leads to the need for true and stable place, although the social or moral benefit of maintaining a unitary sense of place or strong place relationships is not without question. A return to a "living in place" that was more typical in centuries past is one side of the anti-modernist environmental and social philosophy coin. They argue that if we put down deeper roots in a place, we can keep it from being swallowed up by the commercial world and disappearing into the ether of global markets.
- First Displacement in Vernacular Architecture.
Figure 40 Hinemihi at original place in New Zealand after Mt Tarawera erupted in 1880.
Retrieved from teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/23715/hinemihi-after-the-eruption In 1881 William Hillier, 4th Earl of Onslow, was approached the end of his term as Governor of New Zealand and wanted a reminder of the country he loved, to take back
to his family home in England. Hinemihi o te Ao Tawhito is another iconic building that – through displacement and attraction – features in different tourism contexts and for different communities of interest. Hinemihi is today located in Clandon Park, England, but she has a much longer, and more complex history than any other of the buildings discussed here. Hinemihi is a whare that not only displays the imaginaries of locals to travelers but also provides an extraordinary conceptual model of tradition and authenticity, which can inform identities at various levels.
Both tradition and modernity signal the 19th century’s deep commitment to progress, when rapid modernization rendered tradition problematic and invented traditions were deployed for nation building purposes to unify diverse populations. Pacific people use the English term tradition today simply to reference a long-established custom handed down from their ancestors. Apparently it becomes problematic when packaged to satisfy tourists’ expectations, possibly compromising a community’s lived reality and core values.
(Engels-Schwarzpaul & Wikitera, 2 0 1 9, p. 2 5 9 ) Then, tradition likely implies, yet again, clichéd, and possibly inappropriate, production or performance. A culture growing creatively from a traditional heritage that continues to give meaning manifests temporality culture that one walks backward into the future, the past firmly in sight.
- Las Vegas from Commercial Vernacular to Duplitecture Leisure City.
Figure 41 The Duck and The Decorated Shed as describe in Learning from Las Vegas Retrieved from 99percentinvisible.org/ architecture-ducks-versus-decorated-sheds/
Decorated shed and Duck are examples of architecture in Learning from Las Vegas. The former's program is communicated through the use of images and signs. The latter's form communicates both its purpose and its meaning. When Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour published their book, they were instrumental in bringing back decoration and symbolism in architecture, as well the architecture of the ordinary. To be beautiful, why couldn't it look like Surrey? Despite the widely held assumption that what is deemed unsightly should be avoided, it is necessary to investigate and comprehend what is actually unattractive.(Korody, 2016)
Only as an architectural communication phenomena is Las Vegas examined here. "Heroic and original" vs "ugly and ordinary": that is the difference between contemporary and postmodern architecture. There are two classes of buildings, each with a distinct name. A "duck" is a building "where the architectural systems of space, structure, and program are submerged and distorted by an overarching symbolic shape," and a
"decorated shed" is a building where ornamentation is applied independently of structure and program.
There's a new Las Vegas strip in place of the one Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour studied in their famous study, but it's as captivating. One of the most distinctive aspects of Las Vegas's new Luxor casino and hotel complex is its emphasis on distinctions.
Selective reconstructions of the past have been made for those who want educational pleasures – or edutainment. This encourages the traveler to take on the role of archaeologist by exploring the desert floor, the model of King Tutankhamen's tomb, and authenticated antiques in the gift shop, all of which are available for purchase. When it comes to analyzing data. (Cass, 2004, p. 245) To explore contested areas, travelers must assume the role of amateur archaeologists as the lines between fiction and truth become increasingly blurred. The settings represent a new sort of monument as well as a new method of interpreting and presenting historical events. They are. Despite this, their roots go deep. Again, like in nineteenth-century Greece, archeological and tourist discoveries in Las Vegas are linked.(Korody, 2016)
2.3.2 Monumentality and Iconic in Creating Image for Leisure and