Les lieux du tourisme : de quel(s) paradis parle-t-on ? Variations sur le thème de l’urbanité touristique

• Main Authors: Vincent Coëffé, Philippe Violier
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Journal of Urban Research 2008-10-01
• Series: Articulo: Journal of Urban Research
• Subjects: tourist paradise; utopia; urbanity; practices; World; diversity
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/articulo/158

Tourism was invented at the same time as the industrial revolution. The latter was thus made possible and bearable because workers could dream of new horizons. As the hold of work on people’s lives got firmer and as constraints on everyday life increased, the more the tourist paradise stood out as a more and more accessible and hard-earned horizon, the increasing influence on the material world opening the doors of Paradise, as opposed to a virtual paradise uniquely reserved to the selected few. Moreover, the ways in which this Garden of Eden is used are more varied than its mere discovery. The numerous possibilities offered by the outside World aroused a desire to actually take part in it. Once the edges of the World had been reached, tourism, far from dissolving into a uniform mass, developed into even greater proportions. Discoveries opened the way and provided images to the World, thus strengthening the desire to discover it. Far from giving rise to a purported disneylandization, the linking of places resulted both in diversity and in the means to reach it.