Ecotourism

Abstract

Due to the advancing technology, human activities clearly play an important role in creating landscapes. The Dutch natural landscape has now changed into a cultural landscape under control. This project explores the potential of cultural landscape in terms of boosting the economy by recreation and recovering the ecology. Taking one of the most illustrative area, Browersdam and Schouwen-Duiveland, Goeree-Overflakkee, as the case study, the project intends to test the hypothesis of perceiving Brouwersdam as opportunities to develop eco-tourism for the Integration of ecology and economics in Southwest Delta.

Based on the theories of landscape biography and landscape narrative, the project argues that the characteristic of landscape can help building a stronger identity for the development of tourism. The result is a biography of the changing landscape, that runs from the Rome times to the present-day, and that focuses on the study of the interrelationships between spatial transformations, social and economic changes and the construction of regional and local identities in the region. This approach also offers interesting possibilities for applications in the sphere of heritage management, landscape design and spatial planning. Learnings from theories and practices with context analysis, at the regional scale, it is possible to propose the operative landscape structures as the spatial framework for the future development of Eco-tourism.

Based on this spatial framework, strategies for transformation are introduced for Browersdam and its surrounding village. Then based on the typology of this spatial framework, several zoom-in sites will be selected to demonstrate possibilities and potentials through design intervention for integrating water infrastructure with spaces of local habitation and activities. To support the proposals with better feasibility, the project phasing and institutional framework will also be proposed, identifying the priority and potential actors in the process.

With reflections on the contribution to the fields and evaluation of influences, the thesis expects to provide a showcase with methodology, strategic tools, and spatial possibilities integrating different cases of interaction between human activities and river environment. More importantly, the project exhibits the spatial potential of a cultural landscape as an active role in engaging economic with nature, as well as guiding the spatial transformation of the territory for the future.