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Towns and cities across Canada face rapidly changing economic circumstances and many are turning to a variety of strategies, including tourism, to provide stability in their communities. Community Economic Development (CED) has become an accepted form of economic development, with recognition that such planning benefits from a more holistic approach and community participation. However, much of why particular strategies are chosen, what process the community undertakes to implement those choices and how success is measured is not fully understood. Furthermore, CED lacks a developed theoretical basis from which to examine these questions. By investigating communities that have chosen to develop their tourism potential through the use of murals, these various themes can be explored. There are three purposes to this research: (1) to acquire an understanding of the “how” and the “why” behind the adoption and diffusion of mural-based tourism as a CED strategy in rural communities; (2) to contribute to the emerging theory of CED by linking together theories of rural geography, rural change and sustainability, and rural tourism; and (3) to contribute to the development of a framework for evaluating the potential and success of tourism development within a CED process.

Two levels of data collection and analysis were employed in this research. Initially, a survey of Canadian provincial tourism guides was conducted to determine the number of communities in Canada that market themselves as having a mural-based tourism attraction (N=32). A survey was sent to these communities, resulting in 31 responses suitable for descriptive statistical analysis, using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). A case study analysis of the 6 Saskatchewan communities was conducted through in-depth, in person interviews with 40 participants. These interviews were subsequently analyzed utilizing a combined Grounded Theory (GT) and Content Analysis approach.

The surveys indicated that mural development spread within a relatively short time period across Canada from Chemainus, British Columbia. Although tourism is often the reason behind mural development, increasing community spirit and beautification were also cited. This research demonstrates that the reasons this choice is made and the successful outcome of that choice is often dependent upon factors related to community size, proximity to larger populations and the economic (re)stability of existing industry. Analysis also determined that theories of institutional thickness, governance, embeddedness and conceptualizations of leadership provide a body of literature that offers an opportunity to theorize the process and outcomes of CED in rural places while at the same time aiding our understanding of the relationship between tourism and its possible contribution to rural sustainability within a Canadian context. Finally, this research revealed that both the CED process undertaken and the measurement of success are dependent upon the desired outcomes of mural development. Furthermore, particular attributes of rural places play a critical role in how CED is understood, defined and carried out, and how successes, both tangible and intangible, are measured.

The Edmund Edelman Children’s Court is a juvenile dependency courthouse in Los Angeles designed with bright murals, open play spaces, and modified courtrooms to be “child-sensitive” and “family-friendly.” Through a recounting of the political and cultural forces at play building up to its construction, I argue that the decisions to build a “child-sensitive” court confirm the carceral containment of the culpable black adult. This article represents an inquiry into the cultural logic of the court’s construction, revealing the relationship between raced constructions of innocence and guilt. This study draws from five months of fieldwork conducted in the Edelman Children’s Court.

This chapter analyses the interaction between two important movements in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century, the international contribution to urban planning through the New Towns programme and the particular contribution of British artists to public art and how these two parallel movements intertwine. The chapter begins by considering the definition of public art and the marked changes to the work purchased and commissioned in the immediate post-war period. The chapter then considers how the development of post-war New Towns has created new opportunities for contemporary artists, whose work had previously been confined to the gallery. In some cases the public art is integral to the architecture, and this opportunity has since become a threat to the future of many of these artworks. The optimism that defined post-war planning gave way to more negative perceptions of some New Towns as sites of boredom, monotony and even decay, from a failure to deliver on their initial promises of good jobs; a clean, modern environment; and supportive welfare state. In the second half of the chapter are examples of current public art activity in New Towns, and the challenges to sustain these in a time of public sector austerity. Finally, the chapter looks forward, and at the potential to sustain and reinvigorate public art in New Towns into the future.

This chapter offers a theoretical appraisal of our contemporary hyper-regulated urban spaces situated against a backdrop of deindustrialisation, the shift to consumer economies and the rise of the creative city paradigm. While existing work has characterised urban space as dead and asocial spaces bereft of life. This chapter opts to think our city centres as ‘Zombie Cities’: cities which have been eviscerated the social but are forced to wear the exterior signs of life through the injection of economically productive but artificial modes of culture and creativity. This sets the stage for explaining why parkour is inconsistently included and excluded from urban space, and how it attains spatio-economically contingent legitimacy and inclusion into urban space that problematises existing theoretical perspectives around a revanchist urbanism.

A popular narrative connects craft breweries with revitalisation of cities, neighbourhoods or communities, particularly in locations that have suffered from deindustrialisation. Research, too, associates craft breweries with job creation, development of local economies, and with entrepreneurship, crafts production, and do-it-yourself culture. Human geographers link craft breweries with contemporary place-making and neolocalism. Neolocalism, a revived appreciation of local ingredients and production, has become both a societal phenomenon and a business proposition. Based on key indicators for neolocalism, this chapter evaluates to what degree the narrative linking craft breweries with revitalisation, neolocalism and community-building holds for seven studied Finnish craft breweries. The cases presented herein offer a more nuanced view of the phenomenon and open the narrative to variations and richer interpretations. The chapter takes a critical view on narratives that enable, maintain and create societal phenomena such as the craft beer revolution, and it adds to the growing literature on the context and consequences of craft breweries.

Drawing from two years of multi-sited fieldwork about international backpacking in Central America, I make important connections between the backpacking escape motive, the backpacker hostel, and tourism. I explain how backpackers experience the hostel as their “home base” and “home away from home” to escape into local cultures and natural environments that exist outside of it and an international community of travelers that convenes inside of it. I refer to theories on modern tourism, the backpacking escape motive, and the concept of community. I also theorize how the global spread of modern amenities and tourism shapes backpackers' escape experiences.