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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.

In 2010, 12 years after the signing and popular ratification of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (BGFA), the decommissioning of Irish Republican Army (IRA) weapons, and a significant decline in political violence, paramilitary public symbolic displays (PSDs) remained as prominent features of the landscape of Northern Ireland. Their contents and locations constituted an important, contradictory, and contested part of the peace process. We argue that paramilitary murals and other symbolic sites, such as memorial gardens and plaques, continue to tap into ethno-national collective identities forged in conflict but also exhibit a range of reframing strategies that we refer to as historicization, articulation, and suppression. We further argue that contextual factors affect the likelihood of these displays appearing within a given geographic area. To assess these hypotheses, we conduct content and geospatial analyses of all identified PSDs in West Belfast in 2010. The results lend support to a context-sensitive approach to predicting the contents and locations of paramilitary PSDs in Northern Ireland.

Volume 2 contributes to the general theme of this Advances series by offering original, eclectic theories and field studies that focus on culture, tourism, and hospitality research. Volume 2 includes chapters without length restrictions, giving authors the opportunity to provide more nuanced explorations of theory, method, and their findings, and so create articles that sharpen and deepen thinking to a greater extent than is usually possible in journal-length articles. Unlike handbooks of original essays, this Advances series aims to include chapters on topics and coverage heretofore missing from the literature, but that nevertheless build on prior scholarly contributions. Consequently, the primary objective for Volume 2 is to provide must-read chapters unavailable from other sources – a wellspring providing exceptional insights and tools for applied researchers and scholars focusing on culture, tourism, and hospitality.

Tourism research has been largely unconcerned with the aesthetic dimension, although few attempts have recently begun to surface. In this chapter, the authors highlight a multifaceted process of incorporating aesthetics in tourist experience design, based on a three-level framework for theming. The first level is based on aesthetic features of destinations as atmospherics. The second level deals with multisensory atmospherics, transcending the mere visual focus of the tourist gaze. Key experiences of the beautiful, sublime and picturesque are deeply embedded in visual, somatic, olfactory, auditory and gustatory decoding of aesthetic markers. The third level deals with the human factor in atmospherics, particularly focussing on the role of residents. Through a discursive lens, local people are simultaneously identified as sources, co-creators and beneficiaries of aesthetic environments. Thus, the chapter hopes to open possibilities for exploring experiences of atmospherics (including aesthetics) through a dialectic approach.

Graffiti and street art have become a universal, intercultural and multidisciplinary urban phenomenon. The contribution of scientific research has greatly increased knowledge about this peculiar culture that has transformed the way we view and experience the city. The general objective of this chapter is the description of a framework for community development, focused on young people, using graffiti and street art culture as an aggregating resource for social inclusion, cultural entrepreneurship and empowerment. The identification of a set of tangible and intangible assets linked to the creation of cultural synergies for the benefit of young citizens provides a model that may be employed for the social and economic progress of local communities. This chapter also provides a macro and micro environmental analysis intended to establish guidelines for the implementation of entrepreneurial projects for the cultural development of diverse social settings. In this sense, the examples of distinct cities, such as Lisbon, Heerlen and Toronto, demonstrate that their dynamics around street art culture are a challenge for engagement in effective socio-economic constructions. Similarly, the academic research project StreetArtCEI provides not only the scientific knowledge but also resources for the community to use in entrepreneurial actions.

There are a large number of destinations in which post-conflict tourism (PCT) might be a relevant development option. This chapter considers four destinations which have opted to use the PCT brand as part of their strategies to attract tourists. These destinations – Cambodia, Nicaragua, Rwanda and Bougainville (within the country of Papua New Guinea) – are on four different continents, had conflicts which ended in the last decade of the twentieth century and represent tourism industries at different stages of development. They were also chosen because they are at low or medium levels of development and have relatively small populations of less than 20 million people. The chapter considers the different ways in which PCT is or might be used not only to provide economic opportunities for local residents, but also as a means towards reconciliation, healing and recovery after conflicts which have resulted in many casualties and divided the people against each other. Each of the case study destinations have attempted to turn a negative aspect of their histories into an opportunity for development, with differing levels of success.

The data sample used in this study is composed of 2,638 Chinese tourists who have travel experiences to the South Pacific region. This study examines the effects of memorable tourism experiences, destination cognitive and affective images, and satisfaction on revisit intention and their mechanisms from a cognitive–affective perspective. Results show that destination cognitive image, destination affective image, and satisfaction, respectively, play a mediating effect on the relationship between memorable tourism experiences and revisit intention. Memorable tourism experience is the most important predictor of revisit intention, and it mainly affects the cognitive image of a destination. In line with previous studies, this research has shown that memorable tourism experiences have significant impact on the destination image and tourists' revisit intention, which can provide significant implications for tourism practitioners and destination managers in the South Pacific islands.

This study investigated the potential for the development of dark tourism in Lebanon, a destination that has suffered multiple crises in recent years including conflicts and the world's largest non-nuclear explosion, which devastated a large section the country's capital city, Beirut. Research was carried out using desk audit, key informant interviews and archival research, which identified 21 potential dark tourism sites that could be incorporated into a new dark tourism product as part of the recovery of Lebanon as a tourism destination. Of these 21 sites, the majority were found in Beirut, suggesting that an urban dark tourism product may be the most suitable product to develop as the country emerges from crises. However, a number of barriers would need to be overcome in order for dark tourism to contribute to a form of phoenix tourism in the country, including the engagement of diverse stakeholders, the security of international tourists in the destination, and the ability of the public sector to invest in destination marketing in the post-crisis period.

This chapter is part of a broader research project on popular culture tourism that is designed to explore new destination branding strategies that utilize cultural resources as a key strategy. This study promotes the role of urban cultural attractions as an additional significant resource category for destination development. Through the arrival of new and diversified cultural experiences, destinations such as Australia can improve their existing tourism portfolios. The study is concerned with qualitative aspects of the cultural economy, namely the subjective experiences and expectations of past, existing, and potential tourists. It offers recommendations and comments on the use of alternative cultural attractions in national tourism campaigns.