The Tropical Backyard

A couple of years ago, I worked with Dr Lisa Law on this project. We interviewed people in Smithfield, a suburb of Cairns, and came up with some interesting findings. It was particularly interesting to see just how much time and love people invest in their yards, and what influences they brought from other places they had lived previously. 

Dr Lisa Law presents: The Tropical Backyard

Date: Thursday 25^th July

Time: 5:30pm for wine and cheese, lecture 6.00pm-7:00pm

Place: Crowther Lecture Theatre, James Cook University, Cairns.

CAIRNS: Please register online at: http://alumni.jcu.edu.au/FSE-CNS-2013

Or RSVP to Carly McKaskill by Tuesday 23^rd July on 4042 1211

Or email carly.mckaskill@jcu.edu.au

SUMMARY:

Domestic yards and gardens are everyday places that express people’s social, cultural, and environmental identities.  They are also places where people's interactions with nature are engaged with and worked out. This talk elaborates a pilot study of the backyard as an important urban environmental place in a small but ethnically diverse neighbourhood in Cairns.  Although the pilot study set out to understand how residents manage mosquito breeding sites for dengue fever prevention, this talk explores the broader issue of how residents make sense of their backyards, especially in terms of how they relate to them as ‘tropical’.  Living in Cairns means managing a dearth/excess water during the dry/rainy season, dealing with new kinds of ‘pests’ and being critically conscious of the southern bias of Australian garden retailers and house/garden magazines.  These experiences are framed within a longer tradition of tropicality, or a (western) way of making sense of/imagining tropical regions.

Urban counterstructures in the tropics

A few weeks ago, I attended the Asia Pacific Tourism Association (APTA) Conference in Bangkok, and had the opportunity to share some of my research, as well as listen to what else is going on in the tourism world. I heard about the Explore Mekong initiative, a project developed to join China, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia in marketing the Greater Mekong as a region in a comprehensive way, which is a fantastic idea. I look forward to exploring it!

I also heard about Michelle Thompson's research on tourism in agricultural areas - thinking about cellar door sales of wine and more particularly farm gate sales - something that has quite a lot of potential in the tropics, but as yet not well developed.

In terms of my research, I spoke about urban counterstructures in the tropics. I like this idea. It developed originally I think from Cohen (1979), who suggested that people travel to counter the structure of their everyday lives. Things like differences in climate, natural environment, culture, language, pace of life, etc. Gospodini (2001) took this a step further and applied it to the urban environment, with the example of Bilbao in Spain. So the idea is that people also look for different urban environments, or urban counterstructures in their holiday experiences.

So far, I can't find any evidence of people speaking about urban counterstructures much at all, especially not in the tropics. Since we've been thinking so much about planning and urban design in the tropics, and tourism is such a valuable industry to so many tropical places, it may be a good angle from which to consider planning and tropical urban design. I came up with a model, which I plan to submit for publication soon.

Model: Elements of considering tourism and urban design in the tropics (Anderson, unpublished)

Basically, the model considers user experiences on one side, and urban design on the other, essentially a supply-demand relationship. The top half of the model is tourism focused, the bottom half is locally focused. Although it doesn't show here, I also have a basis of 'physical place', which lies beneath all of this, reflecting the natural environment, climate, hazards, things that are outside the realm of influence of planners and policy makers, but which must be considered.

I am developing this idea and thinking about specific case studies - possibly Palm Cove in Cairns could be a good one to start with. Something to keep me busy!

TP

Thinking about the tropics

Long time, no blog...
It's been a long time, I've been busy thinking about tropical planning and the tropics. Since I'm writing my PhD on it, I guess that's a good thing.

I have written a contribution with Lisa Law to the Urban Design Forum UDF100 book on creating a body of knowledge and expertise on tropical urban design. A link will follow once it's published. We have been thinking about the idea of 'interface' being a key component of tropical living. I came up with a model, but I think it still needs some work:



(source: Anderson & Law, in press)

The idea is that the tropics are governed by wet and dry - it influences our lifestyle and how we interact with the natural physical place. I've thought about it some more since we came up with this. Understanding the current body of knowledge in terms of the natural environment and how we respond to it is just a part of the puzzle. It's also a product of how we think about the tropics, how we've always thought about them.

Some scholars suggest that the way the colonialists thought about the tropics; an 'untouched' place to be 'tamed' (Echtner & Prasad 2003); 'paradisiacal' and 'pestilential' in equal measure (Arnold 2000); persists to this day in decision making both for the tropics and within the tropics. There is compelling evidence to suggest that this is so - cyclone-proof buildings with no other climate responsive features (such as verandahs, large eaves, high ceilings, favourable orientation) are still given the green-light by council and developers. This shows a need to 'conquer' the pestilential cyclones, rather than work with the environment in a responsive way, as well as a hint of 'temperate imperialism', where we all get the same designs as the homes in temperate places because it is cheaper to use existing designs. And with climate control, we feel that we can control our own personal climate, which we need to, if we are to live in homes designed to trap and keep heat (like from temperate places), rather than cool nautrally with breezes and shade.

There is plenty more to think about, but I have a PhD to write. I am presenting at the Asia Pacific Tourism Association (APTA) Conference in Bangkok on my research into urban design and its relationship with tourism in the tropics. I am also currently working on an article for the Journal of Urban Design. Some of these thoughts will no doubt end up within the pages of this blog!

Till next time....
TP

References

Arnold, D 2000, '"Illusory riches": representations of the tropical world, 1840-1950', Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 6-18.

Echtner, CM & Prasad, P 2003, 'The context of third world tourism marketing', Annals of Tourism Research, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 660-82.