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Part I
Metropolisation and suburban tourism
Satellite map of European cities, night.
Source: Fotolia.com © Gianluca D. Muscelli, Fotolia.com
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1Ecumenopolis commuter belt tourism
Michał Jacenty Sznajder
Toward Ecumenopolis
In 1967 Constantinos Doxiadis made a forecast based on demographic prognoses and the rate of urbanisation (Sassen 1991). He said that one day nothing more would exist except the city – Ecumenopolis (Caves 2005, p. 143). At the time nobody knew that the concept of the urban footprint could be used to monitor human activity on Earth. Nowadays, if we look from space at the Earth illuminated by billions of electric lamps, inevitably we need to ask the question whether Doxiadis was right in his opinion that urban areas and metropolises all over the world would merge one day and form one global city. The world population is constantly increasing and there are more and more people moving to cities, especially mega-metropolises. Nearly 25 per cent of the world’s population lives in 509 cities that have more than one million inhabitants. There are as many as 36 cities with more than 10 million inhabitants and this number is still growing (Demographia 2016).
If we look at world metropolises from space, we can say that these areas consist not only of the industry, business, housing and free space, but also green space, such as forests, farmland and waters. Green space, forests and waters occupy considerable areas of metropolises, for example, more than 37 per cent of the area of Berlin (Pacholsky 2000, p. 3). These are natural resources which the inhabitants of this metropolis can use for tourism. The greater the distance of these areas from the city proper, the more fascinating natural resources for tourism can be found.
One of people’s numerous needs is for systematic tourism, especially in the areas closest to their place of residence. Weekends and holidays are the right time for systematic tourism as long as the destination is at a reasonable distance, for example, within the metropolitan commuter belt. On the one hand, metropolitan areas create an enormous demand for tourism; on the other, they have considerable natural, infrastructural and human resources which can help to satisfy this demand. There is a problem of what to call systematic or spontaneous tourism in metropolitan areas where the inhabitants of a particular city use the natural tourism resources of their area. There are a few possibilities: nature-based tourism in metropolitan areas, submetropolitan nature tourism, suburban tourism, or metropolitan commuter belt tourism.
Paradoxical hypothesis
Peoples’ attitudes to nature and human development are still rather divided and these attitudes have been changing over the years due to the development of the philosophy of nature and the role of humans in it. This role varies widely from, at one extreme, the Biblical recommendation: ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth’ (Genesis 1:28) to the exceptionally ecological questioning of the role of humans in the ecosystem. Many people, especially those who lived in the late nineteenth century and in the first half of the twentieth century, retained aspects of the attitude that treated nature as something to be fought and overcome. This approach generated several environmental disasters. The doctrine of struggle with nature (борьба с природой) was applied in the former Soviet empire during the entire period of its existence. The Soviets created conspicuous geo-engineering projects which caused gigantic ecological disasters, such as the drying up of Lake Aral and the Bay of Kara-Bogaz-Gol in the Caspian Sea and the enormous erosion caused by ploughing the soil in the Tselina Virgin Lands Campaign (Tselinograd, currently Astana, Kazakhstan). Even those countries that seem to exploit their natural resources rationally sometimes made mistakes and caused the ‘anger and revenge’ of nature. The almost everlasting lightning storm on Lake Maracaibo, which earned the top spot as the place with the most lightning strikes, receiving an average rate of about 233 flashes per square kilometre per year (Connelly 2016), could be considered by some to be a symbol of angry nature.
Alternatively, there are radical ecological ideas which consider humans to be not only harmful but also an unnecessary element of nature. In spite of environmentally friendly declarations, these movements also lead to extreme situations, causing both the anger of people and nature. When Białowieża Forest in Poland was attacked by woodworms in 2015, immediately it became a political arena for the two aforementioned opposing concepts of the philosophy of nature. Białowieża Forest is not the only place on earth where we can see a conflict between radical supporters of nature conservation and local inhabitants who demand due development in their place of residence. Therefore, we need a rational compromise between protection of the natural environment and human development. In view of this fact, humanity is taking increasingly balanced steps to achieve this goal. For example, the EU climate package, also known as the climate and energy package, is a set of legally binding acts which are supposed to prevent climatic changes. Nature-based tourism in metropolitan areas is consistent with the philosophy of sustainable human development due to rational use of renewable natural resources.
There is a subtle difference between the terms urban agglomeration and urban sprawl, although they are sometimes used interchangeably to refer to the process of increasing urbanisation and the growth of cities. Urban sprawl is a centrifugal tendency, where colonisation spreads from the central city to new areas, whereas urban agglomeration is a centripetal tendency, where settlements are concentrated around the central city. Metropolisation comprises both urban sprawl and urban agglomeration and it is an increasing global phenomenon caused by continuously and comprehensively growing significance of big cities in the development of humanity. It is chiefly manifested by rapid urban sprawl to new rural and agricultural areas as well as forests, lakes, seas, deserts, and even the lower layer of the atmosphere. Radical ecologists find it regrettable that metropolisation is an inevitable and unstoppable process, because it is commonly thought that a big city provides humans with better opportunities of comprehensive development and a greater sense of broadly interpreted personal security. There are different forms of urban sprawl, ranging from building luxurious residences in shallow seas to uncontrolled, illegal colonisation of suburban agricultural areas, forests or even marshlands by poor people. The colonisation of the artificial Palm Islands on the coast of Dubai or the Pearl-Qatar in Doha are extreme examples of rich metropolitan dwellers’ households sprawling into new areas. Extreme expansion of cities can also be observed in lower layers of the atmosphere, for example, Burj Khalifa in Dubai, a nearly 830-metre tall skyscraper. Conversely, poor people tend to colonise new areas, such as the Afropolis of Conakry, which is the most populated and constantly growing place in Guinea, aspiring to be called a city or metropolis (see Chapter 4).
In 2007 the urban population of the world exceeded 50 per cent of the total world population (54.5 per cent in 2016) and it is still growing rapidly. The spontaneous process of settling in metropolises and metropolitan areas indicates that humanity can see better prospects for the future in these areas. The inhabitants of the most urbanised country in the world, the Belgians, say that there is no place in Belgium from which one could not see any buildings. As much as 98 per cent of the population live in cities. Some people welcome metropolisation with hope and enthusiasm, whereas others are reserved and apprehensive. The enthusiasm or apprehension results from one’s personal answer to the key question concerning the philosophy of nature, namely the position and role of humanity in nature. Regardless of one’s personal answer to this question, usually people stress the fact that the term metropolisation by itself stands in opposition to nature and metropolitan sprawl inevitably causes the disappearance of the natural environment. However, metropolitan inhabitants more and more often tend to exhibit their need to have contact with nature. The situation causes a paradox, because increasing metropolisation is accompanied by growing demand for contact with nature. The main thesis of this book included in the phrase ‘nature-based tourism in metropolitan areas’ sounds paradoxical. However, the main paradoxical thesis emphasises the complementary character of nature and tourism in metropolitan areas rather than the antagonism between the two. The paradoxical thesis is manifested by the statements that metropolisation favours the development of nature-based tourism and that nature-based tourism lets metropolitan inhabitants better understand and protect nature to save it for future generations.
Thus, the first part of the book is not a synthesis of the metropolisation theory but it is a necessary description of one of significant phenomena of the process, that is, the relationship between metropolitan sprawl into new suburban areas and perspectives of the development of nature-based tourism in these areas. The explanation of this phenomenon requires a broader conceptual context, which comprises classification and functions of the metropolis and metropolitan areas. It is important to know the current distribution of metropolises and metropolitan areas around the world as well as the natural, social and economic consequences of metropolisation. The inevitability of the development of nature-based tourism in metropolitan areas is the vital main thesis of this book, which is also the basis for both further theoretical and practical developments of nature-based tourism.
The city and the country
It is commonly believed that the city is an area where the natural environment is degraded, not to say devastated, whereas the country is an area of natural idyll. More and more often it is quite the opposite – a modern and well organised city protects people from a de...
