The Sense of Place for Tourists: Place-making Under the Perspectives of Symbolic Interaction and Phenomenology

摘要

Organic place-making and planned placemaking are ends on a continuum of options for place making theories that give significant insight of tourism research. Sense of place is another concept that provides further theoretical and practical depth for understanding place making. With symbolic interaction and a phenomenology perspective, sense of place can be conceived as a stream of awareness composed of place images, place significances and place engagements, which are inseparably linked through the symbolic interaction between tourists and the place. Place image is produced biologically through sensory interactions between humans and place; place significance is generated semiologically in consciousness interactions; and place engagement is created existentially from emotional interactions. These three symbolic interactions create the experience stream which is a person's perception of a place. This stream originates in the authenticity and the organic structure of a place. While top-down placemaking meets the ordinary, recreational needs of tourists, the authenticity of bottom-up place-making gives tourists deeper and richer experiences through the individual's stream of awareness. The different experiences that various forms of place making engender can be better understood in terms of the complexity of the stream of tourist awareness. Mixed placemaking methods need to appreciate the authenticity protection of the back-stage place-making against the commercialization of front-stage placemaking.