Tourism Urbanization in the United States

Abstract

The rapid growth of the tourism industry over the past 50 years has had a number of important consequences. One of these is the evolution of entire metropolitan areas heavily dependent on tourism, a phenomenon Mullins calls tourism urbanization. Such urban centers include Las Vegas and Orlando in the United States, the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast in Australia, and Cancun in Mexico. Studies of tourism-dependent cities outside the United States have shown them to differ symbolically and socially from more traditional metropolitan areas. The author evaluates the effects of tourism on American metropolitan areas and determines whether tourism-dependent cities in the United States are similar to those elsewhere. The author found two distinct types of tourism urbanization in the United States. One type specializes in "sun, sand, and sea" tourism, and the other specializes in highly capital-intensive tourist attractions. The two types of tourist cities exhibit different social structures, and both differ in important ways from tourist cities outside the United States.