Tourism as creative destruction: place making and resilience in rural areas

ABSTRACT This paper develops a new theoretical framework for understanding rural spatial change under the creative destruction of rural commodification and tourist consumption activities. In the context of tourism as creative destruction, place making is used as a theoretical tool to elaborate on positive spatial change in rural areas, and resilience is regarded as a new perspective for rural change management to capture the good adaptive cycle of this place making. The findings from a review of the literature on tourism as creative destruction, place making, and resilience are that maintaining a strong sense of the rural idyll and incessantly transforming innovative spaces into quality places in a resilient cycle of adaptation are the core of place making under tourism as creative destruction. These findings further suggest that continual innovation and the adaptive cycle are the main factors to consider when applying the notion of resilience in change management to the overall framework and deriving managerial implications from tourism as creative destruction and the transformation of space in rural areas.