The Disneyfication of the Alps: Protected area turistification and spatial justice

Abstract

For some regional administrations, tourism is seen as a panacea for the economic development of peripheral areas. It is presented as a non-extractive sector that preserves the environment and enables sustainable economic development. This communication aims to challenge this discourse by developing a critical analysis of tourism and showing a number of issues related to the design and governance of protected areas in relation to spatial justice.

To this end, the results of an analysis of public debates on the failure of two national park projects in the Ticino Alps in Switzerland will be presented. While the institutions and supporters adopted a discourse that framed both projects as a source of sustainable regional development – something that would have helped the entire canton to emerge on the international tourist scene – the detractors saw the parks as a prevarication of urban centres over peripheral areas. By mobilising the ideals of sovereignty and independence, they described parks as an attempt by affluent residents of urban centres to impose a change on the way of life on the inhabitants of peripheral areas. The transformation of the Alps into protected areas, in this framework, amounts to the destruction of the ways of life of Alpine communities, the disneyfication of their living spaces. Tourism becomes, in this perspective, an industry that extracts aesthetic value, and in doing so destroys the ways of life of the residents.

Despite the problematic nature of the detractors’ arguments, the population decided to reject the projects. This calls for a critical reflection on the touristification of protected areas. The situation is much more conflictual than it might seem at first glance. Thus, we propose to include spatial justice as a key factor when developing a protected area and managing it. Only by guaranteeing communities living within the perimeters of protected areas a treatment that will be perceived as fair will it be possible to create local support for their implementation. The neoliberal governance of protected areas as instruments for extracting economic value from wilderness, by not considering this aspect, proves to be unsustainable.