DESERT TOURISM: Delineating the Fragile Edges of Development
Conference at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design
 |
image: Golf Course, Coober Pedy, Australia |
April 4: 2pm–7pm
April 5: 9pm–6pm
The film Lawrence of Arabia will be screened on April 2 at 6pm.
GSD, Gund Hall 48 Quincy street, Cambridge MA 02138
Stubbins Room and Piper Auditorium
For information, call 617.384.9889
Deserts have lost their stigma as inhospitable, inaccessible places and are becoming an ever more popular tourist destination. However, the growth of this niche tourism is raising particular challenges. It jeopardizes their fragile ecosystem and strains their scarce resources, affecting both the landscape and the local population. In effect, the increasing popularity of desert tourism is paradoxically undermining the very notion of their allure, their position as a frontier.
In developing countries, those consequences are even more drastic as the local populations, gathered around oases, live in dire conditions, with scarce resources and insufficient infrastructure, rarely benefiting from tourism’s economic effects. Furthermore, in face of rampant modernization and migration, their cultural and Architectural heritage is decaying at an alarming speed while new infrastructural needs and settlement patterns are emerging.
This conference on desert tourism seeks to analyze the relationship between tourism and the sustainable development of the populations, Architectures and landscapes of arid regions. Its main purpose is to provide a meeting platform for students, academics, researchers, and organizations, which have studied or implemented tourist projects that integrate the development of their surroundings and to discuss issues raise by desert tourism.
Papers and proceedings from this conference will be published.
Desert Tourism Abstracts of Presenters
View Desert Tourism poster (pdf)
Desert Tourism Exhibit (pdf)