Tourism accounts for one of the largest industries, promoting a commodification of place across the world. Clean, safe, and attractive self-contained environments are created that by definition are generally segregated from local conditions.

Packaged for mass consumption these sites are crafted via various tactics involving the construction of popular myth, the re-framing of history, and the management of cultural reception. In effect, destinations are remapped to serve social, political, and economic agendas.

Tourism is simultaneously a product and producer of culture, a catalyst in a nuanced process of exchange. This phenomenon offers an arena for examining the mutual relationship between contemporary practices of tourism and the ongoing development of the built environment.