Beach resort morphology in England and Australia: A review and extension

Abstract

Resort towns provide a special example of urban settlement that satisfies what Cohen calls the phenomenological ‘recreational’ mode of tourism, in which the holidaymaker escapes his usual environment and returns refreshed to his everyday life-world. Their landscapes are shaped to enhance that escape, and to facilitate it, leading to specialised urban morphologies which require separate examination. Resorts are commonly located close to Nature (Lavery, 1971) and Nature indeed is a key to understanding this morphology given its value as a social category in recent Western culture (Jeans, 1983; Tuzin, 1977). It is argued here that a common semiotic morphology can be imposed on seaside resorts, while recognizing international idiolects which do not disturb the general model.