APG5609 – Sustainable Development and Planning
Sustainable Urban Tourism: Case Study St. Kilda, Melbourne
MUHAMAD RIFKI
21654801
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS i
LIST OF TABLES ii
LIST OF FIGURES ii
Executive Summary 1
1. Introduction 2
2. Research Context 3
3. Research Findings 5
4. Recommendations 8
REFERENCES iii
APPENDICES v
LIST OF TABLES
Table 3.1 SWOT Analysis 5
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 3.1 St. Kilda Triangle Project Master Plan 8
Figure 4.1 Mind Map Problem Solving Scheme in Community Participation Process 9
Figure 6.1. Infographic St. Kilda v
Executive Summary
This report provides an identification of the key challenges that happen in St. Kilda as an urban tourism destination. The analysis of the extent to which sustainable and resilient urban tourism is evident based on the key challenges of the problem in St. Kilda. The methodology applies a qualitative method using direct observation in the location and research through the secondary data from the journal articles, news, Port Philip Council official website. Also, casual conversation with the tour guide in the walking tour, people in the from the community, also some employees in some restaurants to obtain additional information from others’ perspectives.
The results of the research show that the critical challenge in St. Kilda is overtourism during peak season. This challenge creates other problems related to the environmental, social, and economic. The environmental problem is pollution, wherein the rubbish contaminates the foreshore. The social problems are noise pollution and security from the tourists’ behaviours and drunk people. Also, gentrification is also another problem due to the increasing demand from tourists for low-cost accommodation. The economic problem is competition for jobs between backpackers and residents.
Meanwhile, the strategies of sustainable tourism lay down in action to adapt with overtourism during peak season. First is a collaborative approach to focus on Environmental preservations with The Eco Centre, Beach patrol, Port Phillip bay cleaner, Earth Care. These organizations are a form of sustainable activities for preventing the environment from massive damage due to tourism. The 24-hour alcohol ban is regulated by The City of Port Phillip Procedures in Protocols Manual 2018 to create a secure living hood. Lastly, The Community Housing Program to address the gentrification.
The current plan to continue developing the tourism is ‘St. Kilda Triangle’. It is expected to generate a new wave of economic and social benefits for the state and the community while creating a great place to hang out. As the recommendation, the collaborative working is needed with the community, public and private sectors to create the sustainable and resilient strategy.
Documentary Video :https://drive.google.com/open?id=1iOurNhUrhlgCk2NfRo8cF7Cdz38zPjt1
1. Introduction
In Melbourne, St. Kilda is one of urban tourism destination. According to UNWTO (2012), urban tourism is the tourism activity which happens in the cities or ‘places with a high-density population.’. Located 6Km from the city, St. Kilda has plenty of accommodations, cafés and restaurants, and tourist attractions also events.
Beside the beautiful scenery in Port Philip bay, St. Kilda has several tourist attractions. One of the iconic sites is Luna Park which is the first theme park in Australia with its roller coaster and carrousel. St. Kilda Pier is the place where tourists can spot the penguins and is the top attraction according to tripadvisor. Another attraction is, Botanical garden which serve as the lung for St. Kilda with the biodiversity vegetations.
St. Kilda is also famous with events and the iconic streets such as the Acland and Fitzroy Street where the European style stores can be found there. Esplanade market is the Sunday market in which there are lots of stalls selling arts and crafts. In addition, the event called St. Kilda Summer Festival which is annually held.
Having some attractions, St. Kilda will potentially have a problem to maintain its sustainability of its environment, social and economy. Therefore, this paper aims to identify the tourism status quo of St. Kilda as one of the urban tourism areas in Melbourne. In order to provide in-depth understandings of sustainable tourism in urban contexts, analysis the extent to which sustainable and resilient urban tourism is researched based on the analysis of key challenges of the problem in St. Kilda. Another approach used in this paper is by underlining one key strategic approach for St. Kilda that will serve to enhance the development of sustainable urban tourism.
2. Research Context
St Kilda was named after the ship called the Lady of St Kilda in 1841, then eventually became an area of wealthy settlers and a place for spending leisure time. Proclaimed as a city in 1890, St. Saint Kilda has become the urban tourism destination. However, The Depression occurred in the 1890s, and St Kilda began to decline until there was a project to recover St. Kilda in the early 1900’s, which put the stepping stone for the development of this area. It was also coincidental with the growing cultural communities. The development started with the construction of St. Kilda sea bath in 1910. Then the revitalization continued with the Luna Park in 1912 as one of the icons of St. Kilda tourism industry. After that, the effort of beautifying this place kept going with Palais de Danse and The Palais Theatre in about 14 years after Luna Park. This development of the tourism industry in St. Kilda is still happening until now. Having that history, it affirms the status quo of St. Kilda as an urban tourism destination with a strong history, culture, and community until now (www.acklandstreetvillage.com).
Some challenges arise coincidentally with the continuity of the leveraging the tourism industry. UNEP and UNWTO (2005) define sustainable tourism as ‘tourism that takes full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts.’. It can be seen from the definition, three aspects should be taken into consideration; ‘people, planet and profit’ (Wise, 2016). However, the idea of sustainable tourism concept tends to limit the tourism growth and St. Kilda as a case study wants to maintain their status quo as one of urban tourism (Sayer & Campbell, 2004; Saarinen, 2013). Apart from the consideration to maintain the growth of tourism in St. Kilda, the number of visitations which showing the increase year by year, events and the tourist attractions, also the number of Airbnb around the area potentially create some potential problems to the environment, social and economic. Along with that, the city of Port Phillip and the communities are running a sustainable development and resilience strategy
Resilience is the anticipation action to adapt to changes (Lew, Ng, Ni, & Wu, 2015 and Wu, 2015). Sustainability, on the other hand, seeks to prevent and address the significant challenges which will be impacting social and environment to exist (Redman, 2014). From these definitions, it can be concluded that the difference is in the actions that are taken to prevent and to adapt from changes. Thus, there might be some similarities in action. However, the action of resilience may not only be the attitude to adopt, but also to prevent the worst scenario. Therefore, Redman (2014) argues that many researchers tend to combine both concepts.
This research applies a qualitative method using direct observation to the location, analysing the secondary data from the journal articles, news, Port Philip Council official website. Also, casual conversation with the tour guide in the walking tour, people in the from the community, and also some employee in some restaurants are the other method to obtain additional information from others’ perspectives.
There are some limitations. Firstly, since there are many ways to enter this place as an urban area it is relatively difficult to get accurate number of visitors who visit St. Kilda. However, the data of capacity building action in St. Kilda from the port Philip council can serve as a good approximation because the administration has to focus on eight areas. The research location is also limited to the St. Kilda area where the tourism is concentrated. (https://profile.id.com.au/port-phillip/about?WebID=170)
3. Research Findings
Upon the existence of St. Kilda as the urban tourism destination, there are some key challenges in this research location which is giving some detrimental effects to environment, social and economy around in St. Kilda. Those challenges appear as the threats and weaknesses in the SWOT analysis table 3.1.
Table 3.1 SWOT Analysis
Internal Factors
Strengths (S)
1. Near Melbourne CBD
2. Strong historical and cultural story
3. Strong power of community determination
4. Availabilities of tourist attractions, events and tourism supporting components
5. Dispersed the tourists via events Weaknesses (W)
1. Insufficient parking lot for visitors
2. Security staffs around the crowds
3. There is no strict rule for working backpackers
4. Seasonality
External Factors Opportunities (O)
4. Improvement infrastructures
5. Attracting tourists during low season via events Threats (T)
1. Overtourism
2. Gentrification
3. Pollutions (noise and rubbish)
4. Drunk Tourists
5. Increase retail shopping
From the swot analysis, it can be seen that St. Kilda still has some potentials to grow and maintain its position as the urban tourism destination. The growth can be supported by the strategic location, solid history, culture, and also the tourist attractions, events, accommodations, restaurants, and cafes. However, during peak season and events this place can be over capacity resulting to over tourism which eventually will harm the environment, the people. Additionally, the growing demand and the possibility of obtaining the economic benefits from tourism activities influence investors and business people to open their business which can increase the competition in economy.
The extent to which sustainable and resilient urban tourism is evident showing along with the challenges appearing in St. Kilda. Overtourism has been becoming the headlines since 2017. It is recognized as the situation when the number of tourists reaches over the carrying capacity, and the tension from the local community emerges due to the tourism activities (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2018). Carrying capacity in tourism context is the level of density of tourism activities which will harm the environment, the habitat of animals, the local community around the destination (Clark, 1997; Martin and Uysal, 1990). Overtourism is the primary challenge of St. Kilda during peak season.
According to ABC News, On Christmas 2017, ‘St. Kilda beach trashed in the Christmas party’. About 5000 people were partying which ended up with a bunch of rubbish along the foreshore. The impact is not only on the environment, but also the drunken people did not respect the local community with the noise pollution and disobeyed the trial rule from Port Phillip council of 24-hour ban on drinking or holding an open container of alcohol outside licensed dining places (The City of Port Phillip, 2018). It means that overtourism challenges the sustainability, in particular, the planet and people contexts.
The mayor of Port Phillip to ABC News, the majority of the crowds on 25/12/2017 party was backpackers. This leads to the next challenge which is gentrification. Gotham (2005) states that gentrification in urban tourism is the transformation of classification neighbourhoods from the middle class to more high class which is influenced by the proliferation of tourism industry in the area. One of the relationships between backpackers and gentrification is in the growing influx of airBnB (Paris, 2009; Mermet, 2017). This transition of accommodation rental trends might be raised the properties and land prices also influence the rental fee (Cócola Gant, 2016; Stulberg, 2015). However, airBnB is not the only factors, but also the popularity of St. Kilda as the tourism destination and the improvement of infrastructure also might be the causes. However, it is also because there might be pressured on the infrastructure, such as public transportations.
In terms of the economic impacts, St. Kilda is the second most visited place in Melbourne after the CBD with about 1.7Million overnight tourists as per March 2018 (Tourism Research Australia, 2018). There is a competition for jobs between the local community with backpackers. It would be likely to reduce the opportunity for people around St. Kilda and neighbourhoods for having a job. Based on the conversation with some waiters in some cafés. They said that some part-timers in the café are backpackers who travel for several weeks. They got the vacancies information in the hostels where they are staying. It is clarified by the employee in one of the hostels in St. Kilda saying that they give some information about job vacancies, also they have a special rate to support them for staying longer in their hostel while working there.
Meanwhile, strategies for more sustainable tourism growth lay down in action to adapt with overtourism. There are several mixture actions of sustainable and resilient evident in St. Kilda and most of them are a collaborative approach to some organization focusing on Environmental preservations. Some of the organizations who play a significant role are The EcoCentre with focus on the environment, beach patrol and Port Phillip bay cleaner who focuses on maintaining the cleanliness of the beach from rubbish, advocacy and education (Port Phillip’s website). Then, EarthCare is an organization doing penguin guide and research to maintain the number of penguins. The current survey states that there are approximately 1400 penguins and it increased from the last number (St. Kilda Penguins Organisation). These organizations are forms of sustainable activities for preventing the environment from massive damage due to tourism.
Acknowledging of having some problems caused by drunk tourists’ behavior. in 2018 the government amended procedures and protocols manual 2018 for taking a severe actualization of 24-hour alcohol ban and holding an open container of alcohol outside licensed dining place. This regulation is meant to make government in controlling drunk people. Thus, they would be in the bar, café, restaurants or some events. It also will create a safer environment for people who live around St. Kilda.
The stressed on public transportation and gentrification are two problems that are difficult to be solved. However, the city is trying to promote walking and cycling around St. Kilda with BikeShare. It aims the stressed on public transport also for reducing the carbon emission in the area. In terms of gentrification, the local council Port Phillip is doing Community Housing Program to address the gentrification (Port Phillip official website). However, since the issue is undeniable, the local people are resilient by finding cheaper houses a little bit further.
Figure 3.1 St. Kilda Triangle Project Master Plan (Source : St. Kilda Triangle Project – City of Port Phillip)
The next planning of Port Phillip Council is Environmental protection and cultural precinct. Through Co-design ‘St. Kilda Triangle’ project whereby stakeholders are affected in the investigation and work process in designing problems and develop solutions. The aims are to create areas for recreation, socializing, and events also a cultural precinct to complement the Palaise theatre and Luna park. The proposed precinct focuses on cultural production, not just recreation or consumption. Besides the aim to boost tourism, it is also expected to generate a new wave of economic and social benefits for the state and the community, while creating a great place to hang out (St. Kilda Triangle Masterplan). This project is still in the masterplan stage.
4. Recommendations
Some actions have to be done in order to tackle the challenges that are faced by St. Kilda due to overtourism. Since people who live around St. Kilda have strong determination and power to put forward their ideas, embracing the community participation should be taken into the sustainable and resilient strategy. This can be addressed by considering the community who will undergo the positive and negative transformation due to tourism and creating the ‘hospitality atmosphere‘ that makes the tourism industry sustain (Simmons, 1994). Nonetheless, participatory from private sectors is also needed to create sustainable urban tourism.
Figure 4.1 Mind Map Problem Solving Scheme in Community Participation Process (authors)
The collaboration between public, private sectors, and communities are assimilated from Beijing, Berlin, Copenhagen and Bogota’s strategies as urban tourism (UNWTO, 2018). The public sector is the city council of Port Phillip which the role can be some regulation, financial support also controlling of the process.
Communities can be the residents, organisations, and artists. They will be responsible for solving some problems regarding pollutions by inviting tourists to join them doing some volunteer activities. Holding some seasonality market provides more opportunities in the middle of competitions for jobs. In terms of seasonality, the low season can be a recovery week for the environment.
Competition for the jobs is likely to involve participation from private sectors. Since the salary might be higher than paying backpackers, business owners would be facing some problem to pay people who are living around St. Kilda especially during low season. However, it could be assumed as a social responsibility and capacity building from the private sector.
References
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APPENDICES
Figure 6.1. Infographic St. Kilda