Tourism and built environment changes in traditional communities : Kuta and Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia as the case studies.

In many of the changes that are occurring in the world today, tourism has a significant role in many areas developed mainly as tourist destinations. Among other changes, spatial and land development engendered by tourism has not been researched widely. One of the most obvious impacts of tourism is on the physical landscape, especially because of change in the built environment. Most studies on the impact of tourism in developing countries are focused on the social and economic impacts of tourism. This research will specifically focus on the impact of tourism on the built environment. Accepting that tourism and land development are complex phenomena, which are idiosyncratic to the context of the particular communities, this study focuses on the traditional communities of Bali. Although faced with significant socio-economic change, especially brought about by tourism, these communities are culturally conservative and possess several highly developed traditional institutions, which maintain, guide and regulate many aspects of environmental change. This approach is constructed by investigating and problematising the theoretical model for this study; considering Bali tourism development generally; developing case studies from built environment change in two resorts in the same regency: Kuta, with integrated development, and Nusa Dua, with enclavic development, and comparing Balinese traditional and current government institutions within a planning discussion. The research uncovers that, there are multiform development mechanisms found in various tourism projects in Kuta and Nusa Dua. The challenge to the analysis is to recognise the common theme in land development processes, which differentiates these two cases. Most likely, the only commonality, which may be drawn out from them, is that nothing in development mechanisms can be generalised. Realising the complex disparity, the analysis is conducted by dichotomising the informal and formal development mechanism. The Nusa Dua resort is an example of a purely formal development mechanism. In contrast, most of built environmental changes in Kuta represent informal and/or semi-formal mechanisms, except starred hotels and other tourist facilities built by large capital investors. Considering planning for changes to the built environment in Bali is practised by two distinct sets of institutions: traditional institutions (desa adat) and more recent official institutions which are created and controlled by the central state government, the supplementary analysis exercise is comparing these two sets of institutions, which apparently have contrasting characteristics and processes. The concern with 'institutions' suggests an understanding of the land development process as social products, and therefore embodiments of context-and historical-specific practices. Built environment processes and their outcomes are seen as the complex result of economic, social and cultural processes from which geography and history cannot be ignored. Simultaneously, this research is another contribution to the empirical investigation of the role of 'institutions' in explaining development processes and the characteristics of the resulting built environment. In planning discipline, especially land development studies arena, most economic-institutionalapproach- research has been conducted in developed countries. This research has partly been based on a sociological-institutional-approach to analysing built environmental changes arising from tourist development in traditional Balinese communities.