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.