The short and long of collaborative planning in the mountain resort destination of Canmore, Canada

Abstract

This paper examines the outcomes of a collaborative planning exercise in the mountain town destination of Canmore, Canada, and offers a unique view of the experiences and challenges facing community leaders, planners and residents in post-process strategy implementation and monitoring. Diverse resident and stakeholder interests came together in 1994 in a year-long collaboration to develop a Growth Management Strategy (GMS). While short-term process outcomes are reported elsewhere, this paper focuses primarily on the medium-to longer-term outcomes and the experiences of participants eight -nine years after the GMS process ended. Tangible and intangible, as well as direct and indirect outcomes were identified. The results show that some gains appear to have faded overtime, significant challenges were experienced in strategy implementation and monitoring, while growth continued to impact the social -cultural fabric of the community. However, a number of positive gains and efforts indicate that collaborative processes complemented by citizen-based strategic visioning and strategic planning can be valuable for direction setting, growth management and sustainable community development in destinations like Canmore. Implications for research and practice are discussed. The study also suggests the need for a new planning paradigm to manage such complex community domains.

Conflict management within the context of community based tourism: an exploratory study

“…Among the relevant literature, focus on the collaborative process, and the relationship conflict management had to the process, seemed to be dominant key theme Jamal & Getz, 1995;Jamal & Getz, 1999;Jamal & McDonald, 2010;Okazaki, 2008). Due to the relationship that collaboration has with conflict management in the tourism literature and, even more specifically, the CBT literature, it becomes evident that collaboration amongst key stakeholder groups is a very pertinent research topic within this field.…”

“…Within the tourism literature, there are several publications that discuss conflict in relation to CBT (Gascón, 2012;Jamal & Getz, 1995;Jamal & McDonald, 2010;Jamal, Stein, & Harper, 2002;Kibicho, 2008;Reed, 1997). Specifically, Gascon (2012), states that CBT can actually be the cause of the conflict because of one stakeholder having a monopoly on a new resource.…”

“…In relation to stakeholders affiliated with tourism development, conflict is quite frequently discussed within the literature Gascón, 2012;Jamal & Getz, 1995;Jamal & McDonald, 2010;Jamal et al, 2002;McKercher et al, 2005;Reed, 1997;S. Reid, Ruhanen, & Johnston, 2012;Ruhanen, 2012;Wray, 2011).…”

“…Based on that conclusion, the exploration of the gamut of conflict management 'responses' for key stakeholder groups becomes even more apparent as a necessary research purpose. Concerning the key stakeholder groups that were included in the reviewed literature, local communities (Dredge, 2010;Jamal & Getz, 1999;Wray, 2011) and local leadership and/or governments (Beaumont & Dredge, 2009;Jamal & Getz, 1999;Jamal & McDonald, 2010;Okazaki, 2008) appeared to be the most common unit of analyses in the case studies.…”

“…Within the tourism literature, conflict management is seen as an integral component to tourism planning (Dredge, 2010;Jamal & McDonald, 2010;Jamal et al, 2002;Wray, 2011). In the literature on conflict management within tourism planning, discussion is held on the significance of tourism planners needing to understand the importance of conflict management when dealing with stakeholders, in order to deliver accepted outcomes Wray, 2011).…”