Urban Ecotourism

THESIS

Urban ecotourism proposal towards the revitalization of public spaces by means of usage, valuation and conservation. Case of study: New York’s Chinatown.

From the Environmental Management perspective, cities are facing worried and unsustainable situations for the collective and individual welfare even more when population densification processes are developed swiftly in the metropolises. A case of study is New York City, where since XIX century has been consolidating one of the human settlements with the largest Chinese population in the western hemisphere known as Chinatown. In a continuous historic process over a century this complex neighborhood has gained a socio-cultural cohesion where coexist relations and conflicts, convergences and divergences, myths and legends from east and west.

This research evidences the neighborhood revitalization growing interest from different society sectors spite of the persistent problems; between the detriment quality of life main causes are the public space deficit, inadequate recreation spaces, lack of promotion and divulgation of the importance of these places and the socio-environmental impact of the proposals of traditional tourism; this situation has generate the deterioration of the urban environment represented in: underused public spaces, inadequate uses of urban spaces, loss of values anchored in these places and the disinterestedness to visit or live in the neighborhood.

At the present time in many cities of the world there is no a clear urban ecotourism proposal that respect the ecological, social and cultural values for the strengthening of the identities, in detriment of knowledge and respect of the resources, compromising its quality of life as well as its economic and tourist competence.

In this research the author in his role as an external agent or observer adopts as analytic and diagnosis method the historic-hermeneutic approach in its ethnographic version. Besides he uses a conceptual structure for the systematic analysis of the diagnosis that facilitates the external threats and opportunities comparison with the internal strengths and weaknesses by means of pursuit of the best adjustment between the surrounding tendencies to identify the key aspects for the formulation of the set of strategies.

The formulation of environmental management strategies for the comprehension, usage and conservation of public spaces, in this specific case they point out to: 1. Insertion of the participation of the different actors and the administrative strengthening of the several competent instances, 2. Environmental cultural redemption of the public spaces besides the usages and values constrained to the urban landscape, and 3. Promotion and patronage of the ways to realize and improve the conditions for the urban ecotourism. In a special way this research materialized a video-documentary and a Green Map, creative and participative education tools of environmental empowerment.

The design and application of this proposal pretends amplify the studies horizon in this field, to reapply this model in a contextual way in any other neighborhood, city o urban settlement, in honour of the comprehension of the socio-cultural and natural supply of the built environmental systems and, the strengthening of the local identities according to its environment.