Michael
Romanos is professor of planning and economic development at the
University of Cincinnati, in the U.S.A. The recipient of the 2005 D.
Cohen Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest such recognition
of his university, he has lived and worked in many parts of the world,
especially Southeast Asia, where he has served as senior advisor to
Indonesia’s Ministry of Economic Planning, was a Fulbright and Asia
Foundation Senior Professor in Indonesia and Thailand, and lead a
multi-year program of higher education reform in these countries. He
directs the Summer Field School in Sustainable Development, which
conducts sustainable development planning studies for tourism-oriented
communities all over the world. A native of Crete, he holds
architecture and planning degrees from the National Technical
University of Athens and Florida State University, and a Ph.D. in
Regional Science from Cornell University.
The
University of Cincinnati was established in 1819 as a city
institution, and later became part of the state of Ohio university
system. With a student body of about 37,000, of which about 10,000 are
graduate students, and a faculty of about 2,500, the University of
Cincinnati is a Carnegie I research institution. It is a comprehensive
university offering instruction in all disciplines except the
agricultural sciences. Its School of Planning is one of the largest in
the US, with a student body of over 300 in two undergraduate, one
master’s and a Ph.D. program, and a faculty of seventeen. Known for
its cooperative education undergraduate planning program, the School
offers graduate-level specializations in physical and environmental
planning and design, economic development, and international planning
and development. Its award-winning Summer Field School has been
operating since 1984 and has conducted student-faculty educational
programs in Indonesia, Thailand, Brazil and Greece.
(The Interview follows:)
ECOCLUB.com:
As someone who has worked in many and vastly diverse corners of the
planet, what would be the most valuable lesson you have learned in
terms of tourism policy & planning and which you would share with
aspirant planners in tourism and the environment?
Professor Michael Romanos: There is a perception in every corner
of the world that tourism could instantly solve a place’s economic and
social development problems. This is a dangerous fallacy which often
leads governments to misallocate resources, raise unreasonable
expectations among local populations, and “sell out” a place in order
to attract tourism-related investments and/or achieve quick profits.
Often local and regional governments do not realize that in order to
have a successful tourism development, in addition to the natural
beauty or cultural resources of a place, transportation,
communications and environmental infrastructure must be at least
adequate, the training of personnel on all aspects of the tourist
trade is absolutely essential, and the education of the local
populations on how to deal with tourism and visitors is imperative.
When the impacts of tourism development have not been carefully
thought out, the environmental, social and cultural implications of
uncontrolled, exploitative tourism can not only destroy local cultures
and lifestyles, but may also ruin the attractive characteristics of a
place, thus also destroying the future potential of the place to
support sustainable tourism.
ECOCLUB.com:
Does an expatriate or visiting consultant in your line of work need to
know the issues, the politics and the people at least to a depth
normally available to natives, or is it better to have an Aristotelian
'unscribed-tablet' (tabula rasa), to choose your own successful
formula and apply it objectively regardless of local objections and
special interests?
Professor Michael Romanos: A consultant must learn and understand
a place and its people, their capacities, constraints, potentials, and
aspirations in depth before (s)he can make recommendations for any
kind of planning. Tourism planning makes this principle imperative,
because by its nature tourism cuts into the very lives of the people
of affected communities. Visitors go to a place in order to experience
the local culture and resources. If planning for this kind of
development does not understand the fragility, idiosyncrasies, values
and attitudes of the local population, how could it ensure their
protection and long term sustainability? Application of a “formula”
would be a mechanistic way of dealing with people and ecologies; and
it would assume that individual characteristics of the place and its
communities do not matter. The plan that would be produced out of such
a set of assumptions would be insensitive to the local people and
their landscapes, and would either fail because it would not be
accepted by them, or it would be implemented by government fiat but
would be resented by the affected people.
Understanding the local politics is a different matter. Yes, you need
to understand the local politics in order to be able to generate any
kind of plan with hope to have it implemented. But if local politics
are corrupt, and/or local politicians are self-serving, a good plan
would stand no chance of being implemented unless major compromises
were made to accommodate their greed. I have had more than my share of
such experiences….
ECOCLUB.com:
Cincinnati, were you teach, is an architectural gem, and historically
important in terms of planning as the first American boomtown in the
19th century, and a border town during the American Civil war however
it has since stagnated with population in the city having dropped 40%
since 1950. What is the current state of urban tourism in Cincinnati
and can it revitalize the inner city?
Professor Michael Romanos: Cincinnati in the nineteenth century
was one of the great gates to the West, and for many years it was a
major economic and industrial centre, thanks to its location on the
Ohio river. It gradually lost its primacy as railroads gradually
gained dominance over river and canal transportation, and eventually
became part of the American ”rust belt” as its manufacturing base aged
and lost its competitive advantage. More recently, the city has been
making major efforts to transform itself into a modern economic centre
based on the New Economy, with advanced technology, services, research
hand education, and tourism as its foundations. The effort has been
only partially successful. The regional economy is thriving (Greater
Cincinnati encompasses a 15-county metropolitan region with 2.2
million people and steady population and employment growth), but the
city has been unable to reverse its population loosing trends to date.
The racial conflicts that caused riots in the mid-1960s and again in
2001 also gave a serious blow to the efforts of the city to cast a
more tolerant and diverse image of itself. In fact, they have affected
its tourism sector considerably, because after the 2001 riots, a
number of African-American and other socially minded organizations
from around the country cancelled plans to hold conventions or other
public functions in Cincinnati, on account of its image as a racially
insensitive city.
But
tourism continues to be one of the anchors of the local economy. A few
years ago the city and Hamilton County, the regional entity containing
Cincinnati, made a long term financial commitment to the local
baseball and football teams to replace their sports facilities. With
an estimated investment of over a billion dollars, the Cincinnati
riverfront now has two magnificent, state-of-the-art sports
facilities, which attract large crowds from a wide region to their
games. The city’s convention centre, recently renovated and expanded,
is one of the most modern and largest in the Midwest and is constantly
in use. Luxury hotels, gourmet restaurants, and entertainment
districts have been sprouting in and around the downtown on both the
Ohio and the Kentucky sides of the river. And this year, the efforts
of the city to radically change its image of a racially segregated
place finally are bearing fruits as a young and progressive
African-American mayor has been elected and a number of city groups
have come together to address and resolve their social problems, which
include poverty and unemployment among the majority African-Americans
of the central city.
Whether
or not the short term successes of these efforts indicate a longer
term ability to solve the social and economic problems of Cincinnati’s
inner city, is questionable. The vast area north of the downtown known
as Over-the-Rhine has recently been designated by the National Trust
for Historic Preservation as one of the eleven most threatened
historic urban areas in the country. Most of its 6,000 plus residents
are poor, unemployed, and have few opportunities to get a job within
the neighbourhood. Its housing stock is deteriorating, and its
businesses are closing down at alarming rates. Tourism and
entertainment developments in the area in the past several years have
largely left the residents out. Further housing and commercial
developments, unless coupled with an effort to include the local
residents, may just produce neighbourhood gentrification pressures. On
the other hand, if tourism and residential rehabilitation investments
are expanded into the area, there will be no other chance of
improvement for its population. This problem has been around for many
years, and it is by now clear that fragmented development attempts by
the private sector alone will not be able to solve it. Recently, a
number of private-public partnerships have been established to
implement an ambitions comprehensive development plan and program, in
which tourism plays a role but is not the main emphasis. These
partnerships are making serious efforts to engage the local residents,
and are giving priority to housing rehabilitation, public space
improvements, school enhancement, and social services expansion. Their
priority is the improvement of local living conditions, the assumption
being that a stabilized neighbourhood will better be able to attract
and retain business, including entertainment and other tourism-related
activities.
ECOCLUB.com:
Your native Crete, for which you also completed a study between
1998-2003, is a smallish island (250 km x 30 km) that receives some 4
million tourists annually, flown in by charter flights most in the
course of the 3 summer months. The current government is pro-business,
pro-tourism development, but surely, there must be limits to growth?
Indeed, you have not lived in Greece for many years, but as an
impartial observer with deep understanding, if you could fix one thing
in Greece's tourism sector, what would that be and why?
Professor Michael Romanos: It is not “one
thing”, but it is the bundle of actions, national government policies
and local controls that would reduce the rampant growth of cheap
tourism that makes international tourism agencies and large operators
wealthy at the expense of local resources, populations and the
environment. In Santorini, which is the latest of the studies I have
directed in Greece, up to 10,000 visitors disembark per day during the
high season, brought to the island by a number of large cruiser boats.
These people are shuttled around in oversize buses, pollute the
island’s air, congest its streets, crowd its beaches and
archaeological sites, leave very little money on the island, and learn
even less about local culture in the few hours they spend on the
island. They do not benefit Santorini’s population, but they enrich
the – mostly outside the island – business involved in these mass
tourism excursions. In Hersonissos, one of the “hot” destinations in
Crete, hundreds of young visitors go berserk every night from the use
of alcohol and drugs, causing damage to local property, hurting people
and themselves, causing numerous accidents, and creating such
unpleasant conditions that chase desirable tourism away.
ECOCLUB.com:
The 2004 Olympics, a great urban planning project, came and went, and
their legacy can be observed today in Athens, some of it good like the
subway & the tram, some not so good like the creation of so many
expensive stadiums for unpopular sports, the missed chance to create
more green spaces and introduce environmental technology in buildings,
and not the least, the Eur 8bn-10bn bill. As a tourism planner, and a
tourist, could you name three measures to help finally take 2,600 year
old Athens, usually avoided by most tourists, to its deserved place as
a top spot for city breaks and sustainable urban tourism? Le
Corbusier, a great admirer of the Parthenon, famously proposed the
demolition of a vast part of central Paris - would you go that far
(assumed it was ever possible)?
Professor Michael Romanos: LeCorbusier was a great architect but
was a miserable city planner. He never understood the roles, functions
and actions of the human beings and communities that constitute the
city. To him, the city was a design artefact, and could be repaired by
design or erased and be rebuilt. No one involved in modern urban
planning today takes such ideas seriously. Athens is a great city,
filled with all the opportunities of culture that make cities such
desirable places to live. Architects and developers did their best
during the last part of the twentieth century to destroy its
character, demolish its old buildings, erase its neoclassical
character, and fill its neighbourhoods with polycatoikies; and were
successful in producing today’s impersonal, featureless city
neighbourhoods. But time will change the city’s fabric. The city’s
population is gradually leaving the urban core, and that will
eventually reduce urban densities and create opportunities for
redevelopment.
A city
is a living organism, and has beautiful and ugly aspects. A city can
be a tourism destination, but that is not its purpose. Its purpose is
to provide quality of life to its residents. The characteristics that
will make that quality of life possible may or may not attract urban
tourism as well, and that is fine. But the Athens of today for
visitors has such great museums, archaeological sites, and cultural
opportunities, that the city can capitalize on them for its tourism.
Visitors interested in these features will find Athens a very
attractive place. The others can go elsewhere.
But
there are things that we can do to make the city more attractive to
visitors: Continue and complete the excellent plans for the
unification of all the archaeological sites, and include in the
network other cultural locations, green spaces, entertainment
districts, and shopping areas; bring the marbles back from London;
convince the government to be more generous to its people, so that
they do not strike during the high tourism season; keep museums and
archaeological sites open longer hours; educate taxi drivers, gate
keepers, store employees to be polite and scrupulous to visitors; and
keep the city clean, the trees watered, and the graffiti under
control.
ECOCLUB.com:
You have recently completed a study of the iconic Mediterranean island
resort of Santorini with the cooperation of the local Municipality,
entitled "Plan for the Future of Santorini - Building the cultural
centre of the Eastern Mediterranean". What were the main conclusions,
and what is actually happening on the ground, following your study?
Professor Michael Romanos: We identified the following major
problems with the development of the island, and determined their
causes and ways to address them: Rampant construction and expansion of
tourism facilities on the island eats up all the open space and
agricultural land; The entire economy of the island is dominated by
tourism; The development policies for the island favour hotel and
entertainment development, but pay no attention to the island’s
permanent population needs such as education, health, infrastructure,
environmental conditions, cultural preservation and enhancement, or
quality of life; The quality of tourism on the island deteriorates
each year, even as the numbers of visitors keep increasing; The
confluence of increasing supply of facilities and increasing demand
for entertainment, combined with declining per visitor profits and a
dramatic shift towards short-visit, cruiser boat tourism, are robbing
the island of its quality of life, contribute to the decline of its
environmental resources, are adulterating the cultural images and
architectural character of its settlements, and are affecting the
cultural characteristics of the native population; Nothing appears
worthy of protection on the island, while everything is being
sacrificed on the altar of tourism profits. Continuation of present
trends will drastically and irreversibly alter the ecology and the
architecture of the traditional communities of the island in ten
years.
Neither
the national government neither the local authorities have been able
to address these problems. There is no political will to implement
existing plans calling for land use controls, land growth management,
congestion reduction, infrastructure improvements, enforcement of
architectural standards, or building permits. None of the plans
produced for the island so far has been implemented, because of lack
of political will to act against the interests of large tourism
investors. Our own planning proposals were developed over two years of
intensive work, during which every single organization and
professional group on the island was interviewed, participatory
procedures were employed to define the goals and priorities of
development, a number of international experts participated in
technical studies to address every significant development issue, and
every past study and recommendation was considered carefully. The
proposals that were produced by these efforts were widely accepted to
all the constituencies sand stakeholders on the island. The public
acceptance and approval of the study and its proposals by the
community during the public presentation of our work at the Nomikos
Conference Centre in August 2005 was overwhelming. The municipal
administration originally characterized the study and its proposals as
excellent, reflecting the realities of the island, practicable and
feasible, and worthy of implementation. Unfortunately, the study was
later condemned by the same individuals as politically motivated and
rejected. Hence my comment about the need to understand politics, in
question # 2 above.
ECOCLUB.com:
Much is being made about the importance of ’stakeholders’ these days.
What is your understanding of the role of 'stakeholders' in terms of
sustainable development planning: Is the term undemocratic, revealing
special interests & corruption, or an acknowledgement of how things
are done since "all animals are equal but some are more equal than
others"?
Professor Michael Romanos: The whole idea of sustainable
development is to create a synergy among environmental, economic and
social goals. Environmental and social justice are at the heart of
sustainable development, so the concept, far from being undemocratic,
is a vehicle to achieve more participatory democracy and more
democratic planning and development. In this sense, then, stakeholders
are the beneficiaries of the plans and the development programs, and
since these plans and programs advocate resource conservation,
resource management, controlled growth, conservation of land,
nature-friendly life styles, and several other similar principles,
their interests are not ”special” interests, but rather those of
society as a whole. Now, special interests may intervene in the
sustainable development/planning process in order to insert their own
goals and priorities, but these are external agents, and the plans
would not be partial to their concerns. If the process is carried out
fairly, sustainable development planning will not favour these special
interests but rather the stakeholders that who constitute the
communities for which the plan is produced. It is up to the special
interests to join the ranks of community stakeholders or not. In the
Santorini plan, for example, most of the professional organizations
participated in the planning process as stakeholders. But some special
interests objected to the direction of the plans, because they were
advocating limits to rampant growth, management of the land and other
natural resources, protection of the landscape, and regulations for
construction. These special interests could join the ranks of
stakeholders, and be part of the planning decision process, but in
this case they felt that their personal and business interests
deviated from those of the rest of the community.
ECOCLUB.com:
Famously you left Greece and Crete to escape the 1967 -1974 military
junta that had temporarily imprisoned you, but in the course of your
planning career, in the 1970s and 1980s you had to work with
authoritarian governments / juntas, then proliferating in the
developing world. So is democratic governance or autocracy, from your
experience, more conducive to planning? Some would think that state
planning is by definition autocratic?
Professor Michael Romanos: Far from me to advocate for anything
autocratic or authoritarian as even worthy of consideration as a
planning tool! Urban and/or regional planning is done by free-thinking
people for free-thinking people. Anything else is forceful imposition
of an authority’s will on people, and that is not planning, it’s
tyranny. We will not go there….
Good
planning is done following sound methodologies, honest use of data,
employment of social and environmental justice principles, and the
active and continuous participation of those who will benefit or be
affected by the plan. Only a plan that is widely accepted by the
communities affected has a chance of being implemented. And plans are
not supposed to be fixed overtime. What makes sense to today’s
citizens may be considered unacceptable to younger generations five or
ten years later, because the economic conditions, social norms, or
ways of thinking about the future may have changed. An abundance of
resources may make people ready to use them without constraint, while
a shortage of them may trigger goals of conservation. But in all
cases, in order for these goals and priorities to be viable, they must
reflect the communal will of the affected citizenry, and that can only
be accomplished with democratic procedures, the people’s
participation, and ample and open communication.
Having
said that, I must acknowledge that I have over the years worked in
many countries where democracy was not the modus operandi. But I want
to believe that the purpose of my work there was to establish
democratic procedures that would ensure a more participatory planning
and a better quality of life for the client communities. For example,
my work in Indonesia during the 1990s took place partly under the
Soeharto dictatorship. Working within the system with a number of
dedicated expatriates and native planners, though, we were able to
develop networks of regional development for the island provinces of
that country that altered the ways by which funds were allocated to
peripheral regions, and thus were able to enhance the infrastructure
of the affected places through improved port facilities, more frequent
sea connections with the main islands, better decision making
procedures for the local communities, a stronger role of these
communities in the regional and national development deliberations,
and an elevated understanding and protection of their environmental
and cultural resources. This is another good example of how important
it is to understand the local culture and politics before you could
embark in any serious efforts to change local decision making patterns
and transfer power from the established domains to the affected
stakeholders.
ECOCLUB.com:
University departments around the world, in particular those in
applied topics such as Tourism and the Environment increasingly work
as consultancies, mostly as a result of declining state subsidies. The
positive impact is easy to detect - fresh, pioneering ideas applied in
the -so called- real world, and in turn - there is a reality check for
these pioneering ideas, while first-class academic experts can offer
their services directly to the economy. Could there be a downside
however, for example students getting too result & money-oriented &
conservative at an early age, or professors getting distracted from
their professorial duties?
Professor Michael Romanos: I think that university faculty and
student involvement in the planning and development of communities
which do not have adequate resources to hire professional consultants,
both locally and around the world, is a terrific way for students to
learn and gain experience in applied situations, for professors to
test new approaches and methodologies and stay focused on the
practical aspects of their field, and for communities to benefit from
innovative, creative, fresh approaches to the solutions of their
problems and needs. I am not sure that I understand what the downsides
of such practices would be, especially your reference to the money
orientation of the students. I cannot talk about other universities
and programs, but I can tell you that the University of Cincinnati
Summer Field School in Sustainable Development never receives any
money from the places for which we conduct planning and development
studies. We cover our own expenses, buy our own tickets, and receive
no remuneration for our work from the host communities. Our students
are not paid to participate in these programs. On the contrary, they
pay the entire cost of the program as well as their own university
tuition. In fact, they make major financial sacrifices to participate
in these programs, because they forgo income they would have if they
stayed home and worked, as practically all our students have part time
jobs – up to 35 hours per week – that allow them to support
themselves. Many of our students cover the cost of their participation
in the summer program through student loans, advanced by the US
government, and payable after the student’s graduation. The
communities, for which we do the planning projects usually, but not
always, provide us with accommodations, and occasionally some of the
meals and the local transportation. All other expenses are the
responsibility of the program.
ECOCLUB.com:
What are your immediate future plans, and how can interested readers
keep up with your work?
Professor Michael Romanos: We are very fortunate to have received
a lot of positive publicity for our international work over the years,
and to have received many invitations for planning collaborations as a
result. For example, the Santorini planning and development study we
completed lat year was recently recognized by the American Planning
Association as the best tourism planning study by a United States
university team in 2005. In the last year alone we have received
invitations to conduct planning studies in collaboration with local
governments or academic institutions from three different
municipalities in Crete, three islands in the Cyclades, and two states
in the south of Brazil. However, our immediate plans are to spend the
summer of 2007 on the island of Thirasia (see map), as guests of the
Community of Oia and its mayor Mr. George Halaris, and conduct an
ecological and cultural preservation and conservation study for this
unique island, for the purpose of guiding its tourism development,
land management, and traditional community protection under a general
comprehensive plan. A team of twenty students and faculty are already
at work at the University of Cincinnati preparing for this important
project, which is unique for Greece and will be a model for small
island development and preservation in the future.
ECOCLUB.com:
Thank you very much
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