How integrated models can turn a tourism development crisis into an opportunity and create new leisure, environment and social action spaces.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.”
Marcel Proust
Ecopolazas are models of a world saved from climate change, presented in our fictional film called: Ecoplaza Paradise Oasis. A vision of a future that is in regenerative win-win alignment with the planet’s and peoples’ needs.
They apply joined-up-thinking in addressing climate change and many social ills simultaneously whilst instigating leisure renaissance. Thus, every community, small or large, can benefit from an unprecedented level of social, economic and environmental gains that these green spaces generate. Green Lifestyle Centres is the working name we gave this concept of centres for learning, solution incubation and transfer and community resource management. Moreover, each ecoplaza can develop its own unique economic model with an inherent social enterprise structure that operates in synergy with a robust community regeneration plan. To date, we have promoted this concept internationally since its early introduction in 2003. Despite the exponential uptake of this concept’s theoretical basis, the integrated models have yet to be properly instigated.
Green Lifestyle Centres – practical application of our innovation
Below, there is an article the Levante Lifestyle magazine published in 2006. We specifically presented our model using this specific hotel development case. Why? In order to help Almeria province address this iconicly unsustainable development and many resulting issues. We demonstrated how this innovation could solve many socio-economic and environmental problems that the Andalusian communities face. How, with our advanced community and conservation oriented development template, we can go beyond the one issue of a badly handled hotel complex to solving numerous protracted, stuck in limbo developments. And actually, solve many interrelated problems in one go and extrapolate results fast.
A case study in this article is a real example of a planning blunder, that over the years evolved into an eco-catastrophe. By applying most advanced integrated models, we showed realistic ways of turning the crisis around for good. The crisis, in which tourism needlessly competes with conservation. As our integrated sustainability innovation offers a strategy to solve this protracted problem. What’s more, all the parties involved can derive the maximum benefit from this peaceful engagement. Despite that, the development of the illegal hotel, licensed to be built in Spain’s Cabo de Gata Natural Park in the 1980s, remains unresolved to this day.
Today, the hotel is waiting for its demolition, which will cost the taxpayers around 7 million Euros, if not more. We argued then, and still think today, that this is an unfortunate end to a debate over the fate of this tourism complex. The chosen solution, that has divided the community, will also cause a huge pollution once diggers tear the building down. We believe that our solution, presented here, has always been a much better answer, both economically and environmentally. Many local residents and the Mayor of Carboneras feel the same.
