This volume offers a critical and complicated picture of how leisure tourism connected the world after the World War II, transforming coastal lands, traditional societies, and national economies in new ways. The 21 chapters in this book analyze selected case studies of architectures and landscapes around the world, contextualizing them within economic geographies of national development, the geopolitics of the Cold War, the legacies of colonialism, and the international dynamics of decolonization. Postwar leisure tourism evokes a rich array of architectural spaces and altered coastal landscapes, which is explored in this collection through discussions of tourism developments in the Mediterranean littoral, such as Greece, Turkey, and southern France, as well as compelling analyses of Soviet bloc seaside resorts along the Black Sea and Baltic coasts, and in beachscapes and tourism architectures of western and eastern hemispheres, from Southern California to Sri Lanka, South Korea, and Egypt. This collection makes a compelling argument that "leisurescapes," far from being supra-ideological and apolitical spatial expressions of modernization, development, and progress, have often concealed histories of conflict, violence, social inequalities, and environmental degradation. It will be of interest to architectural and urban historians, architects and planners, as well as urban geographers, economic and environmental historians.

This volume offers a critical and complicated picture of how leisure tourism connected the world after the World War II, transforming coastal lands, traditional societies, and national economies in new ways. The 21 chapters in this book analyze selected case studies of architectures and landscapes around the world, contextualizing them within economic geographies of national development, the geopolitics of the Cold War, the legacies of colonialism, and the international dynamics of decolonization. Postwar leisure tourism evokes a rich array of architectural spaces and altered coastal landscapes, which is explored in this collection through discussions of tourism developments in the Mediterranean littoral, such as Greece, Turkey, and southern France, as well as compelling analyses of Soviet bloc seaside resorts along the Black Sea and Baltic coasts, and in beachscapes and tourism architectures of western and eastern hemispheres, from Southern California to Sri Lanka, South Korea, and Egypt. This collection makes a compelling argument that "leisurescapes," far from being supra-ideological and apolitical spatial expressions of modernization, development, and progress, have often concealed histories of conflict, violence, social inequalities, and environmental degradation. It will be of interest to architectural and urban historians, architects and planners, as well as urban geographers, economic and environmental historians.

This book examines the impact of development policies and politics on the physical environment of the Eastern Mediterranean, a region defined here not as a rigid geographical area but as a larger cultural context. Since the end of World War II, the drive toward development has featured dreams of progress and emancipation intertwined with processes of reconstruction, decolonization, and nation-building, as well as transnational agendas for socioeconomic restructuring (capitalist or otherwise) and larger postwar/Cold War power politics. In physical terms, the drive toward development has been responsible for the rapid growth of metropolitan centers, the radical restructuring of rural landscapes, and the proliferation of dams, irrigation systems, and other infrastructures.

Nine essays examine formal manifestations of development, placing the spotlight on urban and rural schemes, housing projects, and agro-landscapes and dams from Israel to Turkey, and from Greece to Syria. These contributions are all grounded in new scholarly research, employing a variety of critical tools to situate built works within the larger sociopolitical context that influenced their design and implementation, and to reflect on their social, cultural, and environmental impact.