Incorporating Living Systems in Destination Planning: A new reading of an old case study
- dianne dredge
- Jul 1
- 18 min read
When an Old Case Study Speaks to Contemporary Challenges
Thirty years ago, in the wet tropics of Far North Queensland, we were wrestling with tourism challenges that now feel incredibly prescient. Working in Douglas Shire, a region where ancient Gondwana rainforests meet coral reefs, we were grappling with concerns about overtourism even though the word had not been coined. Sustainability was also a nascent concept. In those days, the Brundtland Report’s (Our Common Future) description of sustainability was a deep adaptive concept, conscious of planetary limits, and had not yet been turned into a simple, scalable, technical solution to be sold in the marketplace.
What strikes me most as I reflect on this work, is not just how relevant the thinking was at the time to conditions now, but how painfully slow the adoption of new and innovative ideas in tourism has been. While we were conceptualising destinations as living systems with complex flows, nodes, and adaptive processes, mainstream planning and policy approaches have remained stubbornly linear, market-driven, and fixated on growth.
No, the work wasn’t perfect, but the irony is palpable. Imagine if we had been able to pursue and grow this thinking back then! As we developed these ideas in the mid-1990s, we were also witnessing the emergence of neoliberal public management. Planning, environmental management, and the regulatory environment were risks to growth and must be curtailed. We were pushing for a holistic place-based management approach at a time when the forces of late-stage capitalism were seeking to ramp-up resource extraction, proft, and growth.
Innovation in tourism has always moved at a glacial pace. Policy tends to be locked in across multiple scales from national to local levels. Government and industry are locked into a self-reinforcing dance amplifying their self interests. Advocacy, industry groups and even some consultants, also funded by governments, are not wild and courageous, but only interested in reinforcing existing ideas that will ensure their funding streams! In other words, our Tourism Policy Operating Systems are, for want of another word, constipated!
Resistance to change is real. While technologies for booking and marketing have raced ahead thanks to the private sector, approaches to planning and management, the domain of the public sector, remain largely unchanged. Today in tourism, the belief in growth and market forces remains strong despite evidence that local communities and our ecological processes are suffering.
The living systems thinking we explored thirty years ago—with its recognition of interconnected flows, adaptive frameworks, and nested governance—still feels radical today, despite mounting evidence that conventional approaches (or rather the absence of any planning and management approaches at all) are creating havoc worldwide.
This slow evolution of the field has real consequences for communities, nature, and the visitor experience itself. As destinations worldwide now grapple with overtourism, climate impacts, and community backlash, I can't help but wonder what might have been different if what we were proposing 30 years ago might have been nurtured and developed. It hasn’t been for the lack of trying. On too many occasions the patriarchal pat on the head, the soothing tones of suits saying “the industry just isn’t ready”, or the blank stares of disinterest and dismissive tones were in every conversation.
Our work in Douglas Shire wasn't perfect, and the language and tools we used then differ from what we might use today. However, the core principles—seeing places as living, breathing systems rather than mere products to be marketed—remain relevant now more than ever. In 2011, I even argued for a living systems approach in Scenic Rim Regional Council’s first tourism plan, but the consultants that came afterwards destroyed those carefully laid foundations because they simply weren’t capable of doing anything more then template plans. Perhaps as regenerative approaches begin to challenge ‘sustainability’ (which is a term that has been co-opted and metabolised into ‘green growth’ and business as usual), I am hopeful that these early experiments in systems thinking will finally find their moment.
Part of the challenge is that we have no way of going back to learn from the past. Researchers don't like to reference anything before 2018, and next year it will be 2019. Amnesia and loss of memory mean that we are in a holding pattern where ideas are just short-term thinking recycled. For this reason, I am resharing the case of Douglas Shire from 1997 with a contemporary explanation of our thinking from 30 years ago. Innovation often requires looking both forward and backward—recognising that sometimes the most revolutionary ideas have been waiting patiently for their time to come.
Shift from Market-Driven to Place-Based Systems Planning
History Matters: It’s how we can see patterns and make sense of the shifts
In early to mid 1990s, I found myself pushing boundaries, working at the intersection of environmental planning, tourism and community development in Douglas Shire, Queensland. It was right after the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area had been inscribed on the World Heritage Register as having both natural and cultural heritage significance It was a tumultuous time in the State’s political history.
North Queensland was gaining a global tourism reputation, a new era of neoliberal economic management was unfolding, and the World Heritage designation had brought with it layers of Commonwealth, State, and local government responsibilities. The question was how to protect this incredibly sensitive area from overtourism while encouraging economic diversity and community wellbeing. Sound familiar? Thirty years on, it’s the same question being asked across Australia and internationally.
The multidisciplinary consulting team I was working with had been engaged to prepare a new planning scheme for Douglas Shire. The inscription of the Wet Tropics World Heritage area meant that 80%+ of the Shire’s land area had been designated as protected areas. Unlike other protected areas that are often in public ownership, a significant part of this protected area was in private ownership thereby carrying with it the rights and expectations for development associated with freehold land. So how could we protect from exploitation sensitive natural environments while also offering the opportunity to explore and appreciate what the place and community might offer?
Forging a new pathway
Tourism planning and policy was overwhelmingly focused on economic outcomes—increasing visitor numbers, maximising bed nights, and boosting regional economies. This market-driven approach prioritised reducing barriers to tourism development and stimulating market interest. There was little consideration of the complex spatial realities of destinations as living places, or the limited budgets of small rural local governments to trying to manage impacts or deliver efficient infrastructure provision. But the Mayor of Douglas Shire had a vision for tourism, and sought to respect the place, and its natural and cultural value.
See then Mayor Mike Berwick’s story here
How we understood the challenge
As a diverse group of planners, operating at the level of place, with a good understanding of the regulatory mechanisms available in shaping how a place develops, we saw an opportunity for the integration of tourism and planning.
The challenge that we were trying to address is how to manage tourism growth while both protecting the natural assets and respecting community values. The Wet Tropics had been inscribed on the World Heritage Register and there were Commonwealth, State and local government mechanisms that could be used to protect and manage the area.
Traditional tourism policy initiatives were rarely expressed in spatial terms. Planning and policy exercises tended not to be geographically referenced (other than to the DMO’s administrative boundaries), partly because this was (and remains) politically unacceptable to powerful industry interests. Policy cycles becam more and more about breaking down barriers and opening up markets and stepping away from any kind of environmental or social impacts.
Back then, as it does now, the tourism industry, generally views planning regulation as an unwelcome intervention that infringes upon development rights and reduces profitability (see an explanation of the tenants of industry policy here).
However, simply promoting tourism under an a-spatial economic approach was not appropriate for an area that was at the intersection of two contiguous World Heritage Areas (a very rare occurrence indeed). It was expected that Douglas Shire would attract significant levels of tourism and that a more refined placed-based ‘substrategy’ that might protect natural and cultural values would be appropriate. Put simply, with its World Heritage rainforests and proximity to the Great Barrier Reef, we did not believe that market forces alone (i.e. the invisible hand of capitalism) couldn't protect the environmental assets upon which tourism ultimately depended. The paradox was clear: tourism's success could ultimately destroy the attributes that attracted visitors in the first place and go against the wishes of a community that felt strong stewardship for the place.
Our response was to advocate for an integrated place-based tourism sub-strategy—one that integrated tourism with place-based planning. By describing the desired scale, type and character of tourism within formal planning frameworks, the local government could protect public values, particularly environmental attributes and social values, while still enabling economic development. This wasn't anti-development; it was about smarter, more ‘sustainable’ development that acknowledged tourism's dependency on healthy ecosystems, places, and communities.
Multi-Scale Governance as Nested Systems
Perhaps most revolutionary at the time was our thinking that effective tourism planning required a complex, nested systems approach. Local governments couldn't operate in isolation but functioned within larger regional, state, and federal frameworks, each with different responsibilities and powers. It was important to work across these levels using complementary tools available at each level.
In Douglas Shire, this nested governance structure was a result of the way government roles and responsibilities are divided up. The Wet Tropics and the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Areas were created under federal legislation, and as a signatory to the UN’s World Heritage Convention, the Commonwealth government had an international obligation to protect environmental and cultural values in accordance with UNESCO guidelines. That said, under Australia’s Constitution, responsibility for environmental and cultural management fell to the State government. Infrastructure and local development approval processes were split between State and local control. This created a multi-layered decision-making environment where actions at one level inevitably affected all outcomes at other levels.
We argued that local government, despite being at the bottom of this hierarchy of responsibility and with very limited budgets, had the opportunity to coordinate and guide these overlapping jurisdictions through place-based planning. The local planning system requires community consultation (although what we understood then and what we practice now are very different), so there was an ambition to integrate community values and aspirations into the tourism sub-strategy.
Our systems approach acknowledged that tourism destinations aren't simple entities with clear boundaries—they're complex adaptive systems where changes in one part can reverberate throughout the whole. By recognising these interconnections and designing governance structures that mirrored this complexity, we could create more resilient and adaptive destination management frameworks.
The Spatial Organisation of Tourism
At the time, one of our key contributions was highlighting how tourism doesn't simply occur randomly across landscapes—it follows particular spatial patterns that can be understood and guided. Drawing from bioregional design principles and tourism planning concepts from scholars like Clare Gunn and Kevin Lynch, we developed a framework that conceptualised tourism in terms of districts (places of spatial integrity or specialisation), nodes (points where activity, resources and people accumulate), paths (the flows of information, movement and activity), and edges (the boundaries between different areas). These building blocks are similar to concepts used in living systems, such as nested systems, flows, hierarchy, connection and edges.
In Douglas Shire, we used these building blocks and translated them into a loose but differentiated and hierarchical pattern of tourism nodes. Port Douglas was designated as the principal tourism node where development would be concentrated, while smaller nodes like Daintree Township and Mossman would support different forms and scales of tourism. This approach recognised that different locations have different carrying capacities, appeal to different market segments, and serve different functions within the overall tourism system. We described the intention of these nodes in detail in an effort to guide developer interest, ideation, and investment decisions.
The planning scheme deliberately manipulated access to sensitive areas, for example by resisting pressure to widen road access or upgrade access to the area north of the Daintree River through bridge construction. (The issue of the bridge has been raised recently by the current Council but has been an effective environmental management lever for 30 years since our development of the initial rationale). We drew from our knowledge of environmental psychology to shape the visitor experience for slower, deeper experiences. This spatial control of visitor flows demonstrated how planning could shape not just where development occurred, but how visitors experienced and moved through a place.
This spatial approach to tourism was radical because it moved beyond simply approving or rejecting individual developments. Instead, it created a coherent framework for how tourism might evolve across the landscape, recognising that the specialisation of nodes and districts and the flow and relationships between them could protect and deepen visitor experiences and were just as important as the spaces themselves.
The Douglas Shire Case Study as a Living System
There have been many iterations of the local planning scheme since our work in the mid 1990s. Indeed, for a brief period Douglas Shire was even amalgamated with Cairns before being de-amalgamated due to irreconcilable political differences in the values and aspirations of the populations.
Over the last 30 years, people have moved in and out of jobs, a broad range of political issues drive election cycles, and consultants come and go. However it is fair to say that the above described thinking was radical for its time because we were grappling with how to manage the impacts of potential overtourism while recognising the need for a dynamic emergent approach that would evolve with the place and future visitor flows. We also tried to identify limits to growth by defining the character, scale, and nature of development of nodes and districts. We considered this to be a more effective approach than caps because caps can be argued over in court, won, or lost in spurious arguments, and are also more difficult and costly to implement.
At the time, the Douglas Shire planning scheme demonstrated a sophisticated attempt to manage the various flows and drivers of tourism, development, environmental management and community stewardship. While we did not have the regenerative language and terminology back then, the idea to draw from living systems design principles was explained in Dredge & Humphreys (1997). In 2020 some 20+ years on, my coauthor reflected on the efficacy of the approach:
..the achievement of Douglas Shire Council in successfully and consistently managing the extraordinary urban, natural and rural environments of the Douglas Shire over the last thirty years, should not be under-estimated. Often there has no doubt been considerable pressure to depart from the principles developed with the support of the community during the ‘90s. However, clearly, there has been enough agreement and common understanding in the community to maintain and protect the clear directions that were established at that time. It is hard to think of an area in Queensland where so much has been achieved in that regard (Quote from Douglas News Network 2020).
Managing Flows
For visitor flows, the scheme deliberately structured visitor experiences across the area by creating a nodal system, by managing access points, and by defining appropriate development (e.g. the level of servicing that might be provided at that node). By developing a strong rationale for resisting pressure to construct a bridge across the Daintree River, for example, the Council maintained a natural gateway that limited visitor access to the environmentally sensitive northern section of the Shire. This wasn't simply to restrict visitor numbers, it was about designing how visitors would flow through the landscape in ways that enhanced their experience while protecting sensitive environments.
Specialisation and Differentiation
The scheme also channeled investment toward specific nodes like Port Douglas while establishing clear parameters for what development was appropriate in different locations. Rather than simply approving or rejecting individual proposals, this approach recognised development as a dynamic process that needed to be guided over time. By clearly articulating the types of tourism appropriate for different areas, and focusing on natural environment appreciation north of the Daintree River while allowing more sophisticated urban tourism in Port Douglas, the scheme directed development energy toward what we considered at the time to be more ‘sustainable’ outcomes.
Environmental Management
Perhaps most innovative was how the scheme acknowledged environmental flows. The plan recognised that environmental protection wasn't simply about preserving static landscapes but maintaining the ecological processes that sustained them. By identifying environmentally sensitive areas and limiting both access and development intensity in these locations, the scheme protected not just scenic vistas and landscape quality but the underlying ecological functions that sustained the rainforest and reef ecosystems.
Adaptive Planning Framework
The scheme pioneered an adaptive approach through its innovative balance of aspirational statements and the regulatory components. The aspirational component established broad objectives and a vision for tourism development while providing conceptual guidance. This approach allowed for innovative tourism proposals that might not fit into traditional zoning patterns but still aligned with the Shire's overall development vision.
The regulatory component provided the necessary framework to prevent inappropriate development, by establishing zoning patterns and development criteria. What made the Douglas approach distinctive was how these components worked together. By creating a planning framework that could respond to changing circumstances and novel development ideas while maintaining core values and vision, we developed an early model of adaptive place-based management for tourism.
Nested Tourism Nodes
The Douglas Shire planning scheme created a hierarchical structure of tourism nodes that balanced development with environmental protection. Port Douglas served as the principal tourism node, concentrating major tourism facilities and infrastructure, while smaller specialised nodes like Daintree Township, Mossman, and others played supporting roles. The plan differentiated areas by function - north of the Daintree River focused on nature-based tourism and environmental appreciation, while areas south emphasised urban tourism experiences. This organised approach allowed for diverse visitor experiences while controlling development intensity and efficiently managing infrastructure needs across the region.
Feedback Loops
The planning scheme pioneered a system with built-in feedback mechanisms for continual learning and adaptation. Its extensive community consultation established ongoing communication channels between planners, stakeholders, and community members, supported by Council's community development officer. The Tourism Report appendix served as an organisational memory reference point, helping maintain consistent decision-making despite personnel changes. Rather than using rigid standards, the scheme described desired outcomes for different areas, creating flexibility. This approach recognised that effective tourism management requires ongoing learning and evolution to respond to changing environmental conditions, market demands, and community expectations.
The Difference Between Then and Now
Since the Douglas Shire planning scheme was prepared in 1996, there have been substantial shifts in the thinking underpinning planning systems, tourism governance, and policy. The last thing I want to assert is that the approach described in this case study can be picked up and implemented within our current systems. However, this case is important to revisit because, 30 years on, we have an increasing number of destinations that are grappling with overtourism and the same challenges remain.
In order to see this old case in a new light, relevant to current challenges, we need to highlight the differences between the system back then and the system now.
From Government to Governance
In the 1990s, neoliberal economic management and public-private partnerships were emerging concepts in tourism. The case study represents a moment when traditional government-led regulatory planning was beginning to incorporate more flexible approaches catering to uncertainty. Today, private governance has largely replaced public-private artnerships and government action as the dominant paradigm. It is not unusual to have private interests prepare policy, heavily influence decision-making and government spending, and provide ‘solutions’ that are acceptable to industry.
The Dissolution of Public-Private Boundaries
The distinction between public and private sector roles that existed in the 1990s has significantly eroded. The interests of community used to be represented in terms of ‘public interest’ but in today’s system, public interests are assumed to be what is good for the economy and the private sector.
What was once a transition "seeking to give more power to private sector interests" has evolved into integrated public-private governance systems. Contemporary destination management organisations frequently operate as hybrid entities, blurring traditional boundaries between public authority and private enterprise. There is little to no awareness, engagement, or mandate to take into account community interests and literacies in politics, democratic process and community consultation are limited.
From Certainty to Adaptability
The Douglas Shire case demonstrated early moves away from fixed and certain planning formulas toward more flexible approaches. The rigid zoning approaches that were dominant in the 1970s, 80s and early 90s have been increasingly replaced by approaches that prioritise economic development and investment. This shift has accelerated dramatically, with both contemporary planning and tourism systems emphasising the need to facilitate private sector proposals and be as flexible as needed in an effort to attract investment regardless whether its desired or considered appropriate by the community. In the process, public interests have been largely abandoned.
The Rise of Sustainability and Sidestepping Responsibility
The environmental and social issues that were present in our work in the 1990s have largely disappeared as an area of public sector concern, and we have witnessed a profound shift in how tourism impacts are conceptualised and managed. Thirty years ago, these impacts were considered an area of public sector responsibility and direct action. Today, addressing social and environmental impacts of tourism are largely seen as a responsibility of the private sector, and governments are eager to incentivise and subsidise private sector voluntary ‘solutions’. In doing so, governments get to ‘tick the box’ to say that they are doing something, and at the same time are supporting tools which are often designed to greenwash rather than legitimately addressing more the deeper and systematic challenges.
The regenerative paradigm shift is looming on the horizon. It advocated for a move beyond the "do less harm" ethos of sustainability toward actively enhancing environmental systems, strengthening cultural fabric, and improving community wellbeing by reintegrating tourism back into how places are experienced and given meaning. In the Douglas Shire case, preservation of natural assets was the primary goal, while today's leading destinations are designing tourism systems that restore degraded ecosystems, revitalise cultural practices, and build community resilience.
The challenge of overtourism, barely conceivable when the case study was written, has accelerated this shift, as destinations recognise that merely sustaining the status quo is insufficient when systems are already under stress. Contemporary planning now increasingly focuses on tourism's potential to heal, adapt and enhance, rather than simply maintaining equilibrium.
This regenerative approach demands more sophisticated metrics beyond visitor numbers and economic impacts, incorporating measures of ecosystem health, cultural vitality, and community wellbeing as indicators of tourism success. It represents a fundamental rethinking of tourism's purpose from an extractive industry to be managed, to a regenerative force that can contribute to holistic place flourishing.
Digital Transformation
Perhaps the most significant change not anticipated in the 1990s case is the digital transformation of tourism. Online booking platforms, social media, and smartphone technologies have fundamentally altered visitor behaviour, marketing, and destination management in ways that traditional planning approaches cannot address through conventional means.
The emergence of geotagging, social media influencers, and viral "must-see" lists has created challenges for managing tourism impacts. When a single Instagram post can drive thousands of visitors to a previously little-known location to see a koala, traditional planning tools, with their lengthy consultation and implementation timeframes, are inadequate. These digital phenomena operate outside the jurisdiction of planning schemes and policy documents that were designed for a pre-digital era.
What has become increasingly clear is that education, awareness, and respect must be integrated as core components of digital tourism solutions. Forward-thinking destinations are now embedding responsible tourism messaging within the very digital channels that drive visitation - creating virtual interpretation, promoting digital visitor codes of conduct, and developing apps that distribute visitors more evenly across time and space. Some destinations have even worked with mapping and social media platforms to de-emphasise fragile locations or provide real-time information about crowding and environmental impacts.
This integration of education into digital channels represents a necessary evolution, recognising that in a world where visitors often arrive with pre-formed expectations shaped by online content, management must begin in the virtual space, long before physical arrival. The planning frameworks of the 1990s could never have anticipated this need to manage the digital tourism ecosystem as intensively as the physical one.
Community Empowerment
While community consultation was incorporated in the 1990s, today's planning approaches increasingly recognise local communities not just as stakeholders to be consulted but as careholders with a legitimate voice in decision-making processes. This represents a significant philosophical shift in the way tourism management is conducted.
Despite these transformations, the case presented herein remains relevant precisely because it demonstrates an early attempt to integrate tourism considerations into existing planning frameworks. It’s a challenge that many destinations still struggle with today, albeit in vastly different contexts.
Losing the Balance: Tourism Policy Then and Now
A Vision of Public-Private Balance
Thirty years ago, I argued that the planning system could serve as a bridge between public and private interests in tourism development. The Douglas Shire approach demonstrated how local government could act as an honest broker, guiding appropriate development while protecting sensitive environmental areas and community values.
This wasn't about blocking development. Instead, it was about creating a framework where tourism could flourish in ways that respected a place's ecological limits and social fabric. The planning system provided a framework within which innovation and investment could occur while preserving the environment that made the destination attractive in the first place.
The Dismantled Framework
Today, the political landscape has undergone a fundamental change. Under increasing neoliberal pressure, the regulatory (development control) function of planning frameworks has been systematically dismantled. The government's role has shifted dramatically, from balancing public and private interests to primarily facilitating private sector development.
The guardrails that once protected public interests have weakened or disappeared entirely. Environmental protections are often viewed as "barriers to development" rather than essential safeguards of tourism's core assets. Community input has been marginalised in favour of streamlined approval processes. The system increasingly treats destinations as mere products to be marketed, rather than as complex social-ecological systems that require careful stewardship and management.
Finding a New Path Forward
The challenge isn't to develop entirely new planning approaches. It is to rediscover and reassert the value of balanced stewardship of local place-based assets. This means:
Rebuilding planning frameworks that protect public interests while enabling appropriate development
Revaluing the government's role as mediator between market forces and community/environmental needs
Recognising that tourism depends on maintaining the very public assets that neoliberal approaches often sacrifice
The systems thinking that informed the Douglas Shire approach was innovative for its time. It also recognised fundamental truths about how tourism destinations function as complex place-based, social-ecological systems. These truths haven't changed, even as the political and economic context has undergone dramatic transformation.
The principles of adaptive management within a protective framework remain as relevant as ever. While the question remains as to how we can restore planning and management systems that truly balance public and private interests in tourism development, it would seem appreciating and learning from the past might be a good place to start.
Selected References
Douglas News Network 2020. Douglas Shire Planning Limits to Urban Growth.
Dredge, D. 1997. Local Government Planning Policy and Destination Place Management: A Case Study of Douglas Shire, North Queensland. CAUTHE Conference 1997, Australia.
Dredge, D. and Humphreys, J. 2004. Local Government, World Heritage and Ecotourism. Policy and Strategy in Australia’s Tropical Rainforests. In Ecotourism Policy and Planning (Fennell, D. and R. Dowling, eds)
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