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| A RESEARCH ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF VACATION PROPERTY IN WESETERN COUNTIRES |
| ZHU Chen |
| Chief Urban Planner Office of Wujiang City, Wujiang 215200, China |
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Abstract Vacation property, which is a current research focus in western world, is yet lack of theoretical research in China. In the west, vacation property has been studied since 1960s, which covered plenty of fields, including population geography, rural geography, sociology, urban planning and so forth. This paper aims to quest the clue of the researches on vacation property in recent 50 years in western counties. This paper begins with the analysis of origin and development progress of vacation property, and reveals that the research process is not a straight line and an obvious borderline can be found in the middle of 1980s, which divides the whole progress into two phases. Then the author stresses the analysis methods, policy orientation of the two phases, and makes a comparison of the two phases. The former phase is the rising stage of vacation property, in which vacation property became a popular consumption in western countries. After the Second World War, accompanying with the mass growth of the home income, leisure time and private cars, vacation property consumption boomed among the middle class instead of the social elite. Then it was necessary to conduct research on the definition, statistics and overall characters of vacation property. Due to the lack of precise data, most research depended on qualitative describe instead of quantitative analysis, moreover the samples studied was very small and fragmentary. But by conquering all the difficulties, the scholars had probed into the definition, statistical measures, social problems of culture conflict and housing, supposed modes of spatial distribution and consumption, and the foundation had been established gradually. But the growth of vacation home did not sustain steadily. In the middle of 1980s, the consumption had declined partly because of oil crisis. As a result, the research shrank. Until the beginning of 1990s, the consumption of vacation property revived, and the latter phase began. In this period, vacation property was not only a holiday living space, but a spirit place. The place attachment of vacation home under the modern high mobility sociality has been emphasized. In view of existing situation, plenty of related branch researches have developed, such as retire migration. Unlike the concentration of negative effects forwarded in the former phase, the scholars began to concern the spiritual balance brought by vacation place. So, more objective views on vacation property have been formed. Furthermore, quantitative method has been developed. The process and result of vacation property of the western countries are very inspiring, with the enlightenment of which, a comment on vacation property research and polity has been made in this paper.
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Received: 09 July 2010
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2011, Vol. 26 
