Mid Sweden University

Tourism does not exist in isolation as an economic activity and is embedded in

numerous highly complex internal and external networks. As such, understanding

tourism’s relations to places and regions is a challenging task. The introduction to this

special issue defines the editors’ goals of proposing that an evolutionary economic

geography (EEG) approach can provide an insightful conceptual framework for

understanding the relationship between tourism development and local and global

economies. The first set of papers clearly outline and demonstrate the EEG

perspective. The latter set of papers are not explicitly EEG oriented; however, the

arguments and findings that the authors make have clear evolutionary theory

implications. The special issue is intended to generate further research and dialog on

the relations among tourism, development and place.