Photographed to death, brought to you by the Internet and the Chinese tourist

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

A different damage inflicted by tourists 

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

More signs welcoming tourists

[LesPalenik]

Warning sign for selfie takers - ANYWHERE

[Ivo_B]

"Venice tourists could be hit with $580 fine for sitting down"

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/venice-sit-down-fine/index.html

Venice......

Some years ago I was heavily occupied photographing abandoned places.
On one of our trips, near the 3 land point of Belgium, Luxembourg and France, we entered a closed cement factory. Cement factories are utterly boring (breakers, bunkers and silo's), so our expectation was not high.
We followed the old rail track for few hundred meters and then walked into the facilities. When we passed a bunker we bounced into a huge scaffold contraption, closed with timber. We walked a tour around the contraption, it was huge, and suddenly, I spotted a door. I turned my head to call my friends and walked through the door.

Huge was my surprise when I turned my head back to where a was walking, I was standing in the middle of Venice.

We discovered a filmdecor build on an open spot in that abandoned factory. Not sure what movie, but it certainly reminded us to the second Lara Croft game. Imagine our reaction when we heard dogs barking and we saw a guard approaching with two doberman dogs on a line.

We managed to take some shot before we got kicked out...........

At least we can say, we visited Venice without tourists.....

[MattBurt]

I live in a place where the tourist economy is a big part of our livelihood. It used to be coal mining and I'd prefer tourists but not too many! 
In a global culture of constant economic growth, this is a very difficult balance to keep. People accuse each other of either being a no-growth curmudgeon job killer or a pro growth money-grubbing destroyer of what we love. It's hard to find middle ground.
Vail just completed their acquisition of the local ski area Crested Butte, so the feeling is we are on the cusp of another big growth surge. We have worker shortages and the workers we have can't afford to live here. The NIMBYs vote down affordable housing and it seems like this is going to get worse before it gets better.
I wish we could just hold steady and not have so much growth, but not growing is considered the same as dying from an economic standpoint so we can't have that either. It's hard living in paradise!

[Alan Klein]

I live in a place where the tourist economy is a big part of our livelihood. It used to be coal mining and I'd prefer tourists but not too many! 
In a global culture of constant economic growth, this is a very difficult balance to keep. People accuse each other of either being a no-growth curmudgeon job killer or a pro growth money-grubbing destroyer of what we love. It's hard to find middle ground.
Vail just completed their acquisition of the local ski area Crested Butte, so the feeling is we are on the cusp of another big growth surge. We have worker shortages and the workers we have can't afford to live here. The NIMBYs vote down affordable housing and it seems like this is going to get worse before it gets better.
I wish we could just hold steady and not have so much growth, but not growing is considered the same as dying from an economic standpoint so we can't have that either. It's hard living in paradise!

It's not just paradise.  My wife and I retired from NYC to farm country in New Jersey.  55+ community.  In 5 years, so much of the land has been gobbled up here by real estate developers.  Plus property taxes already went up 20%.  It's mainly bedroom community - not commercial.  So it's not that we have ugly strip malls, well we do have those as well, it's just that all the nice farm land and horse ranches are going, one of the reasons we picked this area to retire.  Not that I've taken up farming or own a horse; just like to look at them when I drive around.

[MattBurt]

We have an organization here that helps preserve the open spaces and views called the Crested Butte Land Trust. It's done some great things for preservation and maintaining traditional ranches which keeps the place looking like what most of us came for. But the flipside to that is they are buying land and setting it aside from development so that isn;t helping the affordable housing issue. That being said I support the CBLT and contribute images to their popular calendar and other efforts each year.

[Alan Klein]

We have an organization here that helps preserve the open spaces and views called the Crested Butte Land Trust. It's done some great things for preservation and maintaining traditional ranches which keeps the place looking like what most of us came for. But the flipside to that is they are buying land and setting it aside from development so that isn;t helping the affordable housing issue. That being said I support the CBLT and contribute images to their popular calendar and other efforts each year.

We have required affordable housing when they build more expensive units as well, all with lots of school age kids.  Frankly, we're getting killed on our property taxes because there's little commercial businesses paying taxes here.  So 65% of my property taxes go for schools paid for by people like myself who are retired with no kids living here.  We've tried to get developers to commit or be required to subsidize their develope to pay for the increase school costs.  But the courts have ruled against us in their favor.  Be careful what you wish for.  Keeping things the way they are has lots of advantages. 

[Rob C]

"Keeping things the way they are has lots of advantages." ...  Alan Klein.

I have been saying that for decades and still believe that we are both right. I look at the changes and all I see is that we have developed new toys, new distractions to prevent us thinking about our lives, and that the important things have been crushed under the heel of political and commercial pressure to expand, expand, and bloody expand, producing more and more rubbish and making the basic essentials ever more difficult to attain.

Just today Sky News had an interview with an economist who pointed out that the number of young people who will never be able to get onto the first rung of the home-ownership ladder has rocketed in the last ten to fifteen years, with about 40% doomed to forever earning too little to pay a mortgage even if they can scrape together a 10% deposit to kick it off.

Property prices and earnings have sped ever further out of synch. But hey, a new toy will make all of the disenfranchised feel so much better.

It didn't have to be this way, just as the Maldives didn't have to drown and Miami become Atlantis.

Rob

[MattBurt]

But fighting to resist inevitable change is is futile and makes people miserable.
I guess the key is to choose your battles.

[KLaban]

There are those who take great pleasure in wallowing in misery.

;-)

[Rob C]

But fighting to resist inevitable change is is futile and makes people miserable.
I guess the key is to choose your battles.

If that change is man-made, then it is not inevitable.

I firmly believe that a major part of it is, indeed, our own fault, fault originally spawned from ignorance of implications of modern acts, and later perpetuated from the deliberate turning of blind eyes to reality for the sake of agendas not entirely altruistic.

Choosing only battles that can be won but losing a war for survival because of that act of cowardice is not laudable.

Rob

[jim t]

How Asian Social Media Transformed a Quiet U.K. Walking Spot -NY Times 10-13-2018

I had my OPEN camera bag picked up by a tourist while I was shooting a waterfall this week. Unfortunately the mobs of people are making serine places a hampered experience. I can only suggest to have mindful respect and leave no trace so current and future visitors will enjoy these spaces without the ignorance of others interfering.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

"Chinese tourists kill kangaroo, hurling bricks to make it hop"

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2142594/chinese-tourists-kill-kangaroo-hurling-bricks-make-it-hop

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

How Asian Social Media Transformed a Quiet U.K. Walking Spot -NY Times 10-13-2018...

Link?