Tropical places with personality: key issues for urban design in the tropical tourism landscape

As tropical destinations struggle to differentiate their product from one palm fringed beach to the next, this paper proposes an alternative differentiating factor: the tropical urban product. Through a literature review, a model is proposed to organize thinking around the tropical urban destination product. The model is tested through semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 16 leading ‘knowing’ and ‘unknowing’ urban designers in the tropical city of Cairns, Australia. The qualitative data provides an insight into the key issues that define and govern the relationship between urban design and tourism in tropical places.