Events and Sustainability: Can Events Make Places More Inclusive, Resilient and Sustainable?

This book examines the links between events and sustainability, with a particular focus on how festivals and events contribute to making places more inclusive, resilient and sustainable.

Previous sustainability research in events often focused on reducing the negative environmental impacts, with a corresponding lack of consideration of socio-economic dimensions. More recently, research has begun to consider events in relation to a range of economic and social issues, highlighting the growing importance of examining events through a critical lens. This book adopts a critical and broader approach to event sustainability, arguing that scholars should examine how events might contribute to sustainable development, rather than merely exploring how individual events could be made more sustainable. Accordingly, the contributors to this edited book address how events might change attitudes and behaviours by promoting sustainable lifestyles, communities and technologies. Following a detailed introduction, the book features 16 chapters written by scholars from across the world.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Sustainable Tourism.

Andrew Smith is Professor of Urban Experiences at the University of Westminster, where he leads the Sustainable Cities and the Urban Environment Research Community. He has written multiple publications on events, including two monographs: Events and Urban Regeneration (Routledge, 2012) and Events in the City (Routledge, 2016).

Judith Mair is Associate Professor of Tourism in the University of Queensland Business School. Her work examines the social and environmental impacts of tourism and events on host destinations. She has published over 50 refereed journal articles and has written and/or edited five books.