Place affinities, lifestyle mobilities, and quality-of-life

In this chapter, we develop the idea that these twin processes of place affinities and lifestyle mobilities are inseparable and essential to understanding quality-of-life, which in this chapter is viewed as an ongoing psychological process of developing a coherent self-identity narrative (Williams and McIntyre 2001). Our globalized age has made the movement or circulation of people, ideas, and goods a ubiquitous aspect of the human condition. Tourism lies at the very core of modern quality-of-life because it is an increasingly prosaic realm within which people seek out and negotiate meaning and build identity into their lives. The modern globalized age empowers many people to actively circulate among a great many places as part of living the good life. We mean that this is not simply for those actively engaged in travel to visit destinations but also for those who reside in or make a living on the character of such destinations and other peoples’ desires to visit them and those whose local quality-of-life is impacted in some way by tourists and other lifestyle migrants’ involvement in such places. Our approach will be to first discuss place, place attachment, and its relationship to quality-of-life; examine how touristic relationships to place afford individuals opportunities to act out desired lifestyle aspirations as a way to enhance quality-of- life; and explore how enhanced mobility has transformed our perceptions of place and the implications this has for tourism and quality-of-life.