Appreciating the built environment through cultural tourism: Fundamental changes in values and approaches

This paper will examine the importance of seeing, reading, evaluating and better appreciating the built environment. Creative observation of built environment is fundamental to our day‐to‐day lives as well as to cultural tourism development. As we want to break away from the routine and lack of stimuli of our home work and environment, we travel to foreign places. Our cities are tourist destinations for others. Being aware of one's environment, and being able to read it should be a skill mastered by all. As many become a tourist at some point in their life, cultural tourism is judged essential to society's enrichment and to the personal enhancement of the tourist. Through methods of awareness, this process allows everyone to appreciate the built environment. None of the tourist charters, educational or initiatives adequately training cover these areas of concern. In response, this paper will explore the matters of perception, place and landscape reading, as well as visual or contextual appreciation as the basis for promotion of heritage conservation, cultural identity and sensitization to place specificities and uniqueness of landscapes. How to see and better appreciate these elements is what will progressively promote a conservation ethic in search of promising relationships between visitors and the built environment.