The future of coastal landscapes: perceptions and conflicts on the west coast of Ireland

Concerns about BG projects have been mainly represented in technical terms that address the loss of coastal views related to specific marine uses (such as wind and fish farms), yet complex relationships between people and coastal landscapes remain invisible.

Understanding these relationships from a community and tourist perspective and how BG affects them is key for resisting hegemonic BG and making its deployment less conflictual. This thesis conceptualises coastal landscape as triadic space switching between perceived, conceived and lived dimensions, and uses a mixed methods approach with two coastal communities and tourists on the west coast of Ireland to understand how contestation occurs in places faced with multiple Blue Growth pressures.