Tropophilia: A Study of People,Place and Lifestyle Travel

This paper explores the changing relations between people and place that are set in motion through mobility. Examining the mobilities of lifestyle travellers, it argues that new relations are sought by this group that undermines traditional assumptions of stability and preservation in the person–place relation. In their stead, lifestyle travellers seek dynamism, change and instability in their engagements with place. This situation suggests that the traditional recognition of the need for a rooted, static and stable set of relations with place – i.e. topophilia – can be supplemented by the love of mobility, change and transformation in the person–place relation – coined tropophilia. The paper raises the important point that a desired connection between ‘people’on one hand and ‘place’ on the other may only occur when their respective paces and trajectories positively coincide.