A transnational networked space: tracing residential tourism and its multi-local implications in Costa Rica

Abstract

The complexity of recent residential tourism growth on Costa Rica's coasts calls for new approaches that address this phenomenon and its implications in a more mobile and translocal way. In this paper one growing residential tourism destination is analysed as a transnational networked space. The focus is on three flows or corridors that have enabled the growth of residential tourism and through which its implications spread in space. These flows of people and investment from North America, Nicaragua and central Costa Rica have not been established automatically: they build on a history and have been reinforced. This does not mean that local groups are left without opportunities; however, some of them increasingly experience a disconnection from mainstream national development