For many waterfront cities that are cruise ship destinations, there’s a challenge to finding the balance between the economic benefits of tourism and the overcrowding that can come from a regular influx of visitors. A number of local governments have pushed back against cruise ships, seeking in some cases to restrict the disruption that they can cause or to alter the very infrastructure that they use.
The latest city where these conflicts are playing out is happening within the United States — specifically, in Alaska’s capital city, Juneau. Writing at The Guardian, Christian Karim Chrobog explored the different ways that the city’s residents have reacted to a growing number of cruise ships docking there. Though to hear one of the residents quoted in Chrobog’s article tell it, it isn’t the cruise ships that bother them quite so much as it is the helicopters used to transport passengers on expeditions.
“I get groups of two to five helicopters flying over my house every 20 minutes,” Juneau resident Karla Hart told The Guardian. “On any given day, that adds up to 50 to 75 flights.”
As The Guardian explained, Hart is behind a recently-defeated ballot initiative in the city — one which the Juneau Empire‘s Mark Sabbatini described as “[t]he most high-profile and controversial vote of the 2024 Juneau municipal election.” If it had passed, the measure would have prohibited cruise ships carrying over 250 travelers from docking in the city on Saturdays, as well as on the Fourth of July.
Amsterdam Is Dramatically Changing Its Approach to Cruise Ships
Big changes are on the horizonWhile the measure did not pass, its existence nonetheless points to the tensions between the economic benefits of tourism and the effects it can have on an existing population. Given that the city’s population is just over 30,000, it’s also easy to see how an influx of passengers can make a big difference there — for good and for ill.
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