ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of natural amenity based tourism and outdoor recreation in North America with a keen eye toward supportive literature, public policy implications, and continuing research needs. It focuses on integrative tourism planning elements specific to the developmental role that tourism plays in exurban and rural regions of North America. Then it draws upon generic elements of rural tourism to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the phenomena that assists in the integrative tourism planning process. The chapter begins with a brief overview of the academic arguments that surround tourism planning as a developmental strategy in North America. Particularly relevant to the vast ex-urban and rural parts of North America, tourism is viewed as an important economic catalyst stimulating private sector entrepreneurial activity within retail and service sector business categories and providing a host of non-economic benefits.
