ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the ambiguity, and what it means for understandings of beaches as therapeutic landscapes. It also focuses on the significance of the new public health's central focus on risk for understanding sites of health promotion. The chapter considers what the promotional strategies mean for popular understandings of beaches, more than two decades after the sun awareness/avoidance campaigns were launched in New Zealand. Beaches have a central place in the national imaginary in New Zealand, and are key sites for everyday recreation and domestic tourism, especially in summer. The prominence of the coast as a site of activity also suggests a fifth way in which beaches fit the mould of a therapeutic landscape: they are places of exercise and routine physical activity for many New Zealanders. Contemporary public health knowledge recognizes ultra violet radiation exposure as something which has both beneficial and detrimental effects on human health.
