Islands of Meaning: Reconceptualising Coastal Wellbeing Through Identity and Tourism Dynamics in Mediterranean and Southeast Asian Contexts

Coastal and island cities are most often analysed by considering the lens of tourism growth, resilience, and environmental risk, without paying attention to how these places generate meaning and wellbeing for the people who live in them, use them, and move through them. This paper introduces the idea of islands of meaning to reinterpret coastal environments as socio-spatial systems where water-based identity, tourism, and everyday practices interact to shape coastal wellbeing. Rather than treating wellbeing as an individual condition or as a by-product of economic success, the paper understands it as a relational outcome emerging from the way these dimensions come together in practice. The originality of this work lies in introducing the Islands of Meaning framework which shifts the focus from individual or economic metrics to a relational understanding of wellbeing, emerging from the practical interaction of these dimensions. The framework is organised around three main domains, water-based identity, tourism intensity, and everyday practices, considered in relation to governance and environmental conditions. Drawing on a comparative reading of Mediterranean and Southeast Asian contexts, the paper highlights the threshold effects of tourism pressure, the role of accessibility and environmental comfort, and the uneven distribution of the benefits associated with blue amenities. The paper also introduces an Operational Layer Assessment Model (OLAM), an analytical tool, as a first step for assessing the conditions under which coastal contexts are able to sustain, weaken, or fragment coastal wellbeing.