Abstract
Tourism development in the Caribbean is often marketed as “sustainable” economic growth, yet in the Dominican Republic it operates through extractive economies that reproduce colonial systems of power over people, land and ocean. Focusing on the region’s most visited resort town destination in Punta Cana, this thesis examines how coastal development, planning logics, and global investment practices reinforce racialized labor hierarchies, environmental injustice, and spatial dispossession to suppress indigenous land-sea relations and undermine cultural sovereignty. In response, the project asks: what is sacred planning, and how might it transform tourism development? Drawing from methods in historiography, applied phenomenology, and empirical analysis, the study develops an integrative approach to co-creating a place cosmology (system of meanings) that links lived experience, ecological systems, and governance structures. Interdisciplinary processes of embodied sense-making and relational reflection reveal ethical dilemmas of citizenship precarity, ecological erasure, and uneven development, while also identifying possibilities for political resistance and cultural continuity. This thesis advances sacred ecology and regenerative hospitality as theoretical and ethical foundations for rethinking tourism development in the Caribbean. It introduces an applied framework for conscious development that embeds relational accountability, participatory governance, and ecological reciprocity within tourism systems. Ultimately, this work reframes planning as a practice of relational stewardship rooted in care rather than extraction. By positioning the water and land as interconnected living commons, it demonstrates how tourism can move beyond patterns of dispossession toward regenerative coastal development practices that enable flourishing futures in the Dominican Republic and Caribbean regions.
