Space in transformation: Public versus private climate change adaptation in peripheral coastal tourism areas—Case studies from Quebec, Canada

Climate change makes the tourism industry vulnerable, as many of its resources will be heavily impacted by its effects. Coastal destinations are likely to be the most affected by rising sea levels and extreme weather events, calling for a sociospatial analysis of the dynamics of peripheral coastal tourism communities. Using a production of space framework, we describe how tourism space is produced and (re)produced in two Canadian communities located along the St. Lawrence River estuary: Tadoussac and Notre‐Dame‐du‐Portage. A case study methodology including observation, semistructured interviews, and discourses analysis is applied to deconstruct the sociospatial process of climate change adaptation. The main findings stress the importance of discourse and land tenure strategies used by different stakeholders. Managers of publicly owned land tend to make environmental strategies (green infrastructure) central to their adaptation strategies, whereas private land owners tend to use man‐made interventions (grey infrastructure) and closing space strategies to protect and enhance their land values in response to the increasing threat and evidence of climate change impacts. The results call for further research that takes the social processes of value creation embedded in land tenure and land markets into account.