Center for Sustainable Tourism

Serving the Region, State, and Nation

Affiliate Faculty

Affiliate Faculty share an interest and enthusiasm for the Center's mission, conduct tourism research activities in conjunction with the Center, serve as thesis advisors and members, and mentor students working on sustainable tourism related research.

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Community Outreach Interests

My interests lie in the area of assisting communities with transportation and travel related issues. I have assisted communities with comprehensive planning. I helped to lead ECU's regional response after Hurricane Floyd with a series of conferences and workshops dealing with response and recovery. I have assisted a large number of communities and interstate corridors with planning for accidental releases of hazardous materials during highway transportation.

Research Interests

As an economic geographer, my main research interests focus on examining the relationship between transportation and the location of facilities, e.g., golf courses. I generally find that the quest for good location generally yields substantial spatially-based inequality. I use GIS and advanced statistical analysis to provide predictive analyses of facility locations or the volume of flows one might expect. Recently I have used these methods to predict the location of hazmat highway accidents and gang violence. I have used the same space-time approaches to predict the performance of retail stores. I do have a growing interest in the intersection of culture and economy. For example, along with my good colleague, Derek Alderman, I recently examined the growth of NASCAR in the Charlotte region as a social network or knowledge community.

Notable Publications

• Mitchelson, R., & Alderman, D. (In press). Red dust and dynamometers: Charlotte as memory and knowledge community in NASCAR. W. Graves & H. Smith (Eds.). Athens, GA: UGA Press.
• Mitchelson, R., & Lazaro, M. (2004). The face of the game: African Americans’ spatial accessibility to golf. Southeastern Geographer, 44(1), 48–73.

Courses

• GEOG 6150: Advanced Spatial Analysis
• GEOG 4310: Geography of Transportation