Presence, absence, and constitutive alignment: unbuilt visitor attractions in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada

Planned visitor attractions do not always come to fruition. This paper examines several attractions in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada that remain unbuilt. Three unrealised attractions are profiled: a theme park, an aquarium, and a museum. Unrealised attractions raise provocative questions related to presence, absence, and tourism development. Four aspects of tourism (non)development related to visitor attractions are addressed: ‘development’ as a process rather than as a built outcome, the importance of finalising a site for an attraction, the tension between controlling costs and creating an attraction that features technological wonders, and the broader constraints that can undermine projects. Studying the absence of visitor attractions speaks to a significant presence: specific elements of the development process that have, to date, not been thoroughly explored in a scholarly forum. This process includes entrepreneurial aspirations. These aspirations are even present when factors necessary for project completion are absent: geographical, political, economic, and technological factors that need to align in just the right way at the right time for the attraction to be built. This alignment is described as constitutive alignment. When one studies absent, never-built visitor attractions, both ambitious, future-focused aspirations and the need for constitutive alignment achieve a visible presence.