Resumen de Renewal of tourism supply and upgrading of cultural and environmental resources: strategies and tools for new scenarios of sustainable development in Calabria (Italy)
The relentless world tourism growth corresponds to the great variety of its local manifestations, with alternating rises and declines of tourist destinations, which should be ready to face the challenges of sustainability. The concept of tourism sustainability implies that the demand expressed by a growing number of tourists is met so as to continue to attract flows and respect, at the same time, the needs and identity of the local population. There is no future for tourism without sustainability and there is no sustainability without a strategic project that takes into account the complex relationships between locals, visitors, territory and business expectations. Therefore, the recognition of the strategic role of tourism for the economic and employment growth of a country should be the starting point to define possible strategies, which can reconcile the needs of development with those of protection of the environmental resources, above all in the most sensitive areas, such as the coastal ones. This would lead to a more competitive tourism supply. Starting from these considerations, this paper refers to a specific Italian context, i.e. the region Calabria, and aims at connecting the research on the tourism evolution and on its effects on landscape changes with the definition of strategies and tools for the restructuring and renewal of well-established tourist destinations as well as for the development of new potentials. In this context, planning and programming tools should bear new practices of local governance based on the idea of integration and unitary development of the coastal areas (subjected to a high anthropic pressure), the hinterland (increasingly populated and in a state of neglect), the urban systems, the rural fabric of small centres and the naturalist areas.
