Resumen de Restart from the landscape: Strategies to reactivate tourism in the Central Italy territories affected by the earthquake
It is well known that today’s cities and territories, in order to evolve towards suddenshifts and global changes - such as unpredictable economic systems or catastrophes- often confer to tourism a fundamental component of their economy representingboth a strategy of rehabilitation of destinations and a plan for activating moremarginal and broken areas. Within the tourism market which is always broaderand more and more competitive, cities and territories, to remain distinctive, turn totactics that focus on their innate resources - histories, geographies, spaces, creativetalents (Richards, 2009) - as well as the new tourists’ requests which are more linkedto the everyday and spontaneity of the places. Starting from the premises of newtourism, this paper analyzes the possibilities of tourism development for the craterof Central Italy re-interpreting its main strength: the natural landscape includingits cultural aspects. The vast hilly and mountainous area of the Marche affected byearthquakes between August 2016 and January 2017 is presented in the first part ofthe paper. The territory is characterized by a vulnerable internal landscape definedby distinctive small settlements and it presents a significant depopulation trend,strongly accentuated by seismic events. Recent experiences of tourist reactivationafter the earthquake are analyzed in the second part underlining the possibility ofinterpreting the distinctive resources of the place by transforming them to create newand appealing experiences. The methodological approach is mixed, based on theacquisition and analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data. For this territory,new forms of tourism assume the importance of strategies for the enhancement ofcultural and naturalistic heritage and moreover they represent economic activitiesgeared to keeping a young population in place. The research confirms how tourismbecomes a strategy of economic and spatial reconstruction to deliver a vital territoryand new references to the population.
