Representational and non-representational Matera landscape: from top-down to bottom-up building of asite image

• Sergio Bisciglia ^[1]
  1. [1] Politecnico di Bari

     Politecnico di Bari

     Bari, Italia

     
• Localización: TOURISCAPE2 - Transversal Tourism and Landscape International Scientific Conference: Barcelona, 5th-6th November 2020 / coord. por Ricard Pié Ninot, Carlos Jesús Rosa Jiménez, Josep María Vilanova Claret, Joaquim Sabaté Bel, Enrico Porfido, 2020, ISBN 978-84-9880-855-1, págs. 821-834
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto Completo Libro
• Resumen

  • Some specific aspects concerning the Conference topic result from a deep andcontinuous analysis of Matera town together with the effects of its candidatureand nomination as European Capital of Culture for 20191. Although ECoCBid Book was mainly focused on cultural objectives, it aimed at attracting atleast 600.000 visitors in 2019 and at the same time supporting a low-impacttourism model for Matera, which is a medium-sized town of only 60.000inhabitants. It was not by chance that the event’s organisers have consideredAirbnb as an important stakeholder and also a partner to be involved insome urban regeneration projects. But the research was focused mainly onqualitative aspects of Matera’s touristic development rather than quantitativeones. In particular, the research was aimed at understanding a) if and how thesocial interaction between tourists and residents - specifically the host-guestinteraction – have contributed to the building of Matera’s landscape image, b)if the Matera image has been innovated and through which social processesthis innovation has occurred, c) which cultural, political and economic rolethe local institutions have played into this process, also as ‘custodians’ ofnarratives about genius loci. This study has followed mainly representationaland non-representational approaches and it is the result of the application ofdifferent methods, ranging from semi-structured interview with key stakeholdersinvolved in the ECoC process to content analysis and environment-behaviourmethods. It discusses the results obtained from semi-structured interviewswith key stakeholders involved in the ECoC process and also from analysis andenvironment-behaviour methods.