Tourism Planning and Resilience Strategies in Inner Areas: Communities in Action in the Madonie Area

Abstract

Tourism, if properly managed, can represent an opportunity for economic development and social growth especially for territories that have infrastructure deficits and economic problems. This is the case of rural and mountain areas, many of which in Italy correspond to the so-called ‘inner areas’, spaces for which the public sector has developed a specific strategy in recent years. Within these fragile areas, tourism planning plays a crucial role because, more than in other spaces, it must identify balanced goals between fostering economic development and safeguarding local identities. The point of equilibrium can be reached through strategies of resilience, that is, by adopting collective response-and-adaptation tools that allow to manage tourism by mitigating its impact on the local sociocultural organization and to restore sustainable mechanisms of operation of the tourism system.

The communities of the Madonie, a rural and mountainous area close to Palermo, taking advantage of the strategy for inner areas, have decided to start processes of institutional innovation through an intermunicipal governance and also to promote new partnership networks to strengthen the capacity of resilience and development of the territorial system as a ‘green community’. Some territorial planning actions specifically concern the tourism sector, as in the case of the organization of a destination management community and the creation of an ecomuseum.

This chapter analyses some experiences recently conducted by the Madonie communities, which are trying to reconcile, also through planning tools, economic growth and landscape protection.

Citation

Giannone, M. (2021), "Tourism Planning and Resilience Strategies in Inner Areas: Communities in Action in the Madonie Area", Grasso, F. and Sergi, B.S. (Ed.) Tourism in the Mediterranean Sea, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 119-128. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80043-900-920211010