1st Edition
Cultural Tourism and Sustainable Local Development
With the exponential rise in leisure mobility, tourism has increasingly become of great economic significance. Cultural heritage, such as museums, churches, historical landscapes, urban parks, and exhibitions attract many visitors and countries, regions and cities which house such historic-cultural amenities have seen increasingly large waves of tourists. While an avalanche of tourists has a positive impact on the local economy, such modern mass tourism also brings about negative externalities such as congestion, decline in quality of life, low access to cultural amenities and loss of local identity; to the extent that the sustainability conditions of a locality might be endangered. This tourism dilemma is particularly pronounced in cities with a rich cultural past, such as Venice, Naples and Amsterdam. Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of leading scholars from North America and Europe, this book examines the interface of local cultural resources and modern mass tourism from a sustainability perspective. It puts forward innovative methodologies and best case practice for future cultural conservation policies.
Biography
Luigi Fusco Girard is Professor of Conservation of Cultural and Environment Heritage at the University of Naples Federico 2, Italy and Peter Nijkamp is Professor of Spatial Economics at the Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
'This book defines and illustrates this sustainability dilemma and provides policy options for both the development of heritage and cultural tourism and the management of the sustainability problem. It examines various approaches to the evaluation of such policy precepts and related practices. Several case studies provide detailed examples in a way that illustrates the themes of the book. This is a must read for all students of tourism and cultural/heritage driven economic development and planning.' Roger R. Stough, George Mason University, USA '...the book may surely be recommended as a very useful compendium on the topic of evaluation of tourism policies and projects from the point of view of sustainable development taking into account ecological, but also cultural spatial, economic and social impacts of tourism.' European Spatial Research and Policy
