Turismo e centri urbani minori: possibili percorsi integrati verso frontiere innovative di sviluppo sostenibile

The growing trend of tourism is a key challenge in the context of broader issues related to the paradigm of sustainability, taking into account the different effects that the activities related to it produce on cities and regions concerned. This issue must be addressed in the right direction as a privileged instrument full of values : the ability to raise awareness of the environment; great potential to support innovative and traditional economic activities, the ability to contribute to improving the quality of life. If properly planned, it can play a key role in the territorial balance, through the construction of tourist facilities including mature destinations, emerging and marginal areas, with a seasonal adjustment of flows and promotion of local economies, that combines stability and innovation in a dialectical process between tradition and creativity. For many Italian cities and regions, such as Calabria, the choice to protect, enhance and manage the resources in an integrated natural-environmental, landscape and historical-cultural through the lever and the sector leverage tourism can be, even in times of crisis, an important tool to revalue its assets, develop the armature connected to it, to promote strategic projects in the tourism sector, to stimulate the creation of accommodation facilities and complementary services. Faced with the challenges of globalization, rediscover its own specificity then becomes a unique opportunity to rethink its own development with intelligence, where the smart attribute refers to the meeting of creative technology and human capabilities, through which the communities themselves become carriers of innovation.