Strategic planning and local tourism: the case of Grecìa Salentina. – The XXVI edition of the Report on Italian Tourism from the Institute of Sciences of Cultural Heritage of the National Research Council (CNR ISPC) revealed that in 2022 (Marasco et al., 2023), out of the 70.1 billion euros spent by Italian tourists within the country, only 15.2 billion euros remained within the visitors' home regions. This marked a decrease of about 0.5 percentage points compared to 2019, showing a negative trend for local tourism. Despite this, proximity tourism shows strong potential, especially in marginal and inland areas, which can contribute to these places' development and cultural awareness. To achieve this, it is important to integrate local tourism into a long-term process led by the local community, emphasizing environmental, cultural, economic, and social sustainability as outlined in Agenda 2030. This approach is exemplified by the Strategic Plan for Tourism Development for the Union of Municipalities of the Grecìa Salentina, which aims to promote sustainable tourism.

Glaciers and Water bodies: Considerations and Emerging Prospects in Alpine Settings. – This research highlights the importance of the relationship between glacier health, snow cover, water resources availability and territories in the Alpine region. Snow has the strategic task of protecting glaciers, feeding freshwater reserves, regulating sea level and supporting local communities. However, snowfall is decreasing and snow and ice are melting faster due to global warming. Therefore, planning future risk management strategies is mandatory for water governance and environmental protection. In this regard Engadin represents an interesting case study. In this region, a local project aims at slowing down the retreat of the Morteratsch glacier. Moreover, a watercourse renaturation project has also been implemented in order to overcome the problem of substantially increased river flow due to rapidly melting glaciers. These are examples of policies that should take into account current climate changes and the physical conditions of the mountain environment.

Analysis and perspectives on water stress reduction: territorial implications and innovative approaches. – Ensuring water sustainability through technological innovation is crucial, especially for groundwater, a vital component linked to the hydrological cycle. It plays a pivotal role in supplying drinking water for various purposes, including agriculture and industry. Climate change pose significant threats to groundwater conservation, raising concerns about both quantity and quality with significant socio-economic implications. Effective preservation requires hydrogeological monitoring of underground basins, coupled with dynamic water balance modelling to provide predictive insights. These modern tools are essential for proper physical resource management. Implementing innovative technologies and strategic political and management planning for underground aquifers are imperative for initiating a robust program to mitigate risks and achieve a sustainable balance for this precious resource.

Landscape and proximity fruition in the Euganean Hills context: reflections from an educational experience. – Tourism-recreational practices are often framed through dichotomous concepts such as near/far, familiar/unfamiliar, tourist/local, and everyday/exotic. With this awareness, we proposed a didactic laboratory within the Master’s degree program in Landscape Science at the University of Padua to address the following research question: What role does the experience of landscape play in reconsidering these dichotomous approaches? We analysed the Euganean Hills area in the Padua province exploring four specific contexts, two historical houses and two museums, where the relationship with the landscape is defined by practices of proximity and specific connections with natural and cultural heritage values. The research was based on desk analysis of demographic and tourism data, strategic and promotional documents, visits and interviews. Dialogue with local operators, their perspectives on local communities and the direct immersion in the landscape unveiled the multiple ways in which the Euganean landscape is understood and promoted for leisure purposes. What emerged is the plurality of discourses and images, places and initiatives, often co-created ‘from below’, that define and redefine the landscape. Tracing the variety of proximity visits, experienced similarly by residents and tourists through an interesting hybridisation process mixing roles, motivations and space sharing, allows to overcome dichotomies and open up new spaces for reflection and local planning.

Hydric resources as patterns for a community regeneration: the Gleno dam between memory and innovation in Scalve Valley. – Geography offers tools for territorial analysis and planning which, by integrating field research with geographic information technologies, propose innovative approaches to support re-generation processes. This is strategic in mountain contexts where, over time, water resources management has been at the core of a delicate co-evolutionary relationship between humans and non-humans and, sometimes, has caused catastrophic fractures induced by anthropic action, like dam collapsing. The essay presents the case study of the Gleno Dam in the Scalve Valley, province of Bergamo, where, since the collapse centenary (1923-2023), the geographers of the Imago Mundi Lab at the University of Bergamo have been carrying out research aimed at reconstructing the territorial stratification generated over time, focusing on the role of water and the disastrous results of the dam collapse on the entire valley. Many places abandoned after the disaster can today be regenerated through co-design processes using mapping systems and placing water at the centre of new symbolic meanings, cultural functions, and production practices.

An Overview of the Tourism Planning of the City of Recife. – Recife is a beautiful city located in the North east of Brazil. Like the majority of Brazilian cities, it had never had a proper tourism plan before the one developed in 2013 – even considering its innate potential. This article aims to share that plan, in which a few field researches were done, as well as informal interviews with the main actors involved. Throughout the years of implementation and execution, not only the impact of external factors was sensitively perceived but also the importance of a dynamic (and participative) revaluation of the plan itself.

“Metamorphosis of the city”: Resilience and Interculturality. – With the advent of urban sprawl, the places have changed its physical structure by influencing the social and urban fabric. New Urbanism is a decisive movement for America and Europe, through it was possible to draw new planning visions. A current that would currently shooting for the operation, which has been show to improve the livability of neighborhoods and cities.
The methodology of resilience thinking and participation tools could improve the strategic planning and management of change and transformation of the social and urban systems, helping the administration to manage the urban policies.

Social organization in space: a case of scientific neighbourliness. – Sociology, as a general science of social relations and interactions, shares with geography a call to work as an accepted consolidation pivot for contributions coming from different fields.

After showing how space as a topic is seen from the micro- and macro-sociological perspectives, the paper is mostly devoted to the Author’s studies on regional small industry development in so-called “third Italy”.

The research methodology includes references to different disciplinary fields, the unifying perspective being the combination of four regulation mechanisms for local economy: market, organization, reciprocity, political exchange.

The same methodology is then applied to Torino, an industrial city undergoing deep transformation. This kind of analysis has proved itself useful when private and public actors were engaged in strategic planning for the city.