Nowadays, the sprawl of tourism for culture and leisure in city centres and in areas of several Mediterranean cities is becoming a very common phenomenon. Especially after industrial abandonment, the conversion of numerous urban sectors for tourism has been a recurrent practice, from Genoa to Marseilles, Barcelona, Istanbul, and dozens of other coastal cities. From the single holiday house to "all inclusive" tourist villages, to a metropolitan colonization of the coastlines, we can interpret the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as a radical transformation of the Mediterranean landscape for tourism. To this, we can also add the topic of urban safety, which is becoming an important tool of territorial transformation and design, thus increasing the perception of many tourist villages as “gated communities”, especially along the coast of North Africa. In accordance with an interdisciplinary approach, the session will select the contributions on projects, plans and policies set up to generate urban transformation for tourism in Mediterranean cities. The session is also open to papers focusing on the transformation dictated by mass tourism, phenomena of gentrification and rehousing, the transformation of entire neighbourhoods in b&b apartments, the diffusion of protected tourist communities in which leisure, trade and hospitality redefine the character of the coast. Specific case studies are welcome.

Session Title: The Mediterranean city and mass tourism: leisure vs. new fears
Session Coordinator: Luca Molinari – Università degli Studi della Campania
Chiara Ingrosso – Università degli Studi della Campania

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