Dionisia KOUTSI, Dept. of Geography and Regional Planning, School of Rural, Surveying and Geoinformatics Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Apostolos LAGARIAS, Dept. of Geography and Regional Planning, School of Rural, Surveying and Geoinformatics Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Anastasia STRATIGEA, Dept. of Geography and Regional Planning, School of Rural, Surveying and Geoinformatics Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Global key drivers, such as climate change, economic recession and Covid-19 outbreak, have brought to the forefront critical debates as to the sustainable future pathways of regions around the globe. As a number of studies claim, the Mediterranean Region constitutes an area highly affected by such global challenges. Furthermore, the strong dependence – among others –, on the prevailing mass tourism model leads to an unsustainable and highly vulnerable setting against the above key drivers. This model appears steadily intensifying, especially when it comes to small and medium-sized Mediterranean islands. The latter, although culturally and naturally endowed, are highly vulnerable to the impacts of the aforementioned key drivers; while they are concurrently suffering by specific developmental inefficiencies that are due to insularity and physical remoteness. In coping with global key concerns but also insularity bottlenecks, the distinctiveness of their cultural resources – land and underwater – has been recognized as a critical comparative advantage, a powerful ‘tool’ that is capable of ensuring more sustainable future development paths, meeting also the authentic and experience-based tourism demand trends. Along these lines, the focus of this work is on the potential of small and medium-sized Mediterranean islands to sustainably manage their land and underwater cultural wealth in order for smarter, more sustainable, resilient and co-created developmental trails to be accommodated. Towards this end, a data-enabled and evidence-based research is conducted. This aims at grasping current state, future aspirations and planning practices in Greek island territories towards a strategic and participatory cultural planning endeavour that integrates land and underwater cultural heritage into developmental perspectives; and paves the way for re-thinking their position in the global tourism market, bringing cultural assets at the epicentre of policy making.
Mots clés : Small and medium size islands|insularity|land and underwater cultural heritage|sustainable local development|participatory cultural planning
A102936DK