Alberto FORTE, University of Bologna, Italy
Alessia MARIOTTI, University of Bologna, Italy
The SARS-Cov-2 outbreak has devastated the international tourism sector which ceased in dominating the global mobility scene for nearly two years. As a reaction to the immobility ignited by the ensuing pandemic, locally and domestically consumed tourism products and outdoor recreation activities have boomed in unforeseeable ways often exposing entrenched and unresolved mass/over tourism issues in certain parts of the advanced capitalist world. Besides a visible spike of public engagement in easily accessible outdoor activities in the Italian mountain ranges, the more exclusive yachting practices along the worldwide cherished coastlines of Italy have had an unprecedented turnout (MIT, 2021) signalling not only a burst of interest in the open sea as a safe space for tourism and recreation but, arguably, in the maritime culture of “being at sea”. In this paper, we present the preliminary results of a qualitative-based research project exploring the role of the open sea in terms of the management of change in selected Italian coastal resorts of the Adriatic littoral. We posit that this novel wave of public interest in the marine environment and maritime cultures coincides with a surge of formal marine preservation programmes (e.g. UNDOS, 2021; OOF, 2021), seeking to bridge an established human/nature divide, and a critical “oceanturn” in human geographical inquiry. We nonetheless argue that two generations of coastal resorts, those of the North of Europe and the Mediterranean area, have persistently failed to pursue regeneration and rejuvenation initiatives that engage with the concept “from the open sea towards the coast and its hinterlands” therefore missing the opportunity to value the ecological and cultural wealth that the sea holds for their sustainable development and, consequently, the regenerative development potential (Mang et al., 2016) embodied by novel yachting practices.
Mots clés : Regenerative Development |Regenerative Tourism|Coastal Resort Regeneration|Yachting|Open Sea
A105012AF