Terracina Integrated Pathways

Pilot project 4. Terracina integrated pathways Projet Interreg IIIB Medocc n° 2005-05-2.1-I-137 March 2008 Content Foreword 1 Methodological approach 4 Terracina integrated pathways case study 5 Background 5 Target groups and purposes 9 Compound analysis 16 Collection 16 Analysis 60 Processing 72 Resources 80 Technical resources 80 Human resources 82 Costs and benefits 86 General considerations 86 Route realisation cost evaluation 87 Route management cost evaluation 90 Bibliography 91 Acknowledgements 96 1st attachment: General overview on Route Tourism 97 Routes instances 102 Route planning 127 Target planning 127 Planning elements 129 Planning technical aids 139 2nd attachment – Planning tables 143 Foreword Tourism is a central factor playing a key role in the frame of the link town-country, as already illustrated into the “Climate monitoring & suburban areas development” study of this series (p. 26). This because tourism could be described in the narrowest sense as a periodical migratory wave of citizens coming to and from the urban centres for various motivations and because of the importance of the economy it generates. The concept of tourism in a broad way is linked to the concept of travelling for purposes different than the basic surviving, territorial conquest or trading motivations. Those could be sought in the intellectual horizon and could be traced back in the history of humanity from the initiation travels of primitive populations, the religious travels testified on the pre-classic age to visit temples and oracles, or the great pilgrimage travel of the medieval age. The pure- leisure travelling holidays are instead testified by many Roman writers, and poets and by the archaeological ruins of classic villas and second houses of the late empire. The word tourism itself derives from “Le Grand Tour”, the educational travel that starting from the second half of the XVIII century the noble and intellectual youth of England were supposed to achieve into the cultural centres of the continent to perform and refine their instruction. Nowadays this educational content has been softened or quite erased and more than a tourist considers its priority only in terms of relax or leisure. This cultural loss in a substantial way is not quite effective. It is in fact a commonplace to define the travel as an enrichment of personality: wandering, seeing other places, other ways of life, other cultures is a cultural improvement itself, that sets in motion reflection and ideas, apart from the benefit coming from physical motion. This passive induction to acculturation could be properly stimulated and deepened thanks to a wise planning and design of the travel route itself, that become in this manner functional to other and higher issues than the pure leisure (from the traveller point of view) or the economic gain (from the tourist operator point of view). One of the issues now at stake is the sustainability of tourism, this operates on the environment on a double way: tourism is attracted by high value, unspoiled, environments and at the same time tourism pollution has a great impact on the environment itself. Apart GGGrrreeeeeennnLLLiiinnnkkk TTTeeerrrrrraaaccciiinnnaaa iiinnnttteeegggrrraaattteeeddd pppaaattthhhwwwaaayyysss 111 from architectonic and landscape spoiling of many places, tourism requests many polluting transport devices and great water resources. Therefore new kinds of tourism more environmental friendly as cycle tourism and walking tourism are taking now place. It is interesting to note that since from the beginning tourists gave great value to the route notion. Le Grand Tour was carefully planned and had its compulsory stages in important historical cities like Paris, the German Universities, Rome, Naples, etc.. In the cities themselves there were peculiar fashionable monuments, landscapes or locals to be visited and the traveller came back well acquainted with the foreign culture, customs and traditions, thanks to a carefully planned visiting schedule that involved physical, cultural, landscape and historical features. Today the definition of “tourist route” accepted by the scientific community refers to an “initiative to bring together a variety of activities and attractions under a unified theme and thus stimulate entrepreneurial opportunity through the development of ancillary products and services” (Greffe,1994). Compared to the ancient concept of tourism that highlighted culture and education, the modern tourism value is referred mainly to economy and economic development. The terminology used to describe the “tourism route” notion often differs in different countries of the world utilising terms as “themed routes”, “trails”, “scenic by-ways”, “drive tourism” and so on. Overall, the route is considered to be an effective method of tourism distribution especially of tourists travelling by road (driving, hiking, cycling etc) within a given geographical area. The essential concept of route tourism is simple, namely that of the linking together a series of tourism attractions in order to promote local tourism by encouraging visitors to travel from one location to another. The kind of attraction selected gives the theme of the route (such as folklore, working lives, food and drink routes, religious routes, etc…) The significance of the travel has acquired over the recent years new values. In the 80ies and 90ies of the last century a trail was general accomplished for leisure, wellness and sport purposes. Than added values connected to the business and marketing sphere of influence were introduced and the itinerary with the time changed from a physical traced route in the environment into an ideal path of discovery (and purchasing) among taste, enjoyment and feeling sensations, to be travelled with different modalities (very often by private car) and sometimes even no more linked to an exactly traced route. GGGrrreeeeeennnLLLiiinnnkkk TTTeeerrrrrraaaccciiinnnaaa iiinnnttteeegggrrraaattteeeddd pppaaattthhhwwwaaayyysss 222 The itinerary adopted to accomplish this travel or visit, becomes the strategic central element for the development of tourist offers in the frame of the territorial management and planning by the local administrators. It is so important that it is involved into the process of local governance of the territory and is linked with many aspects of economy, nature protection, culture, human and environmental heritage, etc… For instance, actually one of the priority actions for the local administrators of coast tourist towns it to mitigate the environmental damages due to excessive crowding on the seaside, trying to divert part of the tourist demand on hinterland locations. In the same way small historical towns of Central Italy are trying to reroute masses of tourists to relevant points of attractiveness of the surrounding countryside. In both these instances wise route planning could be seen as a soft but effective instrument to move away and alleviate the weight of tourism from overloaded nodes, but for this purpose it has to cope with a multi-thematic scenario. Therefore in this study the GreenLink priority axis “Sport, leisure and tourist activities” will be merged and connected with the axes already focused in the three previous projects that were: 1. “Technologic infrastructures and productive activities”; 2. “Renewable energies and biodiversity”; 3. “Educational, cultural and artistic activities”. This is firstly deserved by the GreenLink general viewpoint of rational planning integration and then because the realisation of tourist routes implies the gathering of centres of attractiveness that are linked intimately with the three foresaid themes as it will be illustrated in the following chapters. Panoramic view of Pontine Plain from Monte Circeo, detailing the main tourism features of the area GGGrrreeeeeennnLLLiiinnnkkk TTTeeerrrrrraaaccciiinnnaaa iiinnnttteeegggrrraaattteeeddd pppaaattthhhwwwaaayyysss 333 Methodological approach Following the methodological scheme of the previous works, this fourth ARSIAL activity simulation for GreenLink project is structured in two parts: 1. a general overview about the tourism route realisation concept illustrating definitions, state of the art, best practices, planning methodology; 2. an instance of advanced planning in this frame. For this last aspect it will be take as instance the area of Terracina, a well known seaside place of South Latium, were the conjunction of natural, cultural and historical values could play an interesting role for the enhancement of tourism leisure activities. At the end an evaluation of cost & benefits will try to take into account the economic effort and the advantages linked to the pathways realisation. To this regard it should be stressed that economic benefits are difficult to be accounted for, because they concern the leisure sphere and the un-monetary advantages of public actions that could be esteemed in term of social consensus and community welfare. Due to the large dimension of the work in its whole, this was divided into three different parts to the purpose of a easier publishing on the web: 1) the case study as the main component; 2) the general overview as a first detached attachment; 3) the planning tables as a second detached attachment. Route Tourism General overview 1st attachment Route instances on route Target planning tourism Route planning Planning elements Planning aids Background Collection Analysis Terracina Target group & purposes Processing case study Compound analysis Technical res. Resources

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