The outbreak of COVID-19 confronted the international community with critical health, social, and economic challenges. Travel and tourism were among the hardest affected sectors. In 2020 and 2021 new travel trends emerged, emphasizing local destinations, short distances, and consequently, lower-carbon transportation (proximity tourism). Post-pandemic recovery represents an opportunity to bounce back better by rethinking the sector’s economic model for the sake of sustainability and innovation. This paper disseminates the research that led to the structuring of guidelines for a breakthrough and inclusive municipal-level action plan for the promotion of sustainable tourism, as part of the Tourism Friendly Cities project. An operational methodology is discussed here, whereby key stakeholder participation, conceptualized through a sextuple helix model, is the foundation of the planning process. A small-scale action and a qualitative assessment tool of the participatory process are also illustrated. The proposed methodology corroborates the vast positive effects deriving from stakeholder participation in terms of trust, ownership, planning quality, innovativeness and sustainability of interventions. In applying the methodology, although the digital framework was evaluated positively in terms of the number of participants that could be involved, data collection, and confidentiality of activities, the evaluation shows that hybrid modes of participation are more desirable.

The preservation of the environment, culture and local traditions and the participation of people are the aspects to consider for a sustainable tourism. In this regard, tourist sustainability should involve the environmental, socio-economic and cultural dimensions.The Mediterranean has always been the ideal framework for a sustainable tourism; the environment and the cultural heritage existent, in particular in coastal areas, is in fact considerable. The beauties of these areas are still today visited by millions of tourists.Despite the importance of the topic, observing the current regulations, a tool specifically dedicated to the management of the tourism has not been identified. Therefore, an accurate planning is essential to define innovative strategies aim to combine the benefits to the negative impacts of tourism. This paper proposes a Sustainable Tourism Action Plan -STAP -that seeks to combine these two closely linked aspects. In fact, impacts of tourism -alteration of the landscape, resource depletion and air pollutionare incident precisely on touristic destinations.For example, the thematic tourism (rural, natural,...) is particularly orients towards the sustainability, and it has positively impact on the major tourist pressures (high number of visitors, seasonal concentrations, use of polluting means of transport,...).More generally, the above Action Plan is aimed to realize an international strategy adaptable to local situations, to promote sustainable development at the national level and to encourage the creation of networks among different Mediterranean coastal areas. The proposed methodological approach has been applied in Liguria, one of the most visited regions in the Mediterranean.

The SUMP -Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan -introduced by the European Union in 2013, is a strategic mobility tool intended to promote sustainable activities at an urban level. The SUMP wants to improve the quality of life of citizens and to involve people and stakeholders in the decision-making process. The "Bremen Declaration on Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning in Europe" (2016), has definitely defined that a good SUMP should: integrate the mobility planning into urban planning; support environmental, social and economic sustainability; and adopt an urban vision giving priority to people rather than vehicles, promoting pedestrian and cycling mobility. The paper joins the ongoing debate on sustainable mobility considering another aspect that should be included in the SUMP: urban safety and security. The authors put into relation the concepts of safety and security with the concept of sustainability. Currently, also the most innovative plans consider urban safety and security only with regard to road accidents. Although this last aspect is of paramount importance, we should be careful not to overlook a more global approach to safety and security. A place is considered safe in relation to its crime rate, risk perception, environmental or social degradation. The research intends to define a new approach that considers a rather broader and deeper view of the issue of urban safety and security within the SUMP. The methodological approach initially uses the SWOT (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats) analysis to investigate the state-of-the-art of the SUMPS toll. The authors identified a series of indicators -objective and subjective -to measure urban safety and security. Subjective indicator aims at quantifying the perception of risk by the population, which lives, studies, works in the urban area under study. Finally, the authors applied the methodology proposed in this article to the city centre of Genoa.

Tourism and sustainable development are closely related to each other. In 2015, the United Nation established the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development along with the sustainable development goals for the coming years. Sustainable tourism plays a direct or indirect role in achieving some of these goals, enhancing social equity, economic efficiency and environmental responsibility. All other forms of tourism are the opposite of any definition of sustainable development. For this reason, the paper proposes an innovative methodology helping local administrations manage tourism in a sustainable way. The idea is to integrate the calculation of the tourism carrying capacity -the maximum number of tourists that can visit, at the same time, a destination without causing negative impacts-in Tourism Strategic Plans. The authors' research interests focus on the Mediterranean region, which is famous to be the first tourist destination in the world. Sustainable tourism can contribute significantly to the economic development of local communities without creating negative impacts on the physical, social and cultural environment of a tourist destination. The carrying capacity methodology was designed to avoid these negative impacts and to support tourism sustainable development. The paper suggests that policy makers and urban planners calculate the carrying capacity of the main tourist attractions in their region. Once calculated, the authors propose different solutions/actions to be included in Tourism Strategic Plans depending on whether the carrying capacity is greater, less or equal to the actual number of tourists who visit a destination daily. This innovative approach should be integrated in all Tourism Strategic Plans in the Mediterranean area. The authors analyse a case studythe Liguria Regionto make the carrying capacity assessment more concrete giving guidance to local authorities all over the world.

This paper analyzes some natural and man-made disasters that happened in recent years, which demonstrate how the resilience of a city does not depend only on the actions carried out by public authorities, but it requires the joint work of all actors that live or work in a city. Resilience represents the ability of an urban system to adapt to an external event and quickly return to normality. In recent years, urban resilience has mainly addressed natural risks, neglecting man-made disaster. Therefore, this study considers the risk issue in relation to the resilience concept within urban planning and policies to achieve sustainability and urban security. Urban resilience has become an important objective for cities, particularly to face climate change. The paper proposes a review of the existing Civil Protection Urban Emergency Plan, as a sector plan to support urban planning at the local level, aimed at building resilience in cities. In particular, the proposed Emergency Plan reduces risk and increases resilience by identifying specific scenarios and actions that every city actor—public authorities, research, enterprises, and citizens—can implement. This proposal contributes to the implementation of the quadruple helix principle, according to which the involvement of these four actors is necessary to achieve a common goal, such as increasing urban resilience. The proposed methodology is then applied to the man-made disasters that have involved the city (such as the flood of 2011 and the collapse of the Morandi Bridge in 2018). Genoa represents a good example to be studied according to the “learning-by-doing” approach to understand how the city has responded, adapting resiliently, to natural and man-made events thanks to the collaboration of all the actors above mentioned. The new scenarios, included in the Urban Emergency Plan, can play a fundamental role, both in the emergency and prevention phase, and can help other cities around the world in planning more resilient cities to face higher risks.