No abstract

Salt mines, a significant category of local, regional, national, and/or European underground heritage, are becoming attractive tourism destinations. This paper examines three cases of salt mining in different European countries, namely Wieliczka in Poland, Campina de Cima in Portugal, and Turda in Romania. They are analyzed in the context of history, typical attributes of their attractiveness, and new uses after the salt extraction was or is going to be stopped, in order to detect their unique values as important assets for both Underground Built Heritage (UBH) and Salt Heritage Tourism (SHT). The results of their comparison show that despite a positive impact related to their protection as cultural and industrial heritage, there are also some negative aspects related to increasing costs of their maintenance and adaptation of salt mines to new functions and to meet the tourism needs. By putting in place measures to enhance the awareness of their values and for activating the local community, the three mines are showcases for the economic outputs for their sites and regions, as well as for increasing knowledge regarding UBH.

Modern society is fascinated by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), physical laziness, isolation from nature, and a preference for staying indoors. Despite the general acceptance and understanding of the health benefits of recreation in the open air, a change is being seen in the recreational patterns of urban dwellers, as they spend less time outdoors. In order to counteract such behaviours, we can try to apply ICTs to enhance time spent outdoors. The performed study aimed to find uses of ICT solutions in designing public spaces in order to enhance and promote a healthy lifestyle. The selected examples show possible applications of ICT in promoting active recreation, e.g. mobile applications for sport activities, urban games in line with the idea of the Playable City, and urban furniture and outdoor hotspots enabling access to the Internet. The research findings proved that digitisation is not only a threat to a healthy lifestyle, but that it can also create opportunities to improve the quality of life.