During the last decades, tourism activities were promoted by local and regional policy-makers as a universal solution for rural areas’ suffering from massive depopulation, technological delay, or economical struggles. A large debate flourished in the literature on whether and to what extent tourism could play a role in supporting rural localities. Some valid evidence was brought by researchers backing the cure-all role of tourism, as well as by those who criticized the limited, or even negative, impact of tourism on rural areas. However, following the economic crisis of 2008, the attention switched to a newer and more relevant topic: Does tourism increase the resilience performance of rural areas? Our paper tries to answer this question by focusing on both economic and demographic resilience, which are the most sensitive sectors during an important shock. Following a detailed territorial breakdown according to a twofold typology (spatial accessibility and number of employees), correlations were used to determine the impact of tourism activities on building resilience for each type of rural territory. The results indicated a positive effect of tourism activities upon economic and demographic resilience performance in highly accessible rural areas, while in peripheral areas, the impact was insignificant. This paper provides new insights into the various roles that tourism plays in rural areas and offers suggestions for local policy-makers.
The potential role of tourism in enhancing a balanced territorial development is officially acknowledged by the EU. However, little is known regarding the extent to which tourism in Romania contributes or could contribute to reducing regional inequalities. The present study approaches the matter of the growth of tourism demand and supply in relation to the type of territory (lagging, intermediary, leading), at both regional and local levels. The results indicate a significant geographical concentration of tourism activity, despite a noticeable diffusion of tourism across the country in the last decades. This derives from the fact that the leading territories, which already took the lion's share of the tourism supply and demand also retain the highest part of the increases in tourism demand. As a consequence, tourism sector stands out more as a factor that can increase territorial disparities than contribute to their reduction. However, a considerable potential for tourism growth in terms of tourism supply characterizes the lagging regions. Accordingly, differentiated tourism public policies related to the type of territory could be considered.
The modern concept of smart city rose from a relatively ambiguous term dealing with the future of urban areas to one of the most popular contemporary fields of research. Tackling a considerable range of topics from digitalization, citizen involvement, sustainability or governance, it managed to rapidly attract both academics and policy-makers. This study reviews the research papers published on smart city concept with application to European Union, and especially to the new member states from Central and Eastern Europe. The results indicate many common features of smart cities in EU, but also some peculiarities of CEE in this regard, many deriving from their socialist inheritance. Meanwhile, it can be noticed the rather incipient status of smart cities approaches, the insufficient resources allocated by local authorities, which rely extensively on EU funding, the lack of awareness from citizens and the lack of a comprehensive and structured strategic approach. In order to tackle the abovementioned issues, our paper suggests a series of measures and directions for policy-makers, local administrations and business environment.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.