The collapse of tourism caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing many destinations to rethink their economic model, by focusing on sustainability and innovation. Advances in tourism impact assessment can not only improve tourism products and services, but also guide the sector towards responsible choices for the post-COVID era. The paper proposes a new way to assess tourism products using the Life Cycle Assessment—LCA methodology. Thanks to this method the authors quantify the environmental impacts of tourism choices and propose alternative green solutions. Innovation is therefore aimed at promoting a new awareness to support sustainable tourism after the COVID-19 pandemic. Once the impacts have been quantified, local governments can make decisions in their plans to promote the most sustainable solutions. The application of the methodology to a typical case study for the Mediterranean area—Cinque Terre National Park in the Liguria Region (Italy)—further helps administrations to transfer and replicate the authors’ proposal. The proposed methodology is applied taking into account several priority issues for host territories such as the activities carried out by tourists, tourism mobility, and accommodation.

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.

In the context of land-use planning, sustainable tourism is becoming very important. This paper defines an innovative approach meant to support local authorities in Mediterranean countries in managing this expanding industry. Mediterranean destinations suffer from seasonality and experience many negative impacts related to mass tourism. Tourism has economically positive outcomes, however development related to uncontrolled tourism can lead to very damaging impacts. Managed well, tourism can play a positive role in the environmental, socioeconomic and cultural development of a city. This research analyses the main impacts caused by mass tourism, and it proposes, based on current scientific literature, a method to quantify the tourism carrying capacity of a Mediterranean destination. The concept of tourism carrying capacity refers to the maximum number of tourists that can visit a destination at the same time without causing negative impacts. In order to preserve the identity of a tourist attraction, this threshold should not be exceeded. This carrying capacity should be included in all the local plans for tourism. In recent years, many Mediterranean cities have occasionally exceeded their carrying capacity, compromising their natural/urban environment, lifestyle and cultural traditions. The concept of having a carrying capacity is quite understandable and immediate, but its quantification is not so easy. Within the literature, there are a few examples of practical calculations, and yet there is no unified or predominant methodology to obtain comparable results. The authors apply the carrying capacity methodology to two different tourist destinations in the Liguria Region of Italy. The first case study considered is the city centre of Genoa that has in the last few years had an increasing number of visitors but seems to be far from reaching its threshold. The second case is the Cinque Terre Natural Park, a well-known destination that every year attracts thousands of tourists.