Green Infrastructure and Slow Tourism. A Methodological Approach for Mining Heritage Accessibility in the Sulcis-Iglesiente Bioregion (Sardinia, Italy)

Abstract

In European countries many measures are carried out to improve the disadvantaged conditions and socio-economic marginality of rural areas in comparison with central places. These conditions also affect the quality of travel for visitors and tourists. Therefore, in response to a 'new' tourist demand, motivated also by the restrictions following the spread of the Covid-19 virus in recent years, the institutions and the different local actors are working more incisively to improve rural areas. The rural tourism services offer, combined with the Green Infrastructure (GI) project, at different scales - from local to regional - prove to be interesting territorial development strategies to achieve the Agenda 2030 objectives. This contribution considers the Sulcis Iglesiente - Guspinese area, in the Sardinia Region (IT), as a case study. In this area, the landscape context is marked by past mining activity and the project of a path of historical, cultural and religious values has proved to be an activator of regenerative processes, in environmental, social and economic terms. The present study proposes a methodological approach to develop an index (FI - Feasibility Index) to assess the feasibility of the Stop Places (SPs) schemes along a horse trail to integrate the current slow mobility by bicycle and pedestrian in the bioregion.

Towards an Ecosystem of Innovation for Inner Areas: A Research Plan for the Tourist Development on the Ogliastra Region (Sardinia, Italy)

“…The concept is linked to a conscious deceleration (Gardner, 2009), to a transition from quantity to quality of the tourist experience (Heitmann et al, 2011), and to respect for the place's peculiarity and the related community (Smith & Eadington, 1992;Valls et al, 2019). Slow tourism is often linked to naturalistic and rural destinations (Ladu et al, 2023); then, it could catalyse the inner area's development as the destination. Accordingly, in Sardinia, the focus on tourism deseasonalisation intends to link the most popular seaside tourism with inner areas' tradition, culture and landscape (Mariotti et al, 2020).…”