Turismo lento come pratica di sostenibilità innovativa

This paper considers slow travel as an innovative leisure practice and slowness as the quintessence of tourist sustainability. It is to be meant as a particular space-time framework that, while encouraging the visit of an area in a responsible way (from the environmental, cultural and social point of view) it encourages residents toward a more complete activation of local assets. The reflexive approach and the interpretive literature are the theoretical means by which slowness is described as “thick tourism”, that is as a “humanistic dimension” that includes several criteria of usability of the space. They embrace not only the use of soft mobility but also travellers’ will to capture the intimate geography of the destinations, in accordance with a territorial identity that can be traced in the ecological relationship between nature and society. All this often requires new strategies in order to organize a supply capable of transferring more effectively the specific value of the landscapes and local identities into the services and products of the region. Participatory planning and the adoption of interpretative techniques may be regarded as particularly prone to support this process, and to call into question the cooperation among local actors, as the only capable of leading the way of assets towards more integrated models of regional sustainability.