Mobilities and Hospitable Cities

Mobilities and
Hospitable Cities
Mobilities and
Hospitable Cities
Edited by
Ezio Marra and Marxiano Melotti

Mobilities and Hospitable Cities
Edited by Ezio Marra and Marxiano Melotti
This book first published 2018
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2018 by Ezio Marra, Marxiano Melotti and contributors
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-5275-0533-2

ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-0533-9
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
Part One: Guido Martinotti’s Legacy
Chapter One ................................................................................................. 4

The Metropolis and Beyond
Ezio Marra
Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 20

City-Users and Hospitable Cities
Nicolò Costa
Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 38

Early International Research Activities
Armando Montanari
Part Two: Around the World
Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 58

International Mobilities and Security in European and American Cities
Sophie Body-Gendrot
Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 66

Hospitable and Healthy Destination: A Collaborative Approach
Alan Fyall, Heather Hartwell and Ann Hemingway
Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 79

Making Places, Selling Places: City Marketing and Commodification
Giandomenico Amendola
Chapter Seven............................................................................................ 86
Night-Time Economy, Tourism and Conflicts: Barcelona and Lisbon
Emanuele Giordano, Jordi Nofre and Emanuele Tataranni
vi Table of Contents
Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 101

Beyond Venice: Heritage and Tourism in the New Global World
Marxiano Melotti
Part Three: Some Italian Cases
Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 142

Urban Regime and Policy Performance: The Case of Turin
Silvano Belligni and Stefania Ravazzi
Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 158

Problem Areas and Opportunities in a Complex City: The Case of Rome
Fiammetta Mignella Calvosa and Fiammetta Pilozzi
Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 170

The Variable Geometry of Urban Governance: A Comparative Research
Fortunata Piselli
Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 185

Gentlemen, Professionals and Profiteers: The Case of Naples
Guido Borelli
Appendix ................................................................................................. 210

Destination Competitiveness and Education System:
Old Resources for New Policies
Antonio Minguzzi, Angelo Presenza and Maria Concetta Perfetto
Contributors ............................................................................................. 239

INTRODUCTION
This collection presents a number of selected papers presented at the

international conference on “Mobilities and Hospitable Cities” (Rome,
January 2014), which was held to honour the memory of Guido Martinotti,
a leading figure in urban studies. The volume is focused on the huge
changes that have occurred in many cities owing to the processes of
globalization and postmodernization. Special attention is paid to the
phenomenon of city-users and to the increasing social, economic and
cultural importance of tourism. Many authors, therefore, deal with tourism,
particularly its international dimensions, in a variety of different but
complementary approaches.
The chapters by Ezio Marra, Nicolò Costa, and Armando Montanari,
who worked with Guido Martinotti on a number of projects and in several
circumstances, illustrate his intellectual biography, the breadth of his
research interests and the significance of his contributions to urban
sociology, particularly his main work entitled Metropoli, analysing
Martinotti’s theories of urban mobility and their impact on tourism studies.
In providing an overall framework for urban themes, Giandomenico
Amendola deals with the commodification of cities and of urban marketing,
with particular reference to tourism.
After September 11, 2001 and the attacks which followed (Madrid,
2004; London, 2005), and the explosion of banlieues in Paris (2005) and
elsewhere, as well as the terrorist attacks in different European cities
between 2015 and 2017, the problem of urban safety has grown
paramount. In this book the theme is aptly and realistically discussed by a
prominent specialist, Sophie Body-Gendrot.
Safety, with specific reference to its social health dimension, is
discussed in the interesting chapter by Alan Fyall, Heather Hartwell, and
Ann Hemingway.
Emanuele Giordano, Jordi Nofre, and Emanuele Tataranni dwell upon
the “touristization” of the urban night in post-industrial cities in Western
Europe, particularly in some historical neighbourhoods in Barcelona and
Lisbon.
Venice, one of the icons of international tourism, is the protagonist in
the paper by Marxiano Melotti, who extends his gaze to include the States
and China for their commercial replicas of parts of the city. While the
2 Introduction
best-known instance of this process is the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas,

the mimicries and reproductions in China also include outlets and malls
recalling the Italian Renaissance, with echoes of Rome and Florence.
The controversial problem of urban governance is another major
theme. The research by Silvano Belligni and Stefania Ravazzi investigates
local administrations in Turin in a period of complex urban change and the
citizens’ perception of their performance. Fortunata Piselli highlights the
variable geometry of urban governance synthesizing the results of an in-
depth comparative survey on some large cities in Northern, Central and
Southern Italy.
The problems of Italian cities constitute the main focus in other
remarkable contributions. Fiammetta Mignella Calvosa and Fiammetta
Pilozzi foreground “green” dynamics in dealing with Rome, at the same
time capital of the Italian Republic and the Vatican State, the main seat of
the Catholic Church, entirely embedded in the city’s intensely crowded
metropolitan area. Guido Borelli, dealing with the building industry, real
estate and illicit gain in Naples, compares the current situation with the
1950s and the 1960s of the twentieth century, already depicted in
Francesco Rosi’s famous film, Le mani sulla città [Hands over the City]
(1963).
The appendix is devoted to a presentation of tourism degree programmes
in European universities. Antonio Minguzzi, Angelo Presenza and Maria
Concetta Perfetto analyse the relationships between the higher education
system and tourism competitiveness in some countries, proving a positive
correlation between the success of a tourist destination and the quality of
its university system.
The contributions in this volume usefully focus on a number of
relevant themes and salient dimensions of the new urban issues, in Europe
and beyond.
PART ONE:
GUIDO MARTINOTTI’S LEGACY

CHAPTER ONE
THE METROPOLIS AND BEYOND
EZIO MARRA
1. A modern polymath
A leading Italian sociologist, Professor Emeritus Guido Martinotti (Milan
1938–Paris 2012), was one of the scholars who carried urban sociology
into the twenty-first century through his outstanding research on the
interaction of technologies with the spatial organization of society.1 He
was well-known worldwide, notably in the United States and France,
which he regarded as his “second homes.”
He graduated in Law from the State University of Milan with a
dissertation on the sociology of law under the supervision of Renato
Treves. As a young graduate, he was a Harkness fellow at Columbia
University in New York (1962–1964), and one of the promising scholars
who would soon develop a comparative perspective in Italian social and
political studies–among them Giuliano Amato, Paolo Farneti, Franco
Ferraresi, Alberto Martinelli, Gianfranco Poggi and Marino Regini.
He first taught in Milan (Faculty of Architecture, 1966–1969; Faculties
of Law and Political Sciences, 1969–1975) and in Turin (Faculty of
Political Sciences, 1975–1981), of which he was dean (1978–1981) after
Norberto Bobbio. He was at the University of Pavia for a few years, and
then joined again the Faculty of Political Sciences at the State University
of Milan (1989–1998). In 1998 he moved to the University of Milano-
Bicocca, of which he was one of the founders, and vice-rector until 2007.
At Milano-Bicocca he was coordinator of the degree course in Tourism
Sciences. He started this programme in close collaboration with Nicolò
Costa, who in this volume dwells upon Martinotti’s commitment to and
key role in promoting this new degree course in Italian universities. There
he also launched two doctoral programmes, the interdisciplinary QUA_SI
1
See M. Castells’ 2010 Preface to the second edition of his Rise of the Network
Society.
The Metropolis and Beyond 5
(Quality of Life in the Information Society) and URBEUR (European Urban

Studies), which in 2013 conflated into URBEUR Studi Urbani, an
international doctoral network joined by Paris Sciences Po, London School
of Economics, King’s College London, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin,
Universitat de Barcelona, and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
In 2007 he moved to the Italian Institute of Human Sciences (SUM) in
Florence, where he taught until retirement. Throughout his career, he was
a Visiting Professor at distinguished academic institutions in Europe,
notably Paris Sciences Po, and in the United States, most frequently
working with Harvey Molotch at UCSB (University of California Santa
Barbara) and NYU (New York University).
Although he was mainly perceived as an urban sociologist, Martinotti
was a social scientist in the broadest sense and a polymath: a scholar in an
overarching, most complete sense.
Since his early days as a student at the Cesare Beccaria, the liceo
classico (high school) in Milan, where he met his life partner Eva
Cantarella, he delved into the humanities. At the same time, however, as
Eva recalled in a conversation with the authors of this book, he was also
very fond of physics and biology (and later in life also astronomy, since he
was an experienced skipper). This interest in the “hard sciences”, as we
shall see, was a distinguishing trait in his entire career, the hallmark of his
scholarly life being an unceasing dialogue between esprit de finesse, given
his intense background in the classics, and esprit de géometrie, given his
accomplished interest in mathematics and computer science.
2. The story of the metropolis

In 1981 the results of the 12th Italian census, compared with the figures
from the previous ones, showed that the population of the largest Italian
cities was decreasing, similar to all major European core cities.
Though in the urban belts the population was still increasing, for the
first time in about two hundred years the major urban centres showed a
decline. Some scholars began to speak of counter-urbanization (Berry
1976) or de-urbanization (Van den Berg, Drewett and Klaassen 1982).
Since then the decrease in the population of many European cities has
continued and is still remarkable today.
The process has been interpreted in different ways. Some regarded it as
a temporary event linked to suburbanization (Hall and Hay 1980); others
considered it an epochal phenomenon marking a real decline of the city
(Van den Berg, Drewett and Klaassen 1982). Still others believed that the
ending growth of cities did not entail the vanishing of urbanism as a way
6 Chapter One
of life; on the contrary, in most developed countries the inhabitants of rural

areas had already assumed or were assuming patterns of typically urban
behaviour (Bell 1980, 539). The diffusion of individual means of transport
and of mass communications had urbanized the people living outside the
big cities, at least psychologically (Bell 1980). Finally, others have
claimed that the city “no longer has a specificity distinguishing it from the
surrounding territory” (Ceri and Rossi 1987, 580).
The finding, in 1981, that seven out of the ten largest Italian cities were
losing large numbers of their population was somewhat astonishing. To
those who took an optimistic viewpoint it was just a passing event,
whereas others regarded it as an irreversible process.
The trend was emphasized by ISTAT’s (the Italian National Institute of
Statistics) grouping of municipalities according to their demographic size.
From the data thus presented and their naïve reading, it seemed that
municipalities with under 20,000 inhabitants continued to grow at a fast
pace, those with between 20,000 and 100,000 inhabitants continued to
grow, though more slowly, while larger municipalities were undergoing a
demographic decline (Martinotti 1993, 100).
The trend continued in the following years. So much so that Corrado
Barberis, who had directed a research project for the Ministry of Agriculture,
came to argue that “people are returning to live in the countryside” and
therefore “the majority of Italians now live in rural municipalities” (INSOR
1988). These statements could well be used to update Durrell Huff’s
examples in How to Lie with Statistics (1954). In fact, Barberis used a
definition of “rural municipality” dating back to 1951 and regarded many
municipalities located next to the major metropolises as rural, but which
had already become part of large suburban areas. The logic was olim
ruralis semper ruralis, “once rural, always rural.”
An incorrect use of statistics is not uncommon, but it can produce
totally unfounded alarm. Barberis’ statements were taken as read by
various newspapers and by a number of national and local media.
Martinotti criticized Barberis’ statements in many lectures and in his book
Metropoli. La nuova morfologia sociale della città [Metropolis. The New
Social Morphology of the City] (1993), showing that they were false and
misleading. Indeed, if we introduce the distinction between metropolitan
and non-metropolitan municipalities, we see that metropolitan municipalities
below 100,000 inhabitants grew much faster than municipalities of the same
demographic magnitude that were not under metropolitan influence
(Martinotti 1993, 108).
In brief, the belts of large metropolitan areas grew very rapidly, while
the population of their respective city centres was in decline. Thus, the
demographic balance of the metropolitan areas was always positive. The

“metropolitanization” (an ugly but useful term) of the towns adjacent to
the largest cities was so intense that many authors even began talking of
the advent of an “urban sprawl” to the detriment of a countryside which
was rapidly disappearing owing to the pervasive and sometimes invasive
spread of urban lifestyles (Dal Pozzolo 2002).
The city is changing. Following Martinotti, this means that we are to
revise and redefine the scientific tools—above all, the theoretical
framework—we use to analyse it.
3. Metropoli: The master work

Martinotti’s main work, Metropoli. La nuova morfologia sociale della
città, published in 1993, was followed in 1999 by his edited collection La
dimensione metropolitana: sviluppo e governo della nuova città [The
Metropolitan Dimension: Development and Governance of the New City].
In Metropoli Martinotti singled out three useful analytical criteria for
defining the metropolitan areas: 1) morphology, in terms of spatial
contiguity, distance and/or belonging to a specific orographical or
geographical system etc.; 2) interdependence, due to exchanges of people,
goods or information (commuting, communication, telephone calls etc.);
3) homogeneity, due to similarity in terms of density and socio-economic
characteristics.
New urban spaces connect the three different layers or different social
formations. The first layer is the traditional town that coincides with a
sociological unit defined by interactions between individuals, groups,
organizations, and other social actors. This layer survives, but in
Martinotti’s framework it is embedded in the “first-generation metropolis,”
a second layer in which the metropolitan area constitutes a FUR (functional
urban region) whose uncertain borders are still marked by centre-periphery
relations. This second layer, in its extreme version of “megalopolis,”
(Gottmann 1990, 1994), still remains linked to the centre-periphery
relations. The third layer is a recent development, where central areas are
replaced by internationally connected “global” nodes. Its definition is still
underway, as the various labels naming it show (“world city”, “global
city”, “exopolis” etc.).
The progress of these three coexisting layers in terms of sustainable
growth, social equity and good quality of life depends on their
intersections (Martinotti 2008, 7). However, these three layers of
polymorphous urban agglomeration interact with the internet and with
digital technologies (Martinotti 2008, 52–4). It is precisely this close
8 Chapter One
interaction of technologies and social configurations that makes the future

less predictable.
Martinotti identified four urban populations that characterize social
change in the urban context and its structure: residents, commuters, city
users and metropolitan businessmen (Martinotti 1993, 1999, 2010;
Martinotti and Diamantini 2009). He believed that the central object of
urban sociology was the so-called traditional city, where inhabitants and
workers coincided spatially and socially (Martinotti 1993, 143). In this old
configuration, the night-time population (the inhabitants living in the city)
and the daytime population (those who only work there) largely
overlapped. But the city’s productive capacity and its transport network
expanded, increasing its attractiveness due to job and income opportunities.
This marked the rise of a new figure, the commuter, who belonged to the
daytime but not to the night-time population. This was an important trait of
the first-generation metropolis (Martinotti 1993, 145).
As the first-generation metropolis evolves, the transport system
develops, while the population’s working time decreases and the income
and leisure time increase. This entails the transition from a strongly
production-oriented society to an increasingly market-oriented and
consumer-oriented society.
Large cities and metropolises offer increasing opportunities for
recreational and cultural activities, such as museums exhibits, sports events,
concerts, etc., not to mention the pleasure of shopping or strolling in the
historic centre. At this stage city consumers and city users share the
metropolitan scene (Martinotti 1993). Obviously, the three metropolitan
populations mentioned above partially coincide, as the same individual can
live, work, shop and have fun in the city. But in the second-generation
metropolis there is an ever-increasing number of external individuals
(consumers and commuters) who, though not living in the city, use it
during the day (Martinotti 1993).
The city user is on the move, all year round, with no set timetables
(Urry 1990, Martinotti 2004a). Workers, no longer tied to Fordist
production, also move more freely and flexibly, and this makes it more
difficult to estimate the urban population at any given time.
Finally, according to Martinotti, there is a fourth, smaller but highly
qualified metropolitan population, which performs high-level economic
functions and benefits from middle or upper-middle class kinds of
consumption. This population is made up of so-called metropolitan
businessmen, who usually move long distances and are particularly
attracted by the financial centre and the business opportunities offered by
the metropolis.
The metropolitan businessmen are strongly international and are

socially and economically relevant for their high consumption standards
and for their ability to take decisions affecting the territory by choosing
where to locate new companies or to make economic investments.
Obviously, this type of population is particularly demanding in terms of
cultural consumption and requires top class exclusive hotels and lodgings.
The presence of these four populations, according to Martinotti,
characterizes the third-generation metropolis, which is still emerging;
therefore, its morphology is still to be fully defined (Martinotti 1993, 152).
The study of metropolitan populations requires adequate statistical
data, which in Italy at least did not exist before 1981: the censuses
concerned almost exclusively resident and non-resident inhabitants. The
1991 and 2001 censuses also concerned people moving for work or study,
but they did not take into consideration the much more numerous
individuals who go to town for other reasons, including business and
leisure.
This paradigm applies well to the study of the metropolitan phenomenon
and, with some changes, to the study of tourism and migration. More
generally, Martinotti’s analyses show that official statistics are largely
inadequate to study the growing territorial mobility of the population and
its profound transformations. In his own words, “the new metropolitan
reality overlaps with the ancient urban or municipal reality without
eliminating it: the two entities coexist both in the territory and in the minds
of men” (Martinotti 1999).
4. Beyond Metropoli
His unrelenting attention to social change led him to publish, in 1997, the
Italian version of Saskia Sassen’s 1992 study, The Global City (La città
globale), contributing his own introduction to the volume. With the
explosion of the Internet and of web communications, he started
reconsidering his theory of the metropolis.
His later works include two edited volumes: Urban Civilization from
Yesterday to the Next Day (2009), with Davide Diamantini, and La
metropoli contemporanea [The Contemporary Metropolis] (2012), with
Stefano Forbici.
In the 2009 volume he analysed the transition from Gemeinschaft
(community) to Gesellschaft (society) and from Gesellschaft to
Vernetzenschaft, as he tentatively defined the interactive network society
(Martinotti and Diamantini 2009, 48).
10 Chapter One
In updating and adjusting his paradigm, he increasingly focused on the

interaction of technologies, places, and spaces, characterizing advanced
urban studies at the inception of the twenty-first century and thus became a
prominent voice among the international scholars facing this theme from
different disciplinary angles.
Martinotti also added historic and cultural identity to the three criteria
defining the metropolitan areas mentioned earlier (spatial contiguity,
interdependence, and social composition). Maintaining that the metropolis
is by its very nature boundless, though of course not infinite, he criticized
demographic density as a defining parameter (Martinotti and Forbici
2012). In undermining this criterion, which correlates the number of
inhabitants with a specific territory, we are obliged to abandon the time-
hallowed view of the city by Louis Wirth (1938), almost unchallenged
until the 1990s, which claimed that it was possible to capture its essence
by means of three variables: size, density, and heterogeneity.
In response to the question posed by Sharon Zukin “Is There an Urban
Sociology?” (2011), Martinotti (2011a) produced a relevant study
identifying ten central themes to which a renewed urban sociology should
pay attention. He criticized the indiscriminate use of technical tools which
is likely to generate “theoretical poverty”–notably themed cartography and
GIS (Geographic Information Systems), neither of which is able by itself to
explain a social reality which is much more complex than the one they
purport to present.
His judgement in this respect is worth quoting: “The relation between
the richness of systematic (more or less) and cartographic–one is tempted
to say calligraphic–data on cities and theoretical poverty, despite some
good hunches, is in my mind the crux of the crisis of Urban Sociology”
(Martinotti 2011a).
5. A wide research horizon

Martinotti’s predominant interest in urban sociology was already evident
at the inception of his academic career. His anthology, Città e analisi
sociologica. I classici della sociologia urbana [City and Sociological
Analysis. The Classics of Urban Sociology], published as early as 1968
has constituted the basic reference for many generations of Italian
scholars.
As a social scientist, however, Martinotti cultivated other all-
encompassing research fields, often intersecting with his main interest in
urban studies. If he had not been such an accomplished, well-rounded
scholar, he would probably not have produced his best-known work,

Metropoli, nor updated it constantly.
He was naturally keen on the methodology of social research, and
reinforced this strong interest at Columbia University, as a pupil of Paul
Lazarsfeld. He also edited the Italian translation of Herbert H. Hyman’s
Survey Design and Analysis (Disegno della ricerca e analisi sociologica,
1967). These competences provided the backbone for his questionnaires
and quantitative methods, though he always avoided the extremes defined
by Sorokin as quantophrenia. At least two of his surveys using
questionnaires must be recalled here, the first one concerning Turin and
the second one Milan: La città difficile [The difficult city], carried out in
1982, and Milano ore sette: come vivono i milanesi (Milan at seven
o’clock: how the Milan people live), carried out in 1988. Without his
advanced methodological skills, he would not have been able to analyse
the dynamics of the Italian metropolitan areas with sophisticated
quantitative instruments, as he did in the second chapter of Metropoli.
Next, and again closely linked to his predominant research field, was
his keen interest in information technology, both as a research tool and as
an instrument capable of deeply affecting social relationships. In this
regard we must mention his book Informazione e sapere [Information and
Knowledge], published in 1992. His interest in the use of IT in the social
sciences was also linked to the international network of Data Archives; one
of the founders of IFDO (International Federation of Data Organizations), he
was its President for six years (1977–1983). This striking interdisciplinary
experience led to the 1993 volume and to the subsequent opus.
His further major field of research (and also civic concern) was the
rigorous study of politics: governance processes, electoral behaviour and
public policies, especially local municipal expenditure. Among his many
contributions on this subject, which he continued to study throughout his
life, we shall recall here the highly significant special issue of “Quaderni
di Sociologia” devoted to classes, voting, and politics in Italian cities
(Martinotti 1982). Here again, his attention to institutional dynamics and
the governance of metropolitan processes (see Rotelli 1999 and Ercole
1999) occupied a crucial role in his theoretical system.
6. Civic involvement
Martinotti intensely cultivated the sentiment for civil society and the
institutions regulating it, which is traditionally known in socio-political
12 Chapter One
studies as “civicness.”2 In particular, the school system and university

education were at the forefront of his mind.
It was not an academic interest in a strict sense, but rather civicness
infused with scientific rigor. Here we must remember Gli studenti
universitari: profilo sociologico [University Students: A Sociological
Profile] (1967), Education in a Changing Society (1977), edited together
with Antonina Kloskowska, and È possibile una università che funzioni
davvero? [Is a university that really works at all possible?] (2006), updated
by his speech È possibile un’università diversa? [Is a different university
possible?], given at the University of Camerino in 2011 and now available
online.
As Nicolò Costa recalls in this volume, Martinotti presided over the
government-appointed commission, producing the preliminary plan for
international agreements which brought the Italian education system in
line with those of other European countries. The report of the so-called
“Martinotti Commission”, with fifteen members representing different
academic disciplines, led to Italy’s participation in the 1998 Sorbonne
meeting which initiated the harmonization of European higher education
systems. Yet, given the developments of the university reform policy, he
was not satisfied with its implementation, which was affected by the
intricacies of the “idiotic bureaucracy,” a label he borrowed from the
mathematician Bruno De Finetti.
In an open forum on the Encyclopaedia Treccani website, Guido
Martinotti expressed his concerns about the possible end of sociology as a
science. In his view, sociology was (and indeed in part it still is) at risk of
becoming mere opinion, losing its research-based status. Even in the most
heated debates and critical confrontations, however, he listened patiently
and looked upon his interlocutors benevolently.
Martinotti was a truly exemplary professor. He loved teaching and
liked to stay young. Those who had the privilege to know him3 will
2
See E. Cantarella and G. Martinotti, Cittadini si diventa. Torino: Einaudi Scuola,
1996.
3
I first met Guido Martinotti in 1973, as a student of the Social Science
Methodology course he was teaching, with Joseph la Palombara and Herbert
Hyman among others, for Co.S.Pos (Comitato delle Scienze Politiche e Sociali).
The course was jointly sponsored by the Olivetti Foundation and the Ford
Foundation to promote the social sciences in Italian universities and was attended
by young scholars specializing in political science (Turin) and sociology (Milan).
Martinotti’s lectures, focused on survey and cross-tabulation techniques involving
the use of computer software, were extremely innovative, therefore successfully
inspiring for us all.
remember his constant, genuine effort to understand the new. And they
will remember the attention with which he used to listen, the puzzled look
while he stroked his beard, and clever smile when he was thinking
intensely: traits familiar to all those who were close to him and were
familiar with the depth of his vision as well as his undeniable sense of
humour. The generosity, loyalty and frankness of the man surround his
memory with a special aura.
Guido Martinotti leaves us with an extraordinary human and
intellectual legacy, hence the great responsibility of keeping it alive.
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Vision,” Sociologica, 3, 1–18.
CHAPTER TWO
CITY-USERS AND THE HOSPITABLE CITY
NICOLÒ COSTA
1. Introduction
This chapter dwells upon the activity of Guido Martinotti in urban
sociology and sociology of tourism.
The aims of this chapter are:
– to reconstruct the origins and developments of his ideas on the links
between urban transformations, tourism, hospitality, and human
mobilities;
– to examine the applications of his ideas and his research to
university education through the establishment of degree courses in
tourism.
The methods used are:
– for his scientific activity, a synchronic interpretation of Martinotti’s
writings and their diachronic or historical-biographical contextualization,
also by citing some publications that I had the honour of writing
with him or I wrote with his encouragement;
– for his teaching activity, an analysis of his video-lectures for his
distance course on Sociology of Tourism and Land Use at the
International University Consortium “Nettuno” and his lectures for
the degree course in Tourism and Local Community Sciences that
he established in Milano Bicocca University.
The contents are:
– subjects directly or indirectly connected with urban transformations,
city-users and tourism;
– subjects explicitly concerning tourism education at the university
level and the related teaching issues.
The conclusion will underline the appropriateness of orienting studies
and research on tourism towards post-Fordist production centred on
hospitality/mobility.
City-Users and Hospitable Cities 21
2. Main topics of Martinotti’s research related to tourism

2.1 Theory of city-users and the sociological “discovery”
of tourists
Martinotti’s interest in tourism began between 1989 and 1992, when,
reworking incessantly, he was writing the third chapter of his book
Metropoli (1993), entitled “The four metropolitan populations.” Martinotti
used an original method to outline the new social morphology of the city
with an advanced economy. He found the analysis of urban ecology and
the Marxist theory of conflict too limited because they focused exclusively
on the inhabitants, i.e. those permanently resident in the city, whereas,
according to him, it was necessary to focus on human mobilities.
Martinotti argued that cities are dynamic organisms, increasingly
characterized by information flows and spatial mobilities. This makes the
city limits porous and outdates the models of governance inherited from
the past and the tools of economic, social, demographic, and urban
diagnosis. To understand how the city is changing, it is necessary to know
how and why the residents and the “transient populations” move within
and between cities, experiencing them and connecting them in a
continuously different way over time.
Starting in 1989, Martinotti distributed drafts of the third chapter of
Metropoli to friends who could help clarify specific topics or examine
them more deeply. The city populations also included tourists, to whom up
to then Martinotti had given only indirect attention. Until 1989, he shared
the dominant idea in Italian sociology, influenced by French sociology,
that tourism was a sector of “free time,” which was supposed to have been
“freed” to provide a better quality of life for workers. In 1989 he was
missing the connection with the new orientations of sociology of tourism
dominated by Anglo-Saxon researchers (MacCannell, Cohen, Graburn,
etc.). They were concentrated around the journal “Annals of Tourism
Research” and within the Sociology of Tourism working group (not a
structured section) of the International Sociological Association, as well as
around the nascent Mediterranean Association of Sociology of Tourism
managed by Asterio Savelli. Moreover, in previous years, Martinotti had
studied free time in advanced-economy cities in relation to working times
according to a French model that considered these activities residual with
respect to work issues, the alpha and omega of industrial citizenship.
As a result, in 1989 he read my book and Savelli’s book, both entitled
Sociologia del turismo (Sociology of Tourism), which sought to summarize
the national and international debate on this subject (Costa 1989; Savelli
22 Chapter Two
1989). While appreciating and supporting our work, Martinotti politely

declared that he was dissatisfied with the results produced by the new
discipline at the beginning of the 1990s. According to him, research by the
“territorialists,” i.e. the sociologists who studied tourism processes in
organized space (e.g., the many contributions on the economic, environmental
and socio-cultural impacts of tourism), underestimated the fact that tourists
were a segment of a larger population, which he called “city-users.” It was
a population so important that it shaped the new social morphology of
advanced-economy cities. This population was not to be restricted to the
free time and shopping of residents and tourists; it also concerned the
students, the elderly, the sportsmen, etc. City-users were the result of a
new protagonism of advanced-economy cities, competing with each other
to attract metropolitan business persons, talented immigrants, researchers
and students, sportsmen, and people in entertainment, financial investments,
goods, etc.
Martinotti requested Italian and foreign sociologists of tourism to take
a step forward: to update their approach and include their contributions
within a macro-sociology of the cosmopolitan city on the move, the
“second-generation metropolis” and the nascent “third-generation
metropolis” characterized by mobility induced by metropolitan business
persons. He reaffirmed this idea to an international audience in his essay
“A city for whom? Transients and public life in the second-generation
metropolis” (1999). He asked researchers to investigate motivations and
behaviour of tourists within the city-users, identified as a “new class,
relatively free of location” (Martinotti 1999, 168).
Empirical analyses of how city-users model urban spaces were the
starting point for a later attempt to provide a broader generalization on the
economic-social dynamics of contemporary capitalism and to consider the
hospitality/mobility binomial a production system of the new metropolis.
This suggestion was difficult to follow. It was difficult to establish a link
with studies based on the international literature dealing with the sociology
of tourism, which at that time was much more interested in cultural issues.
The working group of sociologists of tourism was closely attached to the
sociology of culture, as clearly showed, for instance, the conference
entitled “Tourism between Tradition and Modernity,” Nice, 1993, in
which I and Savelli took part. It was sufficient to consider the paper on the
authenticity of tourism experience, by Dean MacCannell, or that on the
phenomenology of the tourist experience, by Erik Cohen, or the
anthropological view of the culture shock of intercultural communication,
proposed by Nelson Graburn, or the centre-periphery idea, expressed by
Marie Lanfant, or the subject of tourism mythologies, treated by Tom
Selwyn. Thus, when in 2005 I wrote the introduction to the Italian

translation of a classic of sociology of tourism (Dean MacCannell, The
Tourist. A New Theory of the Leisure Class, 1976; new ed. 1999), I
mentioned that its roots were in Simmel’s, Durkheim’s and Goffman’s
thought, but not in urban sociology in the narrow sense. In fact, I recalled
Martinotti’s observations much earlier. Indeed, the work of grafting
sociology of tourism on urban sociology was in an early phase at the end
of the 1980s.
The English-speaking and French-speaking geographers of tourism had
already developed models of tourism space since the 1970s (Miossec
1977, Butler 1980, etc.). They had discussed the concepts of tourism
region and urban tourism, linking them to local production systems, going
beyond the idea that the tourism act was exclusively a variant of tourist
consumption during leisure time. They were close to the issues raised by
Martinotti. Nevertheless, the interdisciplinary approach was also slow in
this sector of tourism studies. In Italy in 2009 a geographer, Armando
Montanari, wrote a book on “urban tourism” integrating the national and
international literature in an interdisciplinary way (it was published by
Bruno Mondadori in a series edited by Martinotti, Montanari, and me).
Therefore, the interdisciplinary connection between the city-users theory
and the geography of tourism in the early 1990s was easier but still
complex. It required (and requires) further theoretical elaboration, the
ability to work in a team and crossed citations overcoming corporate
barriers and hierarchical affinities, especially deep-rooted in Italy.
It was precisely in those years that Martinotti felt the need to create a
team of experts. A few years later, he supported my idea to start a journal
that would link the national debate on tourism to the international one and
to the interdisciplinary approach, favouring issues related to space and
mobilities. With the help of the Lombardy Region, we founded a journal,
“Annali Italiani del Turismo Internazionale,” which lived two years (1996
and 1997, for a total of eight issues), but unfortunately with limited
distribution. It was based in the Department of Sociology, University of
Milan, and had an interdisciplinary nature. Its scientific committee
included a psychologist, Marcello Cesa Bianchi, a geographer, Giacomo
Corna Pellegrini, an American anthropologist, Nelson Graburn, a French
economic sociologist, Marie Francoise Lanfant, two Italian sociologists,
Vincenzo Cesareo and Antonio de Lillo, and other well-known sociologists,
such as Erik Cohen, Dean MacCannell, Krzysztof Przeclawski, and John
Urry.
Martinotti wrote an article for the first volume. It was entitled “City-
users a Milano.” Its final section reprised the third chapter of Metropoli
24 Chapter Two
(1993), defining Milan, the Lombard capital, as a second-generation

metropolis. Unlike many scholars who then associated the decline of the
Fordist industrial city with the general decline of cities, Martinotti
analysed the factors of the resurgence of Milan. In parallel, he argued that
Milan would have been included in the new trend if the city council had
planned mobilities and thus the constructed city, stressing the specific
traits of European mobility as “very different from those of the other
geopolitical blocs: Eastern Europe, the USA, and Japan” (id., 193).
Martinotti maintained that the absence of a monitor of city-users explained
why Milan was “indecipherable” in the new spatial and demographic
configurations. Later, in an explicit manner, he concluded:
“It is therefore necessary to describe the mobility of business people,

cultural and recreational tourists, students, the elderly and all transient
people who use the services offered by this active city. With this new
information, public administrators will be able to intervene to improve
hospitality with greater managerial efficacy. In this sense, tourist mobility
is an important indicator of the more general transformations under way in
second-generation metropolises. And we will devote particular attention to
tourist mobility in future issues” (Martinotti 1995, 195).
Unfortunately, his hope was in vain, partly because the municipal

administration and the Lombard and Italian governments did not set up a
monitor of city-users.
Martinotti was not the only one in those years to desire a new
interdisciplinary approach to the study of tourism, included in the broader
context of advanced-economy cities, of the city of information flows, of
intense exchanges and accelerated mobilities.
It was necessary to turn to the sociology of tourism developed in
Britain (on the basis of the influential thinking of Anthony Giddens) to
contextualize Martinotti’s innovative city-users theory. The book by John
Urry, The Tourist Gaze, was released in 1990. In its subtitle and in various
passages, it considered tourism as a variant of a more comprehensive
theory of “travel” in contemporary society. The effect of Urry’s book in
Italy was mainly the initiation of many reflections on cultural or visual
sociology, focused on the “social construction” of the tourist gaze. Above
all, it stimulated aesthetic ideas or those focused on cultural diversities in
shaping urban landscapes (“collective gaze,” “romantic gaze,”
“ordinary/extraordinary dynamics,” etc.). In 2003, however, there was a
meeting between Urry and Martinotti, when Rossana Bonadei and Ugo
Volli invited them to a conference on Lake Garda. Its organizers published
the proceedings under the title The Tourist Gaze and the Narrative of
Places. The very fact that the “narrative of places” was emphasized shows
the orientation of the conference, which was once again cultural, focusing
on the languages and narratives that construct the tourism space, related to
socio-demographic analyses and travel mobilities. Moreover, the organizers
were humanists (literary scholars and semiologists). Martinotti highly
appreciated Urry’s attempt to work out a new paradigm of mobilities
making tourism explode within the sociological field and his intention to
launch a journal dedicated to mobilities. Urry’s approach was clearly an
extension of the theory of city-users and new metropolitan populations,
though he knew it only indirectly.
However, the novel paradigm of new mobilities was developed by
Urry and other British sociologists. Along with the idea of the new
creative class by Richard Florida (2002) and that of the new international
middle class of professionals who live between cities and generate the
serious tourism studied by Robert A. Stebbins (2007), it became another
main topic of contemporary thinking on tourism and “beyond” tourism.
Cities continue to engage in urban planning, in the planning and
management of services to improve the quality of life of residents, workers
and visitors, be they immigrants or tourists, while the local and inter-city
means of transport are increasingly at the centre of public attention. City-
users are not organized and visible like the old working class represented
by trade unions. We realize their importance “negatively,” when taxi
drivers or air traffic controllers or municipal employees decide to go on
strike. Transport workers are the only categories that affect the whole
community. They are the only ones that attract the attention of city-users,
of the new professional middle class that uses transport so intensely.
Indeed, transport plays an essential role in their economic, political, and
cultural hegemony, exactly because freedom to move between cities gives
them their competitive advantage.
2.2 Local community and hospitable city between urban

marketing and bottom-up regulation
A new direction in urban planning emerged between 1985, when
Murphy’s book on the community approach to local tourism development
came out, and 1993, when Ashworth and Voogd’s Selling the City was
published. The book Metropoli became part of the debate on the urban
regeneration of deindustrialized cities, the rise of the economic service
sector as an engine of local development and the competitive growth of
metropolitan areas as national borders were becoming increasingly
permeable to exchanges of people and goods.
26 Chapter Two
For a long time, cities were considered fragile organisms with respect
to the big players of international tourism, and sometimes are still
considered so. Studies on the impacts of mass tourism correctly showed
the negative aspects caused by localization imposed from above by the big
players according to a vertical or colonial integration of the destination.
Examples are Doxey’s Irridex (irritation index model), proposed in 1975,
or Butler’s tourist area life cycle, published in 1980, in which residents
refused tourists when they from “many” become “too many.” The tourist
cities or resort towns identified by Max Weber were only the passive
containers of mass tourism expressed by what Martinotti called first-
generation or industrial metropolises.
Martinotti argued that, as second-generation metropolises, cities could
play an active role, planning their development in a conscious and
responsible manner. Sustainable tourism (a term coined in 1992 during the
Rio Conference, based on the limits of boundless development and of
mass tourism) and urban marketing (i.e. the ability of local elites to
selectively attract and manage capital and visitors) were not excluded.
Cities regenerate themselves, transform abandoned industrial areas into
new financial areas, host creativity industries, build universities on the
periphery and count on the centrality of services to make such places
hospitable for the residents and visitors who choose them, even for a short
period of their life or intermittently, because they are “elective centres”
where the places adapt to them and not they to the places. With his 1993
book, Martinotti fit into the new orientations that detected the active role
of cities in attracting and managing tourists, especially tourists segmented
by their “sustainable” lifestyle and distributed throughout the year to
decongest the areas and to create stable jobs, overcoming the seasonality
of Fordist mass tourism.
Knowledge of urban marketing came to Martinotti from the scientific
literature but also from his direct participation in EU projects such as
“Eurocities” or, as a consultant to Milan’s mayors, in the drafting of
preparatory documents to try to attract European centres to Milan, such as
the European Environmental Agency in 1990–1991 (I was secretary of the
Promotional Committee and Martinotti was in the Scientific Committee)
or from his direct participation in conferences organized by new pressure
groups such as AIM (Association of Metropolitan Interests), as he
explicitly referred to in his 1993 book. In the early 1990s, he thought that
the active role of urban regeneration should be guided by the local political
elite open to international investors, who had to be regulated from the
bottom up, on an urban scale. In Metropoli he argued that it was necessary
to find a balance between urban marketing and local culture, between
corporate infatuations in “selling” the city and new techniques for

organizing what in 2004 he called urbs hospitalis. In 2008 I reprised this
idea in my book La città ospitale (The Hospitable City): the city guided by
culture and by values as well as by economic interests.
Martinotti’s position on the desirability of “regulating” the urban
market was established in 1993. In the Gorbachev Foundation’s
international conference “Economia del Sole,” which took place in Rimini
in that year, Martinotti suggested it, addressing the topic of how seaside
tourist cities were shaped by the new populations of transient people and
the related commercial intermediaries. The city-users theory worked very
well in that circumstance: I argued that the seaside tourist was a multi-
motivated subject and that single-function cities were lagging behind in
development because they organized services for declining seaside mass
tourism coming from first-generation metropolises, thus acting as
“pleasure suburbs.” Only seaside cities that diversified the offer would
become multi-functional to satisfy both multiple market niches and the
individual seaside tourist, who was no longer content just to relax, work on
a tan and do nothing but wanted to play a relational role, interacting with
the local population. Therefore, we proposed a new way to programme
hospitality: while the summer holiday was typical of first-generation
metropolises, the new seaside cities had to be modelled to attract visitors
throughout the year, to desynchronize the times of consumption, and to
plan a new production system based on hospitality and mobility.
The theory of “regulation” was the basis of urban tourism planning.
The topic was addressed by Martinotti and me in the article “Sociological
theories of tourism and regulation theory,” which appeared in the book
Cities and Visitors (Hoffman, Feinstein and Judd eds. 2003). Its editors
had asked Martinotti to apply the city-user theory to Venice. By chance the
mayor of Venice, Paolo Costa, was a regional tourism-economist who had
involved us in seminars and lectures. As mayor he had applied the macro-
technique of “carrying capacity” with the tax on tour operators and tour
buses the year before, in 2002. Paolo Costa shared Martinotti’s view of
managing flows without the snobbish idea of de-marketing (“chasing
tourists away”), but agreeing with the stakeholders on bottom-up,
community driven rules.
Thus, Martinotti and I, reporting on the case of Venice, underlined that
historical-artistic cities (those tending toward hypertourism, i.e. toward a
third-generation metropolis in which visitors outnumber residents in many
months of the year) could be regulated with specific urban policies.
Tourists are not worse or better than residents; the quality of life depends on
how community approach and spatial mobilities are planned and managed.
28 Chapter Two
Martinotti and I wrote in 2003: “The case of Venice demonstrates that the
macro- and micro management techniques regarding the environmental
impacts of tourism are efficient if they start from the bottom, if the
stakeholders mediate the diverging points of view and apply principles of
participation, information, and negotiation” (Martinotti and Costa 2003,
68). And then: “The simultaneous use as applied to competitive and
collaborative strategies in tourism planning, and destination management
by organizational stakeholders, merits greater examination in the field of
regulation theory of tourism” (ibid.). The following year Martinotti
summarized it as follows: “Tourism and technologies, the local
communication networks of the urbs hospitalis, also allow one to reunite
the visitors with the local populations” (Martinotti 2004, 83).
The idea of the active role of cities in programming themselves as
globally hospitable led Martinotti to reprise a classic theme of urban
sociology: the sense of place. Martinotti (1999, 170–2; 2003, 11–12; 2004,
75–84) maintained that decreasing the importance of places built by the
tourism economy and by shopping (recreational parks, hubs, railway
stations, shopping malls, multimedia services in cultural heritage, virtual
museums) was a mistake. In particular, the “non-place” theory of the
French anthropologist Marc Augé seemed off the mark to him. According
to Martinotti (2004, 80), “shopping malls are not non-places; they are
places as we desire them, places of modernity. They are places as we like
them.” “The communities formed in shopping malls and in mainly tourist
cities,” he added, “are formed by rational consumers. It is necessary to
read the “signs” of the “new rooting of tourism in the territory” (id. 83). In
short, even places of radical modernity experience conflicts, ways of life
are delineated, collaborative partnerships are formed, the visual culture of
architects gives aesthetic value to spaces, and city-users live there with
their specific ways of giving rational sense to social action.
3. University tourism education:

Reconciling theory and practice
3.1 Origins
Martinotti was a great educator. Sometimes he devoted more time to his
students than to his collaborators. He was a man who spoke with everyone
because he was curious and attentive to diversity of opinions. He had the
attitude of the progressive intellectual committed to providing students
with equal opportunities through education and thus promoting their social
mobility through the merit achieved with higher learning.
To reconcile political values and educational planning, he proposed the

“Martinotti bill” to Minister Berlinguer in 1997, which became the basis of
the subsequent university reform establishing three-year degrees and
specialist degrees (later called “lauree magistrali”). It was the so-called
3+2 system, inspired by other European systems. I collaborated with him
in defining the main motivations to establish the three-year degree
programme in Tourism Sciences and the two-year programme in Planning
and Management of Tourism Systems. He gave a summary of the
discussion in an article in “Sociologia Urbana e Rurale” (Martinotti, 2000)
and in another article, of which I was co-author, for the Tenth Report on
Italian Tourism, commissioned by the Ministry of Industry and Economic
Development (Costa and Martinotti, 2001, 513–26).
Actually, the motivation, or rather the meta-motivation, was political.
It was related to the democratization of university access and to the fact
that he wanted a higher number of Italian university graduates in general
and tourism graduates in particular. In fact, high school graduates were
enrolling (and still enrol) in hospitality training institutes and technical
institutes for tourism because families often could not (and cannot) afford
to pay for their university studies. Owing to a view dating back to Croce’s
and Gentile’s idealistic philosophy, young tourism students in the 1980s
and in the 1990s were destined to play a service role with low-level,
mainly executive skills, lacking High Culture. Martinotti argued instead
that the new “economy of knowledge” impacted on the re-skilling of the
operators. Therefore, in Italy we should train multi-purpose workers with
middle skills and cultural knowledge. He refused the ghettoizing vision of
tourism jobs. These workers should have: language skills; the ability to use
information technology (web marketing); knowledge of how to organize
an offer (network model); a cosmopolitan humanist culture to talk to
everyone without prejudice (also Lewin 2009; Byrne-Swain 2009);
knowledge of how to exploit the enormous Italian cultural heritage; and
the ability to plan recreational or artistic events, which requires
“empowerment” of tourism workers. Therefore, he devised and constructed
a new university reform with a novel educational mix of territorial, social,
economic, business, literary and technological disciplines. This would be
beneficial to young people, who, through tourism studies, could participate
in global teams, manage the dynamics of international tourism, and
promote the Italian cultural heritage in international tourism markets. In
summary, the three-year degree was to be an opportunity to improve the
active citizenship of tourism workers and to prepare young people for
international work mobility. The educational model was interdisciplinary
and cosmopolitan.
30 Chapter Two
Martinotti was very attentive to what was emerging in the years 1999–
2001. In 1999 he pushed for the bill dealing with the nascent specialist
degree in Planning and Management of Tourism Systems to be discussed
in the Italian Parliament, which in 2001 passed Law 135 establishing
“local tourist systems.” Therefore, the university reform hastened the
system approach with the “magistrale” degree, proposing the role of
planner and manager of urban tourism systems, i.e. the destination
manager. The two reforms were closely interrelated.
Martinotti also looked outside Italy. The 3+2 tourism degree system
was modelled on the educational courses in Leeds, Guildford, Glasgow,
and other British cities, which focused on international relations and
interdisciplinary exchanges aiming at both theoretical and practical skills.
In more strictly didactic terms, the synthesis at the international level was
made by John Tribe (2002), who coined the term “philosophic
practitioner” in an article in “Annals of Tourism Research.” He indicated a
model of tourism worker who was both a “liberal” intellectual seeking
truth and beauty and an “operative” actor able to manage business routines
effectively and efficiently. In parallel, Tribe’s article on the philosophic
practitioner, which we discussed with Richard Prentice in 2004 during a
seminar at the University of Milano Bicocca, pushed Martinotti to
strengthen the humanities in the three-year degree. Martinotti entrusted the
coordination of this area to Marxiano Melotti.
The integration of education and training was already present in the
political-cultural debate that accompanied the introduction of the 3+2
tourism degree course in Italy, because Martinotti was a cosmopolitan
scholar and was well-informed about the educational processes in
progress, especially in Britain and in the United States.
3.2 Consortium Nettuno

Martinotti’s framework was tested for the first time with the Consortium
Nettuno, which managed a distance learning university diploma (not yet a
three-year degree) in Economics and Management of Tourism Services in
the 1998–1999 academic year.
Here I must make a digression. In Italy, business economists were the
first to consider tourism a productive activity and not an activity of
consumption to be associated with sport and leisure. They opened the
university to tourism training emphasizing the economic and juridical
aspects. Martinotti observed that this approach was a good step forward,
but that it was appropriate to take another one connecting companies and
the territory in a systemic view of local tourism development. The
sociologists of the Mediterranean Association of Sociology of Tourism

and the journal “Annali Italiani del Turismo Internazionale” (despite its
short life) had given many contributions in this regard: they dealt with the
role of the local population, introduced ideas on social networks that
facilitate or hinder territorial cohesion, and analysed the models of
governance and local-global connections in the promotion and
commercialization of innovations marked by a bottom-up participation, as
well as the macro- and microtechniques of managing tourism impacts on
the local community.
Martinotti transferred the systemic and community approach into the
Sociology of Tourism module produced in 1998 for the Consorzio
Nettuno, when he was teaching at the University of Milano Bicocca and no
longer at the University of Milan. There were VHS recordings broadcast
by RAI2 late at night and thus his lectures were seen both by students
enrolled in the university diploma course (who had to take their exams in
the various consortium branches) and by the general public. Therefore,
Martinotti also received phone calls from sleepless restaurateurs, hotel
porters working the night shift, and tourism workers in general who simply
felt the need to improve their knowledge. And this “democratic” success
gave him much pleasure.
The initial module was highly appreciated by the managers of the
Consortium and Martinotti was asked to record another in 2000, which he
called “Planning the development and structure of the territory.” It was an
opportunity to start thinking about the sociologist of tourism as a
professional with distinctive expertise in how to collaborate with urban
planners to support the decisions of local administrators in attracting
investors and visitors and in integrating immigrants through tourism
services (hotels and restaurants, in particular).
In both modules, Martinotti wanted to test a teaching model that would
reconcile sociological theory and sociological practice applied to visible
phenomena in organized space. In the introductory lectures, Martinotti
formulated macrosociological scenarios to explain modern society and
contemporary urbanism. He wished to familiarize students with a way of
thinking based on qualitative and quantitative variables: he wanted to form
open minds, willing to explain social facts by social facts and not by
subjective ideas, desires, or points of view; and he did it with simplicity.
Therefore, when he explained the processes of disembedding and re-
embedding taken from Giddens’ book The Consequences of Modernity
(1992), he also introduced examples related to tourism, such as conference
tourism: teleconferences and information technologies indicate a process
of disembedding (or territorial breakdown), because they connect people at
32 Chapter Two
a distance, but also help to reconfigure face-to-face meetings and generate

new ways of organizing conferences (re-embedding). In this way he
demonstrated how the apocalyptic idea of the disappearance of
conferences, advanced by some scholars in the 1990s, was unjustified. He
induced “positive thinking” in those who listened to him: the view that it
was possible to use information technologies to take reasoned decisions
and create a better tourism society. The initial scenarios were followed by
lectures on sociology of tourism in the strict sense, which referred, when
possible, to some ideas he had previously presented. Then there were
lectures by various collaborators, also from different disciplines. Thus, for
example, Walter Santagata, a cultural economist, gave some lectures on
his ideas, relating them to tourism and the growing role of “cultural
districts” in the urban landscape.
The second module, on Planning the Development and Structure of the
Territory, was compact. It provided the tools for a new public management
that would be more efficient in coordinating urban planning. It outlined the
up skills of the destination manager (dealt with exhaustively in the
international scientific literature) and also presented many case studies on
desirable partnerships in public projects and private initiatives.
3.3 The three-year degree course in Tourism

and Local Community Sciences
The teaching experience of the Consorzio Nettuno was transferred to the
three-year degree course in Tourism and Local Community Sciences,
which began at the University of Milano-Bicocca in the 2001. Martinotti,
its first coordinator, wished to include “local community” directly in the
name of the degree course, to affirm the centrality of responsible hospitality.
He sometimes asked me: “But why don’t we call the destination manager
‘hospitality manager’?” The concept of hospitality resulted from the
debate on “sustainable” tourism, which placed the local population at the
centre, according to the view expressed by the Mediterranean Association
of Sociology of Tourism (Guidicini and Savelli 1999), as well as from
Martinotti’s idea that the places of radical modernity, or hypertourism,
also satisfied rational needs.
Martinotti taught General Sociology in the first semester of the first
year, while I taught Sociology of Tourism in both semesters. In the second
year the sociological approach continued with Sociology of Work. The
same logic held for Business Economics or Law: first the general aspects,
then the advanced ones. As can be seen from the course programmes,
Martinotti’s module addressed the “problems” of sociology and built
bridges between the disciplines, enabling the students to understand the

interdisciplinary character of the educational project. In parallel, he used
Boudon’s textbook to teach the methods of social research.
Martinotti also reinforced the internship office with qualified people
and encouraged direct interventions in the classroom by entrepreneurs and
members of non-profit associations. He wanted to bring out the “tacit”
knowledge of those operating successfully in global markets, especially in
Italian incoming.
Internship experiences solidified his conviction of calibrating liberal
education and professional skills by training through exercises and workshops
based on several case studies. Thus, he entrusted some business-management
and organization modules (as well as some entertainment-management
modules) to “reflective” professionals uniting direct experience with the desire
for studying and teaching; he, therefore, expanded the number of “contract
lecturers,” who often achieved great success among the students. In this way
he tried to correct one of the paradoxical effects of critical theory: the
legitimacy of deskilling in tourism works. Indeed, many students, after
listening to a lecture on “simulacra,” “panopticon,” “heterodirection,”
“McDonaldization,” “Disneyization,” “liquid society,” etc., felt somewhat
lost, because they thought that strong powers were manipulating them,
creating precarious jobs, turnover, seasonality, an informal economy,
repression of rights, and even moral vices, such as Veblen’s “conspicuous
leisure” and “conspicuous consumption.”
The lectures by professionals and executives introduced pluralistic
values into the programme and allowed the more “practical” students to
find their way and obtain the degree, even though many of them had
struggled to deal with the complex issues of critical social philosophy
which then was only a component of the educational project. Popper’s
open society and pluralism distinguished the degree programme, in which
space was also given to the religious tourism management, taught by an
enlightened Catholic priest, as a large part of the Italian cultural heritage is
managed by Catholic authorities. No “one best way,” then, but many
mixtures of knowledge and practices in a full postmodern paradigm.
3.4 Teaching of sociology, city marketing and city-users

There is a question that still generates controversy among sociologists:
whether or not it is appropriate to teach urban and place marketing in a
course of applied sociology. With Martinotti the question was never raised
in terms of epistemological legitimacy but rather of methodological skills.
34 Chapter Two
From 1993, Martinotti had me lead a seminar on “City marketing and

city-users” in the Urban Sociology course for the Political Science degree
in the University of Milan. In 2004 he called the three credits course of
sociology of tourism Analysis and Planning of Territorial Networks for
Tourism, both for the Consorzio Nettuno and for the three-year degree
course at Milano-Bicocca. For Martinotti, that a sociologist could be a
professional able to develop analyses and projects to meet the needs of
local authorities and businesses was more than acceptable: it was
meritorious. But it was necessary to possess the relevant tools. Therefore,
together with me, in 2002 he wrote the introduction to the Italian
translation of The Tourism Development Handbook by Kerry Godfrey and
Jackie Clarke, highlighting the fact that many socio-territorial aspects
would redefine place marketing in a more sociological and geographical
perspective. We used this textbook in our teaching, along with Luigi
Guiotto who had translated it, to the full satisfaction of students oriented
toward tourism professions.
The aims of the Analysis and Planning of Territorial Networks for
Tourism module, still present in the Nettuno database and in the course
programme of Tourism and Local Community Sciences, were
professionalizing:
“The course will analyse the territorial networks of incoming tourism with
an inductive socio-territorial approach. The lessons simulate a professional
commission received from one or more local administrations to carry out a
tourism development project aimed at the planning of territorial networks
that integrate and valorize local resources […]. Students will be taught
‘how to’ analyse the pro-tourism social capital and set off the expansive
glocalism of local communities and ‘how to’ foster collaboration among
stakeholders in improving the local offer. They will be instructed ‘how to’
draw up a place marketing plan for tourism and manage and promote a
destination. Therefore, the educational goal is to transform knowledge into
skills that characterize the local tourism development professional. At the
end of the course, the student will be able to analyse local communities by
defining indexes and types of levels of integration and be able to draw up,
albeit in general terms, a place marketing plan and a plan for the
improvement of a particular type of tourism offer.”
Of course, the satisfaction of the city-users was at the centre of the urban
planning.
4. Implications for the study of the

mobility/hospitality binomial
Martinotti’s ideas on tourism and tourism education constitute a legacy of
thought and action that has yet to be understood in all its scientific
implications. This study is only a position paper to frame the key issues,
underlining certain passages in the period 1989–2009, when Martinotti
played an influential role.
To continue Martinotti’s thinking, it should be reiterated that tourism,
far from being an independent phenomenon, is interconnected with other
sectors of the economy. Therefore, interdisciplinary convergence is the
most effective method to comprehend its intersectoral dependences.
Based on the concepts of “urbs hospitalis” and “city-users,” the
hospitality/mobility binomial constitutes the production system of second-
and third-generation metropolises. Sociologists, geographers, urban
planners, and economists of the city, yesterday as today, can converge in
the direction of the hospitality/mobility binomial to develop studies for the
resolution of problems posed by local administrators, workers, companies,
and associations, and to provide solutions to enhance the quality of life of
city-users by means of collaborative partnerships.
In this context, a Monitor, local and global, interuniversity and
interdisciplinary, in agreement with the municipalities and the city-users,
as proposed by Martinotti in the 1990s, might be the best way to capitalize
on his intellectual legacy.
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CHAPTER THREE
EARLY INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH

ACTIVITIES
ARMANDO MONTANARI
1. Introduction
My scientific association with Guido Martinotti began in the early 1980s,
with the Turin project, and continued throughout that decade with the
URBINNO (Urban Innovation) project. I use the term “association” rather
than “collaboration” because we actually began to collaborate in
subsequent years, when our age difference became less marked. My
association and collaboration with him continued in subsequent decades,
after he was named Chairman of the Standing Committee for the Social
Sciences at the European Science Foundation (ESF) in 1992, when the
RURE (ESF) project was underway. When he began to focus more closely
on his research in the tourism sector in the 1990s, he asked me to
contribute, together with Nicolò Costa, to the journal Annali Italiani del
Turismo Internazionale (Montanari 1995) and to a series brought out by an
Italian publishing house, Bruno Mondadori, titled Turismo e Società
(Montanari 2008, 2009, 2010). In our joint research, we always looked for
a general reference theory, a trend model, to prove that social science is a
genuinely scientific field. This essay focuses on the two decades between
the 1970s and the 1980s, a period when many feared that drawing up a
shared process for urban growth might lead to conflict between free-
market countries and planned-economy countries, as well as between
developed and developing countries.
This essay is divided into three sections. The first is devoted to the
Turin project, which in that period (the early 1980s) was innovative both
for its methodology and its design (which involved interaction between a
local municipality, the City of Turin, and some researchers of the local
universities, all of whom with international experience). The Turin project
Early International Research Activities 39
was the result of a cultural process that had developed over the previous
decade within early comparative projects, like the CURB (Cost of Urban
Growth), involving researchers from Eastern and Western Europe. This is
the subject of the second section of this essay, which uses CURB to
illustrate the achievements of the subsequent decade. The third section
examines the way an Italian research project focusing on a single city,
Turin, acquired an international dimension and became the International
Turin project. The researchers involved in these comparative projects were
subsequently channelled into URBINNO project, a new project relating to
urban innovation processes. These projects, on which I collaborated
increasingly closely with Guido Martinotti, demonstrated genuine scientific
innovation and progress in the 1970s and 1980s. This essay deviates from
the norm in scientific articles in that it makes no reference to other projects
that were being developed at the same time. The Turin, Turin
International, CURB and URBINNO projects resulted from the pioneering
work of researchers who achieved their goals using European comparative
research tools and multidisciplinary collaboration.
2. The Turin project

The Turin project was launched in 1978 by the then mayor of Turin Diego
Novelli, following Aurelio Peccei’s request for research into urban
problems in Turin. Peccei had acquired considerable authority at the
international level because of the work of the Club of Rome, the think tank
he had founded in 1968. One of the Club of Rome’s main contributions
was a shocking report, The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al. 1972), which
examined the international trends for the 1900–2100 period using five key
variables: world population, industrial output per capita, food production
per capita, natural resources, and pollution. Peccei concluded that the
problem was not finite resources, but rather their use. Oil supplies,
estimated to be abundant in those years, were erroneously regarded as
inexhaustible. The report was translated into thirty languages and ten
million copies were sold. The theories it put forward immediately led to a
heated debate, and its authors were strongly criticised for the methods they
had used. Peccei had been very clear about the need of involving the
members of the Club of Rome in a work of scientific dissemination that
would be easily accessible to public opinion. The efficacy of its message
was revealed the following year, in 1973, when the inhabitants of many
industrialised countries found themselves obliged to get around on foot or
by bicycle, while signs and streetlights were switched off to slash energy
40 Chapter Three
consumption, as oil supplies had suddenly diminished, partly for

geopolitical reasons.
Peccei had requested the setting up of the Turin project in order to test
future global problems on a local scale. He had chosen Turin, the city
where he was born, because its municipality was faced with an ongoing
crisis. Other, more positive, elements for the choice were a society in a
state of fermentation that believed in political change, and a university
culture in which many young lecturers were keen to engage with the urban
environment in which they were living. Peccei, a cosmopolitan man, did
not intend to explain global phenomena through one city; he wished to
have a network of cities whose experience could be compared to Turin’s.
Peccei had been a manager with FIAT, the Turin-based car company,
which played a key role in the city’s growth, problems, and crisis.
The Turin project was presented at the seventh Conference of Mayors
of the World’s Major Cities, held in Turin and Milan from 14 to 19 April
1978. The motion approved at the conference was “The city: critical mass
and citizens’ community.” It specified that a critical mass could be reached
not just by big cities but by smaller cities too, and that the growth of urban
areas had to be managed, not merely observed. This was why identical
parameters and reference models could not be used, as every city was a
model in itself, with its own level of economic growth. Novelli’s
discussion with mayors of cities from other continents confirmed the
hypothesis of a growth-related urban crisis across the world. The
municipal council of Turin elected on 14 July 1975 from the beginning of
its mandate had tried to gain a better understanding of the city it had to
govern. It opened two information channels: an analysis of Turin’s
situation and a comparison with the situation of big cities elsewhere in the
world, i.e. an investigation at the local level and a comparison at the
international level. In May 1976 Novelli had attended the UN Habitat
Conference in Vancouver, where he presented Turin as a city whose
population had increased from 700,000 to 1,200,000 in less than twenty
years. In his speech, Novelli (1982) drew attention to the relationship
between economic growth and social environment, and maintained that
solutions to the problem could in no way be opposed to economic growth.
On the contrary, they would have to work within a context of increasing
growth, provided that its parameters and values were modified. Hence the
Turin municipality’s priority was awareness of urban society and the
balances and imbalances that had resulted from the economic and social
upheaval of the previous decades (Castagnoli 1998). The economic
structure that had caused those profound transformations was now in crisis
because of the imbalances it had helped to create. Driven by the principle
that knowledge of the situation was required in order to change it, and by
the interest of participants in the seventh conference, the municipality
launched the Turin project. The teaching staff of four departments of the
University of Turin participated in the project on a voluntary basis,
together with entrepreneurs, trade unionists, and non-profit associations of
engineers, architects, and town planners.
The objectives of the Turin project can be summed up as follows: (i) an
analysis of the economic structure of metropolitan areas aiming at
identifying the most important features and providing an explanatory
model of the way in which economy functions; (ii) a study of population
dynamics and structure including the demographic characteristics of the
city; (iii) an analysis of the labour market in a metropolitan area and trends
in the demand and supply of labour; (iv) instruments for the management
of spatial aspects of change in the urban economy at the local level; (v)
tools for governing the local economy and a review of the practical
experiences of local authorities in economic policy; (vi) an investigation of
the problems of a specific production sector which was of particular
importance to the economy of the city; (vii) an analysis of the time
patterns governing the daily life of the city and its citizens, and the way
this information might be used in social services provision. The following
studies were undertaken: (i) an analysis of the socio-demographic profile
of Turin by processing secondary data so as to create a social atlas of the
city (Marra 1985); (ii) studies on industrial relocation (Luzzati 1982),
urban marginality (Barbano 1982), time use (Belloni 1984), quality of life
(Martinotti 1982), and the city and its history (Gabetti et al. 1983). In the
1970s, Martinotti had been part of the Urbanization in Europe research
group at the European Coordination Centre for Research and Documentation
in Social Sciences (Vienna Centre), International Social Science Council
(ISSC), headed by Ruth Glass and Henri Lefebvre. Glass (1964) had
identified and defined “gentrification”: the renewed attractiveness of the
city centre, a phenomenon witnessed on a relatively small scale in those
years and led essentially by “pioneers,” but which would expand
considerably in subsequent years, as documented by Montanari (1976) in
Rome and Appleyard (1977) in Europe. This new trend resulted from the
new and as yet imperceptible attractiveness of city-centre settlements,
which would later give rise to two specific examples—the phenomenon of
gentrification, as in the case of Greenwich Village in New York, and the
urban renewal policies, as in the case of the London Docklands—and lead,
some decades later, to research on the “creative city.”
In 1975 Martinotti joined the faculty of political sciences at the
University of Turin. From 1978 to 1981 he was dean of the faculty. He
42 Chapter Three
was therefore well placed to put into practice his theories and
methodology, drawn up in large part with the help of colleagues in top
European and American universities, with whom he had established a
friendship. Martinotti (1982) identified three phases in the social and
cultural growth of Italian society, which had exerted an impact on the main
Italian cities, including Turin. The first phase immediately after the
Second World War was marked an economic growth mainly due to
external factors. The second phase witnessed a mobilization of civil
society and a consequent modification of economic growth. In the third
phase, starting from the mid-1970s, changes in civil society had been
projected into the political system and led, as in Turin, to the electoral
success of left-wing forces in several Italian cities (Basile and Montanari
1980). The Turin project was an example of a tangible change in the style
and content of governance, not merely a symbolic one. Another innovative
aspect of the project was greater collaboration between local authorities
and universities, research centres and NGOs.
In a tribute to Peccei a few months after his death, Novelli (1984)
referred to him as a “friend, fellow-citizen, and teacher,” recalling his
ability to explain difficult concepts using simple language. Peccei had
devoted a great deal of effort during the last few years of his life to science
dissemination, and this has perhaps not been sufficiently acknowledged.
Novelli (1984) also pointed to another of Peccei’s qualities, one he would
subsequently adopt: a spirit of enterprise and the ability to shoulder his
own responsibilities in tough situations for humanity at large, both at the
global and the local level.
3. Before the Turin project:

The Chicago School and the CURB project
In the introduction to a book he edited, Martinotti (1982) connected the
idea of Turin as a “social laboratory” to the methodology of the Chicago
School, founded by Robert E. Park and Ernest Burgess. He pointed out
that in their view the city was a vibrant and complex entity in which to
carry out research and scientific observation. Within the Turin project, on
the other hand, the city was not merely an observation area but also an
entity requiring action to modify a situation with an evidently limited
pattern. Martinotti (1982) recalled that a school of thought that had
developed worldwide in the 1970s held that cities would remain forever
ungovernable because of the breakdowns that had occurred in the phases
of industrialization and urbanization. He cited Hicks (1974), who had
emphasised that large cities find it difficult to evaluate the nature and
extent of their problems. Hicks had set out possible policies that would
once again make the city a place where its residents would be proud to
live. Martinotti also cited Castells (1976), who imagined a scenario in
which the city is in a phase of decline, undergoing mass police repression
and control in a largely deteriorated economic setting. The suburbs are
fragmented and isolated, and single-family homes are closed over
themselves. Meanwhile, shopping centres are more expensive and much
more surveyed, and services and infrastructures are crumbling. Martinotti
(1982) examined the results of research into American cities and
concluded that the process of deterioration and decline was also destined
to occur in European cities, albeit at a later date. Research on urban areas
gained fresh impetus between the 1970s and 1980s because of a new
phenomenon first seen in the US and later in several European cities as
well. The US had witnessed a slowdown in demographic growth in urban
areas, followed by a marked decline. Urban areas had expanded in size
because of new individual and collective transport systems. So people
began to move from the centre to the suburbs and brought about changes
to the organization and location of production systems and urban
functions. Meanwhile, city centres, which in Europe essentially had
historical and cultural value, were either abandoned and therefore
occupied by marginal social classes and immigrants, or subjected to
profound change to make them more suitable for their new residential
function. In the course of these changes, there was conflict between people
who were in favour of new architecture to host new functions, perhaps
saving a few particularly emblematic historical buildings of particular
value, and people who took the overall value of the urban fabric into
account beyond that of individual monumental buildings (Appleyard 1977;
Montanari 1977). One phenomenon extensively studied in the 1970s was
urbanization, and therefore the increasing numbers of people living in
urban areas and the economic, social, and environmental cost of this
growth for urban areas. The ratio of the urban population to the population
as a whole was one to two in the 1950s; it had grown to nearly two-thirds
in the 1970s, and was forecast, or rather feared, to reach five-sixths in
2030. Tisdale (1942) had defined urbanization as a process of population
concentration. From the 1970s onward, data regarding changes to the
urban population in the US led to a fresh debate about a phenomenon
described as counter-urbanization: the reduction in the size, density and
heterogeneousness of cities. Berry (1976) adapted Tisdale’s definition
(1942) to describe counter-urbanization as a process of decreasing
population concentration.
44 Chapter Three
Berry (1976) mentioned that the main topic at a meeting of the

Committee on Urbanization of the Social Science Research Council, in the
early 1970s, was reviewing research on urban settlements so as to identify
structures, processes, and growth phases that could contribute to a general
theory on urbanization, irrespective of criteria related to time and space in
specific cases. When the Commission on Processes and Patterns of
Urbanization of the IGU (International Geographical Union) took a stance
(also for ideological reasons) on the subject, it explained very clearly that
urbanization, which had spread everywhere, was the result of quite
different situations and factors (Jones 1975). So it would be impossible, or
even unwise, to attempt to reduce the phenomenon to a model. Based on
the identification of a reference model, Berry (1976) was able to document
the move from urbanization to subsequent counter-urbanization in some
North American cities. Research was carried out in various European
countries on the basis of this assumption. Drewett, Goddard and Spence
(1976) applied these theories to the United Kingdom and concluded that
“centralization and decentralization in both the Standard Metropolitan
Labour Area (SMLA) and Metropolitan Economic Labour Area (MELA)
systems are dependent on the stage in the ‘life cycle’ of individual cities.”
The phenomenon occurred because of the lifestyle changes in the
1970s (the economic upswing and the baby boom in European countries,
especially in northern Europe) that made private transport available at
affordable prices. People living in cities could now satisfy their desire to
move to residential suburbs outside the major metropolitan areas, where
they had more room, in neighbourhoods with extensive green spaces, and
where the distribution of residential space was democratically organized,
unlike the hierarchical organization of living space in the city centre. This
process was identified in Europe starting from the Vienna Centre’s CURB
project (1971–82). CURB was one of the first European international
comparative research projects in the field of urban geography. It used the
work of Berry (1976) as a starting point. He had placed urbanization in a
global perspective and had attempted to see whether the theories of the
“Processes and Patterns of Urbanization” Commission of the IGU–theories
he had already applied in the US–were also applicable in other Western
countries, with free-market economies or planned economies, and in
developing countries. His interest in comparing the different processes of
urbanization worldwide led him to work with a group of scientific
counterparts in various parts of the world. Some of them, including Roy
Drewett of the London School of Economics and Political Sciences and
Gaston Goddard of the University of Fribourg, later formed the core group
of researchers around which the CURB project was organized. The main
findings of CURB, particularly the theory of urban cycles, were published

in an edited book (Van den Berg et al. 1982). Irrespective of the
ideological approach of some of the researchers, the concept of an urban
model had some undeniable advantages: (i) A model is the best way of
explaining complex phenomena, especially when a number of different
disciplines are involved in the explanation; (ii) Having a reference model
encourages multidisciplinary collaboration; (iii) A model also facilitates
scientific dissemination for phenomena that would otherwise be difficult to
explain.
The theory of urban cycles illustrates population increase and decrease
within CORE, RING, and FUR (Functional Urban Regions) at different
stages of the urban growth (Tab. 3-1).
Table 3-1 Population increase and decrease at different stages of

urban growth in historic districts, newer historic districts and
contemporary housing estates
CORE RING FUR

HD NHD CHE HD NHD CHE
Urbanization ++ + = - = = ++
Urbanization/ + ++ + - + = +
Suburbanization
Suburbanization - +/- + + + ++ +/-
De-urbanization +/- - - +/- - - -
Re-urbanization + +/- - + +/- - +
The CURB research project was carried out in the 1971–82 period
(Montanari 2012; 2013), with the participation of universities and research
institutes from Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Great
Britain, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland,
West Germany, and Yugoslavia.
At the Turin 1978 conference, the researchers were asked to transmit
the results of the CURB project, which had identified a turning point in the
growth of metropolitan areas (Van den Berg, Drewett, Klaassen, Rossi,
Vijverberg 1982). A similar process had previously been noted in the US
by Berry (1976).
Brian Berry, too, owes part of his fame to the University of Chicago,
where he taught from 1958 to 1976. Because of the significant results he
obtained in the course of his research, Berry was the world’s most
frequently cited geographer for nearly twenty-five years, a period when
several factors emphasized the crisis of industrial cities and the need to
single out urban policies aimed at the economic regeneration of large
46 Chapter Three
cities. There were obvious signs of crisis: fewer industrial jobs, above-
average unemployment levels in various countries and a growing number
of people employed in the service sector.
Hence, at the seventh conference (1978), Vladimir Braco Mušič, the
CURB researchers’ representative, pointed out that the city is both a
community of people and an opportunity for a learning experience.
Therefore, social and economic relationships must be changed in order to
change the city’s structure effectively. Civil society must be involved to
the greatest possible extent in the process of change and superficial utopias
must be avoided. Diego Novelli, then mayor of Turin, blamed researchers
and urban planners for not being in touch with society. Mušič replied that
urban research could not merely be considered a technical activity. It had
to be seen first and foremost as a social sciences endeavour aimed at
policy implementation. Therefore, the individual phases of a process
comprising research, consultation, university teaching and political work
had to be combined.
4. After the Turin project: Turin International

and URBINNO
The Turin International project created an innovative relationship between
local authorities, the scientific community and the NGOs, and therefore a
new process of scientific dissemination. But above all, it introduced a new
way for cities to work together: one that went beyond the twinning
arrangement. Although the twinning, developed fast in the 1970s and
1980s, was implemented exclusively between Western European cities,
Zelinsky (1991) retraced its history. The first, in Europe, was made in
1918, soon after the First World War, between a Swiss and a German
town. But the Organization for Sister Cities International was founded in
1967, following what the American President Dwight D. Eisenhower had
called “people-to-people diplomacy,” which was used to overcome the
divisions and brutality of the Second World War. By giving Turin the task
of initiating and managing the International Turin project, the seventh
conference approved Diego Novelli’s proposal to use the city as a living
laboratory where to study and acquire a clearer understanding of urban
processes. At the ninth Conference of Mayors of the World’s Major Cities
held in Turin in April 1980, the Turin working group presented a report on
its research, titled “The city: critical dimension: community of citizens,”
which was debated by the mayors present. The discussion was dominated
by the speeches of three people who represented significant aspects of the
international debate at that time: Diego Novelli, mayor of Turin (1975–
1985) and president of the World Federation of United Cities (1979–

1982), Aurelio Peccei, president of the Club of Rome (1968–1984), and
Adam Schaff, president of the Board of Directors of the Vienna Centre
(1969–1989). These three prominent politicians and intellectuals proposed
to give the task of organising and coordinating the new project to the
Vienna Centre, which had already been responsible for the CURB project.
There were two reasons for this: the significant problems the project was
to address; and the opportunity of bringing together cities in countries with
both free market and planned economies, which was one of the Vienna
Centre’s main goals. Selecting the cities was not an easy task: with Europe
divided between NATO countries and Warsaw-Pact countries, approval
from top-level political authorities had to be sought for each candidate
city. The principal difficulty was that metropolises were increasingly
becoming indicators of economic crisis and social malaise. Countries with
a planned economy were “embarrassed” to admit that there could be an
economic crisis and social dissatisfaction, as their governments tended to
transmit reassuring messages. Much effort was made to involve a Soviet
Union city in the project, but despite the interest shown by a number of
municipalities, a green light from the decision-makers in Moscow was
never obtained. This particular concern became evident when the results of
the CURB project were published. Some representatives of Socialist
countries once again mooted (as had already happened within the IGU a
decade earlier) that it was impossible to use a single model to explain
urban changes. On the last day of meetings held at the headquarters of the
Polish Academy of Sciences from November 23 to 26 1979, at the end of a
prolonged debate that lasted well into the night, a compromise was found:
the two-page summary specified, among other things, that the form, scope
and rate of urbanization depends on the level of socio-economic
development attained, the geographic conditions and the institutional
structures of the given country, as well as on the preferences of groups,
authorities, enterprises, and other stakeholders involved in the processes of
socio-economic development (Herman and Regulski 1977).
When both Comecon and the Soviet Union were dissolved in 1991,
there were attempts to justify the earlier behaviour of researchers and
scientific authorities in former planned economies. Regulski, who had
taken part in the CURB project and subsequently became the minister for
local government reform in post-Communist Poland from 1989 to 1991,
undertook a critical study of the Communist period with regard to socio-
economic growth processes (Regulski et al. 1988). He explained that the
State played a very different role in Communist countries compared to
“democratic” countries. Even urban growth problems were viewed through
48 Chapter Three
the lens of ideology. The highly centralized State of Communist countries

controlled every sector of the economy and all social reactions, going so
far as to put the personal lives of citizens (including researchers) under
scrutiny. So there was no room for studies calling attention to the problems
that local authorities faced (Regulski 1999). Enyedi, who had also taken
part in CURB and was a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences,
reviewed the history of urban growth in Eastern Europe in the post-1988
period, comparing it to the earlier Communist period. He writes that while
politicians in their public speeches exalted the experience of Soviet cities,
researchers observed the experience of Western cities and the development,
in these cities, of informal phenomena that was more significant than
anything exclusively ideological analysis could provide (Enyedi 1992).
Following the preparatory phase, the cities that took part in the Turin
International project were Cologne (FRG), Cracow (P), Dresden (GDR),
Lille (F), and of course Turin, because they all had significant problems and
offered a sample comprising cases with market economies and cases with
planned economies. In 1980, Lille opted out of the project and was replaced
by a Soviet Union city, Tallin (Estonia, USSR), which was a peripheral town
of relatively little importance to the authorities in Moscow.
The Turin International Project indicated major possible changes and
the inevitable problems that would result: (i) Western and Eastern
European cities, which were separated at the time by the Iron Curtain,
could attempt to cooperate, even if that cooperation was to be strictly
controlled; (ii) The scope of twinning until then had been to organize
events, shows, exchanges of gifts and, mainly, big lunches, and dinners.
While all of them had certainly helped to thaw the icy relations between
West and East, twinning could no longer continue unless it managed to
tackle the concrete problems of each community; (iii) With towns
beginning to tackle concrete problems and potentially involve citizens in
this process, it was absolutely necessary to supply information and
encourage discussion and debate. Local administrations’ vision of their
participation and involvement was limited to their own electoral terms.
These periods did not coincide and did not provide enough time to
carry out the required research; (iv) Comparative research can be
restrictive when it comes to selecting the data to be examined, and the
comparison of results can lead to conclusions that are not always fully in
line with the expectations of each administration; (v) The Turin
International project was undoubtedly an interesting example of
dissemination, but it will be unlikely remembered for its scientific results
and publications (Allan 1982; Lever 1989).
Each of the municipalities that made up the Turin International project

had a research group involving researchers from that particular city. While
this ensured optimal dissemination, it also made the research problematic
in some ways. The project was built on two methodological references that
were not entirely compatible with international comparative research.
Firstly, the cities made it clear that they did not intend to follow a common
research programme based on a single methodology, with identical data
being collected and analysed. They decided on research that would be
analogous to the greatest possible extent and, while based on independent
criteria, would supply results useful for some form of comparative
analysis. A joint coordination meeting was to be held at least once a year.
Secondly, the participating administrations wished to be free to exchange
information on the policies adopted with regard to themes of immediate
interest to each city. Any city could organize a meeting to discuss themes
of its own interest.
In the 1980s the quantitative aspect of the urban phenomenon began to
stabilize, and research began to be primarily focused on the qualitative
aspects. The URBINNO project (Innovation and urban development: the
role of technological and social change), which was carried out from 1987
to 1989, studied innovations in several areas of the urban landscape. The
study looked at a period of about one hundred years, from the end of the
nineteenth century on, to trace the main changes resulting from industrial
and post-industrial growth.
The opportunity for the study arose following a Volkswagen
Foundation request for tenders in 1983. The criteria specified the necessity
of presenting interdisciplinary comparative research that would include
studies of social, economic, and land-use phenomena. The project was
coordinated by the European Centre for Social Welfare Training and
Research, Vienna, and sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation in
Hanover. It got off to an official start at a seminar organized by the Vienna
University of Economics in March 1987 and ended in 1989 following
several coordination meetings in a number of European countries. In 1990
an agreement was signed with Avebury, which would publish the results in
its “Urban Europe” series. Books by Nijkamp (1990), Strohmeier and
Matthiessen (1992) and Montanari, Curdes and Forsyth (1993) were
published. Other volumes in the pipeline, including one edited by Guido
Martinotti on urban institutions and innovation, were eventually never
published. URBINNO, in which researchers from fifty national research
groups organized into four working groups participated, drew up its
methodology based on the results of the CURB project and the
“Metropolitan Dynamics” project coordinated by the IIASA (International
50 Chapter Three
Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Vienna). Besides the German

researchers, who had to be included for the project to receive funding from
the Volkswagen Foundation, URBINNO took on the following coordinators:
C. Matthiessen, who had participated in the CURB project; P. Nijkamp,
who had been part of the IIASA project; G. Martinotti, who had been
involved with the Turin project; and A. Montanari, who had taken part in
the CURB project and the International Turin project (Tab. 3-2). The
coordinators of the entire URBINNO project were R. Drewett, who had also
overseen the CURB project and worked with B. Berry (Drewett et al.
1976), and U. Schubert, who had participated in the CURB project. The
four working groups had been set up to identify the following kinds of
interrelationships: (i) the growth of technological processes and economic
phenomena in relation to changes in land-use policies; (ii) social and
cultural changes, and their impact on the lifestyles of urban populations;
(iii) changes in political organizations and administrative systems in
relation to conflicts emerging in urban societies; (iv) changes in the
finances of local authorities, local power structures and decision-making;
(v) an analysis of local political parties and voting habits; (vi) citizens’
participation in decision-making processes, also in relation to emerging
cultural and social movements.
Table 3-2 URBINNO Project: content and organization

of the Working Groups
Working Group and Product innovation Process innovation

coordinators
Employment and New products and New technology
economy (H. J. Ewers services
and P. Niikamp)
Urban demography and Education and changes in New organization within
sociology (C. the quality of human the society, new family
Matthiessen and K. P. welfare structures and new
Strohmeier) lifestyles
Political institutional New infrastructures New planning and
organization (L. Albertin and new services budgeting systems and
and G. Martinotti) new
financing instruments
Built-form, environment New planning paradigms New technology in
and land use (G. Curdes and new architectural building, transportation,
and A. Montanari) styles etc.
The project proposal discussed at a seminar at the University of

Monaco in May 1984 had drawn on the results of previous studies,
particularly in regard to the behaviour of the various stakeholders during

the process of urban growth. The phases of this process had been defined
as follows: perception, evaluation, decision-making, and implementation.
In particular, the implementation and the actions each stakeholder was
likely to take were developed in detail in the course of subsequent
research. For this phase, the genuine insight had been to take into account
a situation based on fluid reactions represented by flows of people,
migrations, financial flows, and flows of information about the administrative
culture.
The project programme was drawn up at the first URBINNO steering
committee meeting in Vienna in March 1987 and the conditions in which
innovation takes place were defined. These conditions become necessary
either when bottlenecks are created within the urban system, hampering
further growth, or in order to find ways out of crisis situations. Urban
crises occur when the system goes through phases of structural instability;
these phases are favourable to the creation of new pathways of innovative
growth. The URBINNO researchers agreed that a crisis creates dissatisfaction
with the status quo and persuades stakeholders to seek out better
alternatives. Possible strategies include new geographical paradigms,
repositioning, and purely innovative strategies leading to new ways of
taking action.
However, a mixed strategy is sometimes adopted, and the results can
only be monitored by analysing processes in the long-run. At the macro
level, urban change results from the overlapping strategies of different
stakeholders, depending on their ability to prevail. All in all, innovation
and urban change must be considered in terms of mutual feedback. From
this point of view, URBINNO offered a new approach with respect to
previous studies, which had considered the relationship between
innovation and urban change as a sector-based phenomenon rarely seen in
real-life situations. In fact, new urban parameters and new planning tools
are connected to technological progress, and new products and services are
the result of wide-ranging institutional changes.
5. Conclusions
In comparative research the researchers are selected on the basis of their
scientific experience and ability to exchange useful information once the
study is over. A pleasant personality and an ability to define scenarios,
suggest new approaches, and propose intuitions are undoubtedly qualities
that contribute to the success of a comparative research project. They were
among Martinotti’s qualities that people appreciated and that contributed
52 Chapter Three
to the success of the projects he led.

The sustained international cooperation that some researchers working
with him experienced did not continue in subsequent decades, but it
certainly left its mark, as all of them went on to include international,
interdisciplinary collaboration in their own work. The consequences of the
internationalization of the economy and of the social, economic and
political processes that transformed Europe in the 1980s and 1990s were
the starting point for another project, RURE (“Regional and urban
restructuring in Europe”), carried out from 1988 to 1993 and promoted by
the European Science Foundation (ESF) during Martinotti’s tenure as
chairman (1992–1996) of the ESF’s Standing Committee for the Social
Sciences. RURE’s preliminary studies on flows of migrants and tourists
(King 1993; Montanari and Williams 1995) made it possible to identify a
theme that would subsequently become a core area for the social sciences
worldwide over the subsequent decades: human mobility.
Human mobility occurs in different forms including migration and
tourism, and social scientists have been studying the relationships and
overlapping that these flows entail. Tourism is interdependent with
specific forms of migration. It is a form of mobility, of varying duration,
which generates other forms of migration, like the one activated by the
need for tourist infrastructure and services or the one, consumption-led,
that takes on different forms depending on its duration and reasons: second
homes, seasonal migration, lifestyle change migration, migration of
pensioners and elders, etc. The IGU Commission on Global Change and
Human Mobility, GLOBILITY, was set up to focus on this subject in 2000.
European projects that have continued Martinotti’s tradition of
collaboration include SELMA (“Spatial Deconcentration of Economic
Land-Use and Quality of Life in European Metropolitan Areas,” 2002–
2006), which examined the phenomenon of deconcentration in production
and the consequences this can have on the environment and the quality of
life. Subsequently, the SECOA project (“Solutions for environmental
contrasts in coastal areas. Global change, human mobility, and sustainable
urban development,” 2009–2013) looked at urban settlements that,
following the economic crisis in the 1970s, embarked on a process of
regional and urban restructuring to give themselves a new international
image. It was found that renewed economic success has brought fresh
flows of human mobility: permanent, semi-permanent, temporary, daily;
consumption-led (leisure and tourism) or production-led (economic
migration). And that international competition among metropolitan areas is
emphasising the importance of natural and cultural resources.
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Basile, S. and Montanari, A. 1980. “Town planning and rehabilitation in
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PART TWO:
AROUND THE WORLD

CHAPTER FOUR
INTERNATIONAL MOBILITIES AND SECURITY

IN EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN CITIES
SOPHIE BODY-GENDROT
1. Introduction
We are now experiencing rapid changes, protests, and threats of disorder.
Global fears worm their way into people’s everyday life, unstable city
spaces emerge, become sites of conflict, and mutate. Our focus here is on
protests as forms of mobility or movements revealing something about the
anxiety-generating mutations in our time. Unrest is not just a repetition of
the past. At a time of global connections, information, and communication,
protests and disorders starting in one place may generate other uprisings,
by imitation and contagion.
A growing concern about a possible “global pandemic of unrest” has
been publicly expressed by the US director of National Intelligence as well
as by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Cities are “arenas in which the
conflicts and contradictions associated with historically and geographically
specific accumulation strategies are expressed and fought out” and where
alternatives are formulated (Brenner, Marcuse, Meyer 2009, 176).
Whether they take place in Cairo, Tunis, Istanbul, Lisbon or Hong Kong,
protests are frequently triggered locally by a specific outrage, by a sense of
injustice or a need to redress, bringing an intensity of emotions to
demonstrations taking place in the public space.
Security is then a major concern for public authorities and a
fundamental and vital need for everyone, as well as a value for urban
societies. States and cities, with a prerogative task of protection, cannot
ignore demands for security.
Cities are diverse and contradictory. They are “composites of many
moving parts and tiny enclaves (nestled) within larger patterns” (Abu-
Lughod 2011, 23). The issue at stake here is whether global cities, which
have so much to lose from wide disturbances, social fragmentation, and
International Mobilities and Security in European and American Cities 59
material damages, are on the frontline for experimenting with social

innovation (Body-Gendrot 2013, 272). Cities are both geographical spaces
and metaphors for societies. More and more, the global is inserted in the
local. Consequently, considering the destabilizing impact of macro-
mutations, cities cannot wait for upper decision-making levels to make a
move; they have to act fast before unrest gets out of control.
I draw here upon my research experience on safety and public space
that I carried out with the Urban Age programme at the London School of
Economics and Public Policy over the last ten years. My research is
interdisciplinary and qualitative, focused on the city as a strategic field for
the study of a whole series of conflicts. I use the city here as a lens for
understanding larger processes.
2. Urban insecurity, a slippery notion

Insecurity is an elusive term. It refers to many issues, from a deteriorating
moral fabric, to family crisis, to communities’ decay, to societies’ bleak
future. In this paper, I focus on how fear and insecurity are constructed by
various actors and on the policies and measures resulting from this
construction.
Several clarifications need to be made. Firstly, it is important to
differentiate feelings of insecurity from risks saturating our lives. While
there are experts in risk management, there are no experts in urban
insecurity. Risks can be calculated one by one and evaluated, whereas
insecurity is a whole and is undividable.
Secondly, the concern with insecurity has to be contrasted with the
reality of insecurity. For middle classes, urban insecurity is mostly a
concern (Furstenberg 1971). They talk about it, get nervous about it, and
protect themselves, but they are rarely victims of serious crimes. For Beck
(1992, 96), such feeling is frequently based on “second-hand non-
experience based on second-hand information.” Conversely, experiencing
danger in the public space, day-to-day when going to work or returning
home, and finding oneself alone and powerless in a hostile and brutal
environment when all signs of order have vanished, is a common fate for
vulnerable residents in cities.
Thirdly, while our societies are most secure compared with previous
ones in terms of comfort and peace, the feeling of insecurity amalgamates
different types of fears. One should differentiate social insecurity (losing
one’s job, being injured at work, being seriously sick) and civil insecurity
(threats relative to property and persons). Social integrity used to be
protected by the welfare state and the rights it provided but it is hollowing
60 Chapter Four
out in numerous countries. This sort of insecurity is continuously

amalgamated with civil unrest, fed by ongoing narratives about incidents
in cities (Castel 2003).
In our current time characterized by international mobility, the
challenge to authorities is to maintain social cohesion and social efficacy
for all kinds of city-users (Sampson, Raudenbush and Felton 1997).
3. Research questions
A first question that cities need to face is the need for an effective system
of social order. Since city-users are not just permanent residents but also a
variety of visitors and hyper-mobile actors on whom their finances
increasingly depend, what types of protections can cities offer them? The
second question is related to the coproduction of local order. Should the
task of protection be distributed among plural forces? Should the use of
force remain public or involve private agencies? The third question has to
do with citizen participation. Should they get involved in the coproduction
of security and, if so, how? While solutions may appear familiar, questions
on the dialectics of safety/unsafety, order/disorder, violence/conflicts are
not.
4. Global cities’ dilemmas

Global cities are in a prominent position for functions of command,
control, and planning. For their survival, they need to attract and maintain
investors, tourists, employees, and other city-users, ensure their mobility,
and reassure them about safety. This task is arduous.
On one hand, the new technologies of information and communication
continuously exhibit these cities’ flaws in terms of inequalities and risks.
Frustrations and a sense of injustice feed tensions and unrest. On the other
hand, cities are also constrained by legal and economic forces restricting
their leverage. Their systems are shaped by the past, by opportunity
structures afforded by larger, even global conditions (Abu-Lughod 2011,
26). Their action is also limited by assemblages of public and private
bodies with a wide capacity for decision-making. Nevertheless, it is in the
essence of cities to produce new norms, to maintain social peace via
policies of redistribution, to appease conflicts, and to heal wounds. Such
tasks belong to cities’ hospitable missions.
5. Cities, a breeding ground for insecurity?

Protests and urban disorders refer to a hardly conceptualized “newness”
and to an inability to think about urban change. Feelings of insecurity,
uncertainty, and unpredictability are like a thermometer revealing the state
of societies. There is nothing new here. Medieval cities were hardly quiet:
they were the scenes of disorders, lethal brawls, and uprisings. Most
scholars agree that the present level of interpersonal violence needs to be
seen in a long-term decreasing trend (Body-Gendrot 2008, 1). More than
twenty homicides per one hundred thousand inhabitants were recorded in
England in the High and Late Middle Ages (Lane 1997, 4). Currently, the
rate would drop to less than one per one hundred thousand. For Ted Gurr,
the decrease in interpersonal violence is “a manifestation of cultural
change in Western society, especially the growing sensitization to violence
and the development of an increased internal and external control on
aggressive behaviour” (Gurr 1981, 258).
A related issue concerns cities’ spaces themselves. Are some city
spaces a catalyst for unrest, protests, uprising? Or are the latter caused by
internal/external forces impacting cities’ spaces? What are the cities’
responses? Two contrasted examples from Paris and New York illustrate
these cities’ handling of the security issue.
6. Comparing security policies

France has a national and centralized police force in the Jacobin tradition.
Order maintenance and the protection of the State are its first missions.
When, in 2005, disorders erupted in three hundred neighbourhoods, three
weeks of unrest followed (though no locality registered more than four
nights of disturbances). Over ten thousand vehicles were burnt, three
hundred buildings, and 255 schools were vandalized, and damage costs
amounted to two hundred million euros. However, the national police
demonstrated a real expertise in how to handle urban dysfunctions. Eleven
thousand five hundred men belonging to the police, gendarmerie, and
other corps were mobilized. They demonstrated their ability in avoiding
causing casualties among the participants. They isolated provocateurs and
thugs from watchers and concentrated on the 5–10 percent active youths
per locality. They proceeded to make arrests, judges acted in real time; in
the end over four thousand four hundred adults were put into custody and
763 of them were sent to jail (Body-Gendrot 2008). A national crisis
group, under the supervision of the Minister of Interior, met twice a day,
officials went onsite each night and reacted to the evolution of the
62 Chapter Four
situation. A national emergency law was passed at the apex of the crisis,
locally preventing youth gatherings, ordering the deportation of
undocumented delinquents, forbidding the selling of cans of petroleum to
prevent arson and authorizing night curfews.
For three weeks, sensitive sites, touristic areas, state buildings were
heavily protected, and mobility unhampered. Paris is a well-policed city. It
has more policemen per capita (one for every 162 residents) than New
York (one for every 205) and a better ratio than the rest of France. In
November 2005, unlike May 1968, Paris and France more generally were
not paralyzed or “under siege.” The city was guarded like a medieval
castle surrounded by moats (the ring roads) and the Stock Exchange kept
rising. The police expected no coproduction from citizens.
In New York, although it has not experienced riots recently, the
sanctuary city was hurt at its core by a lethal terrorist act in September
2001. What is of interest here is how the city reacted after this trauma.
First of all, owing to its wealth and assets, and in response to financial,
economic and political elites’ demands for protection, the city’s police
department launched aggressive order maintenance in the continuity of a
policy set by mayor Giuliani.
Gradually, invoking the “precautionary principle,” authorities slowed
mobility in public spaces. Risk management and the surveillance of
prestigious streets and parks meant that taxis could no longer linger along
notorious buildings, that access to towers’ promenade space was restricted,
that endless searches delayed visitors to the Statue of Liberty and into
airports. Inside private buildings, visitors had to show identification and
parcels could no longer be delivered to the offices’ upper floors. In
equipped centres, magnetic and biometric screens or facial identification
cameras allowed the checking of visitors (Body-Gendrot 2012, 78). The
“barricading” or “citadelization” of the city was denounced by intellectuals
(Marcuse 2002, 599). Public demonstrations, even peaceful ones on
Thanksgiving, taking place on Fifth Avenue are currently strictly controlled
by the New York Police Department. The demonstrations routes are
previously defined with organizers and a zero-tolerance policy operates.
For sites in construction, architects and engineers are currently
supervised by the police, which has the right, for instance, to require “rings
of steel” (inspired by the terrorist experience in Northern Ireland) for a
better protection of the first floors of a prestigious office tower, like the
Freedom Tower on Ground Zero. Surveillance, control, and identification
are exerted by numerous police officers as well as by thousands of
cameras. On the meanwhile, citizens’ participation in making public space
secure is encouraged.
The attacks of 9/11 have contributed to justify and reinforce safety

measures. As Guido Martinotti remarked in a letter to his friends, “the
worried elites of many countries reacted by appropriating the dead ones
and rose in indignation for the defence of their values.”
7. Citizens as actors coproducing order/disorder

7.1 Buying security
In a city in flux where few residents know who their neighbours are, a
usual reaction is not to trust the police and make private decisions, such as
buying arms or living in gated communities. Privatization is flourishing in
North America where private guards outnumber public officers. With the
notion of defensible spaces in mind (Newman 1973), some residents may
choose to lock themselves in and have others locked out, thus freezing
mobility. This trend was called the Exile Project (Simon 2007). It leads to
a less democratic, more racially polarized and more uncertain America,
and feeds an endless quest for security.
7.2 Urban disorders as the expression of the disempowered

Not everyone in the city shares this frame of mind. An opinion poll
indicated that 60% of New Yorkers had not changed their way of living
after 9/11. For less affluent residents in cities, public spaces remain a
political resource for all kinds of grievances to which the media give
visibility. Protest is indeed about rites and symbols. It is about belonging
and sharing an experience of protest despite the heterogeneity of
participants in a symbolic space.
It is a novel form of mobility forming a connection between the global
and the local. Mobilizations are a mode of social expression: they
reinterpret public space and organize a drama in a context of marked and
contentious territories (Sassen 2010; Body-Gendrot 2012). Theoretically,
they can be perceived as a “voice” or at least a “cry,” a signal that
disjunctive democracies are going too far in their excesses.
8. Conclusion: Global cities’ compromises

Serious social problems, conflicts, tensions, and forms of violence
resulting from global processes could be alleviated if cities were included
from the start in the decision-making process and in the transactions
among various political, financial, and economic actors. Macro-level
64 Chapter Four
frames should be held accountable “for the types of stress that arise out of
everyday violence and insecurity in dense spaces,” i.e. the type of issues
that global governance discourse and its norms do not quite capture
(Sassen 2010, 1).
Cities submit to states’ domination but, closer to citizens, they also
take advantage of their own perceptions of problems. Confronted with
threats and attempting to alleviate fears and insecurity, they can innovate
with their own solutions. The dilemmas mega-cities face come from the
need to become or remain world-class cities with top financial ratings, to
control crime, disorder, and unrest in order to reassure investors, on the
one hand, and, on the other, to avoid and reduce the socio-economic
fragmentation of their populations, considering contexts boosting urban
risk. They need to attract global actors (the 0.1 of one percent) via efficient
structures of control, creating financial opportunities but also to “buy
social peace” with larger redistributive measures, more basic public
services and shared spaces for the 99.99 percent. Such compromises are
vital, and it is likely that these financial compromises are currently the
most difficult to reach.
References
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Analysis,” in The City Revisited. Urban Theory from Chicago, Los
Angeles, New York, edited by D.R. Judd and D. Simpson, 21–50.
Minneapolis: Minnesota Press.
Beck, U. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage
Body-Gendrot, S. 2008. “Urban ‘riots’ in France: Anything New?” in
Local security policy in the Netherlands and Belgium, edited by L.
Cachet, S. De Kimpe, P. Ponsaert, A. Ringeling, 263–80. Den Haag:
Boom Juridische Utig.
—. 2012. Globalization, Fear and Insecurity. The Challenges for Cities
North and South, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
—. 2013. “Globalization and urban insecurity: comparative perspectives,”
in Cities and Crisis, edited by K. Fujita, 270–93. London: Sage.
Brenner, N., Marcuse, P. and Mayer, M. 2003. 2009. “Cities for people,
not for profit,” City, 13, 2–3, 176–84.
Castel, R. 2003. L’insécurité sociale. Paris : Le Seuil.
Furstenberg, F. 1971. “Public reaction to crime in the streets,” American
Scholar, 40, 601–10.
Gurr, T.R. 1981. “Historical trends in violent crime,” Crime and Justice, 3,
295–353.
Lane, R. 1997. Murder in America. Columbus: Ohio State University.

Marcuse, P. 2002. “Urban form and globalization after September 11th: the
view from New York,” International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research, 26, 3, 596–606.
Newman, O. 1973. Defensible Spaces: People and Design in the Violent
City. London: Architectural Press.
Sampson, R., Raudenbush, S. and Felton, E. 1997. “Neighborhoods and
violent crime: a multilevel study of collective efficacy,” American
Association for the Advancement of Science 277, 916–24.
Sassen, S. 2010. “The city: its return as a lens for social theory,” Theory,
Culture and Society, 1, 3–10.
Simon, J. 2007. Governing through Crime, Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
CHAPTER FIVE
HOSPITABLE AND HEALTHY DESTINATION:

A COLLABORATIVE APPROACH
ALAN FYALL, HEATHER HARTWELL

AND ANN HEMINGWAY
1. Introduction
Competition among destinations continues apace with the need for new
forms of differentiation: a constant challenge for those managing and
marketing destinations (Fyall 2011). Being truly distinctive in a crowded
marketplace is becoming harder, as so many destinations seek to position
themselves as great places to work, live and play (Morgan, Pritchard and
Pride 2011). One current trend across many destinations is that of
“wellbeing” and they are variously beginning to tap into the desire by
tourists and residents for more “hospitable” and “healthy” places. Some
scholars (Hartwell et al. 2012) go further by suggesting that the time is
right for destinations to deliver a more eudaemonist and less hedonistic
“quality of life.” For example, while hedonistic tourism involves happiness
and the attainment of pleasure, eudaemonist tourism is focused on self-
realization, meaning and human flourishing. Eudaemonist orientations are
in fact more consistent with the wider agenda of wellbeing, entailing “a
state of complete physical, mental, and social wellbeing, and not merely
the absence of disease or infirmity” (WHO 2006).
The trend towards wellbeing experiences at destinations is particularly
notable in that the very origins of modern mass tourism were driven by
religious pilgrimage (mental wellbeing) and the perceived benefits of spa
and sea waters and the general good quality of air evident in primarily
coastal destinations (Walton 1983). A migration to new forms of wellbeing
tourism suggests, therefore, that tourism may be returning to its original
eudaemonist roots. Although hedonistic forms of tourism will always have
a place in the tourism landscape, there is a groundswell of influence
Hospitable and Healthy Destination: A Collaborative Approach 67
emerging among those leading the tourism and public health agendas for a
significant improvement in the overall wellbeing and quality of life of both
tourist and resident communities, as they seek to establish destinations
nice to visit and nice to live (Fyall et al. 2013).
This chapter thus explores the relationships between public health,
wellbeing and tourism and the need for collaboration at the destination
level for truly hospitable and healthy places to exist. Using Orlando,
Central Florida, as an example, the chapter then introduces the role of
collaborative clusters as a vehicle to destination development with spatial-
economic, organizing capacity and cluster-specific conditions, identified
as the key criteria for successful “collaborative” destination development to
take place. The chapter closes by offering a series of provisional
recommendations for the destinations eager to introduce more eudaemonist
experiences and products into their strategies and so to deliver the hospitable
and healthy places in demand by both tourists and residents.
2. Public health, wellbeing and tourism

Quality of life depends on the level of physical and psycho-social
wellbeing of individuals, which, in turn, relates to the values and attitudes
that define people’s perceptions of their own life; quality of life also
encompasses wealth, status, and moral and aesthetic values (Diener et al.
2009). Moreover, as people work longer, with less time and less income
for pensions and gilt-edged retirements, the search for more memorable
experiences driven by authenticity, nostalgia, spiritual and mental
enlightenment, convenience, and spontaneity will become the norm
(Hudson 2010). Health and tourism are complex phenomena, which seek
to enrich the lives of people and create healthier tourist and resident
communities. Ultimately, health is a far-reaching multi-sectoral social
responsibility with both opportunities and challenges for tourism. Tourism
clearly does not thus operate within a policy vacuum and, as such, it will
only function smoothly if it shares, cooperates and dialogues effectively
with other sectors of society, such as public health (Fyall et al. 2013).
A small number of studies have begun to appear on these subjects,
such as Dolnicar et al. (2012) on vacation taking and quality of life and
Gilbert and Abdullah (2004) on holiday taking and the sense of wellbeing,
Small and Harris (2011) on tourism and obesity, and McCabe et al. (2010)
on social tourism and the linkages between subjective wellbeing and
quality of life. But a paucity of research adequately examines the policy
foundations, opportunities, and achievements in the potentially synergistic
fields of public health, wellbeing, and tourism. Hence, while wellbeing
68 Chapter Five
and quality of life are gradually beginning to appear in tourism and public
health planning under the auspices of a new paradigm of “societal wealth”
(Rodrigues, Kastenholz and Rodrigues 2010), there is clearly scope for
destinations to embed components of wellbeing and quality of life within
their destination brand positioning, as evidenced through their wider
destination development strategies.
One of the destinations that have recently adopted such a stance is
Manchester. Third only behind London and Edinburgh in the United
Kingdom with regard to the number of its international visitors,
Manchester has the unenviable record of being one of the cities with the
worst results for specific causes of death such as heart disease and stroke,
cancer, liver disease, and lung disease. Manchester also has the worst
overall level of early death, not in itself a great selling point to its visitors!
Rather than hide behind such trends, however, Manchester has been
sufficiently bold to integrate public health ambitions into its wider tourism
strategy with the desire to create a tourism city that also delivers a better
quality of life for the three million people who live or work there. In the
words of Visit Manchester, the local DMO (Destination Management
Organization), “if we build a destination that is fit for us, the people of
Greater Manchester, then we will create a future city that will attract
people from all over the world, particularly those with a thirst for
discovery” (Visit Manchester 2008).
For those managing tourism at the destination level, such as
Manchester, one of the biggest challenges is that satisfaction varies among
tourists and residents using the same service (Sirgy 2010). Hence, while
some scholars (e.g. McCabe et al. 2010) have outlined the negative
“hedonistic” effect of tourism activities at destinations, such as drug and
alcohol abuse, overeating, food poisoning, risky sexual behaviour, and
physical harm, a number of recent studies have commented on those
factors contributing to improving satisfaction and “eudaemonist” wellbeing
among tourists (Neal et al. 2007; McCabe et al. 2010; Nawijn 2010;
Nawijn et al. 2010; Nawijn and Peeters 2010; Nawijn 2011; Uysal et al.
2012). A destination that is well placed to tap into this trend at the national
level is England, where there is a multiplicity of options catering to a wide
diversity of markets.
More significant, perhaps, is that England is currently experiencing a
period of rapid political change at the regional and local level, with the
reorganization of its health infrastructures providing a necessary
foundation for a shift in orientation from a hedonistic to a more
eudaemonist approach to tourism in many destinations (Hartwell et al.
2012).
Interestingly, one of those destinations that consistently records high

levels of wellbeing is Singapore, in South East Asia. With a life
expectancy of just over 84 years of age, one of the most efficient health
care systems across the globe, one of the world’s cleanest and greenest
cities and a growing emphasis on work-life balance and plethora of
sporting events, Singapore continues to serve as a wellbeing model for
aspiring destinations across the world, with 15.6 million tourists visiting it
in 2013, an increase of 7.4% from 2012 (Singapore Tourism Board 2014).
3. Hospitably and healthy destinations?

The need for collaboration
One of the key contributors, or inhibitors, to hospitable and healthy
destinations is the food and drink consumed by tourists and residents alike.
Interestingly, although the tourism and hospitality industry is frequently
chastised for its advocacy of unhealthy eating and drinking practices, the
opposite is frequently true. Evidence can be found from many destinations
across the world where hospitality has influenced positive social change,
including social inclusion, and has contributed to the social and cultural
regeneration (Bell 2007).
Bell goes further and argues that “food, drink and entertainment have
effectively been reincorporated into definitions of urban culture with
consumption as a leisure and tourism activity.” From dockland and old
industrial neighbourhoods to inner-cities of urban decay, the regeneration
of places through food and drink is omnipresent across many countries,
with some areas, such as London’s Covent Garden, that have become
iconic destinations for tourists and residents alike.
Such places seldom come about by chance, though with the need by all
stakeholders to collaborate effectively frequently viewed as the only
means possible to initiate such energy, funding, and political leverage for
change to take place. Interestingly, Fyall et al. (2012) argue that
collaboration is the only viable response to the management and marketing
challenges faced by some destinations.
This is consistent with the views of Sheridan (2014), who suggests that
many if not most destinations are to embrace the collaboration economy as
a permanent fixture, with a consequent need to evaluate their options
accordingly. He does in fact go further by suggesting that an economic
paradigm shift has taken place in which the need to “share” prevails over
the competitive modus operandi, traditional across the wider travel
industry. While all destinations vary in their composition, scale, history,
organization, climate, spatial dimensions, infrastructures, politics, and
70 Chapter Five
government, it is the geographical and political boundaries that dissect

many destinations and ultimately necessitate a cross-border collaborative
approach. This is true generally for purposes of destination marketing and
management, let alone more complex cross-sectoral initiatives, as is the
case for public health, wellbeing, and tourism. Ultimately, the composite
nature of destinations is such that collaboration in its myriad of forms is
necessary for hospitable and healthy destinations to take place.
4. Collaboration and clusters

Collaboration, despite its core role in the marketing and management of
destinations, which is widely recognized by both academics and
practitioners, is not always sufficient to ensure achievement of their
aspirations. For many destinations, it is a combination of collaboration and
cluster behaviour that collectively moves the agenda forward.
According to Van den Berg et al. (2001), evidence suggests that in
many instances urban economic growth often comes about through
proactive cooperation between various economic actors who together form
innovative cluster arrangements of firms and organizations. They add that
it is in these geographically concentrated “clusters” or configurations of
networks that value-added and employment growth in urban regions are
realized. Ultimately, clusters represent networks of specialized organizations
at the frequently local level where the processes of production are closely
connected through the exchange of goods, services and/or knowledge. One
of the key contributions of cluster activity is the exchange of information,
knowledge, and creative ideas both within and across clusters. This often
informal exchange is primarily driven by actors within the wider
destination who are cognizant of the key issues, challenges, and
opportunities faced by the destination and the necessary contacts and
channels with which to stimulate action and essentially “get things done.”
With over sixty-two million visitors per annum, Orlando, in Central
Florida, is one of the world’s truly great tourist destinations, with its
themed attractions (such as Disney’s Magic Kingdom, Universal Studios,
and Seaworld) collectively serving as the stimulus for an industry that
currently generates over 230 million dollars per annum in tourist
development taxes alone! Despite its considerable and unrivalled success
globally in the international family theme park market, like most
destinations Orlando is also seeking to diversify its offer, to widen its
economic horizons and to become a more hospitable and healthy
destination. Although with a staggering economic benefit of its tourism
and hospitality industry in excess of fifty-four billion dollars, challenges
for Orlando include its status as a relatively low-wage economy by US

standards, its overdependence on tourism and hospitality, and the
implications for public health and overall wellbeing.
Like many other successful destinations, however, there is in fact much
more to Orlando that meets the eye. For example, it has an active culture
of community sports with participation levels at its myriad of five km, ten
km, and half and full marathons particularly impressive. It also boasts
many fine museums, art galleries, and traditional attractions, while its 500
million dollar investment in its landmark Dr. Phillips Center for the
Performing Arts will, as is hoped, firmly establish Orlando among the top-
tier cities in the US.
In addition to its considerable investment in sporting stadia, commuter
rail infrastructure, and active promotion to industries outside of tourism
and hospitality to come and locate in the Orlando area, one cannot
question the effort and desire to succeed by those leading the city and
wider county. Although clearly a man-made destination of an immense
scale with a vast network of public and private sector stakeholders, one
defining feature of Orlando is the extent to which the destination works
together and understands the benefits from a collaborative approach to the
development, marketing and managing of destinations.
To explain this case in more depth, however, the following figure
serves as a useful vehicle in which to dissect the various collaborative and
cluster dynamics currently present in Orlando (Fig. 5-1).
4.1 Spatial-economic conditions

As with most destinations, operators at the local level are hugely
competitive throughout much of the year and collaboration between them
only occurs at certain times of the year and even then, frequently with only
certain markets. Nevertheless, all of Orlando’s key attractions are
committed to the broader development of the destination as well as raising
levels of awareness of its non-tourism and hospitality attractions. With an
expanding non-tourism economy that boasts national and international
leaders in aerospace and defence, life sciences, and biotechnology,
modelling, simulation and training, and digital media, Orlando offers far
more than large mice and rollercoasters! In fact, Orlando clearly offers
much potential with the interplay of competition and collaboration
occurring in most sectors.
72 Chapter Five
Fig. 5-1 Collaboration and Clusters

Source: Van den Berg, Braun and Van Winden 2001
One interesting aspect of Orlando is that many of those key actors

continuing to drive the industry today were present at the very beginning
in 1971, when Walt Disney World first opened its doors in Central Florida.
Hence, personal and professional relationships going back many years are
central to Orlando’s success with many of the key actors continuing to
pass their knowledge through the generations. The greater the diversity of
its economic base, the greater the overall attraction of the broader
metropolitan area as a place where to live, study, and enjoy life. Over time
it is this growth that has fuelled local and regional demand with local and
regional residents, contributing much to the popularity of Orlando’s key
attractions whether through their own visits or as “hosts” to friends and
relatives who themselves are frequenting the attractions.
One challenge for the destination is its over-reliance on car
transportation with limited alternatives available for the near future.
Although there was a successful launch of its commuter rail service back
in the summer of 2014, this is limited in scope for visitors and for east-
west travel. That said, the future investment in road, rail, and more
sustainable forms of transportation are impressive. Orlando International
Airport, the thirteenth busiest in the US, continues to grow, serving as a
major catalyst for the attraction of new business to the area and to enhance
the international accessibility to Central Florida.
Recognizing that the provision of high-quality medical, hospital and

educational services is critical for many people when considering
relocating, Orlando has achieved much in recent years with its Medical
City at Lake Nona, only minutes away from the international airport, a two
billion dollar medical cluster of national and international standing. The
city’s commitment to health and healthy living continues with the US
Tennis Association recently committing sixty million dollars to develop a
national training centre in Orlando, neighbouring the aforementioned
Medical City.
Clearly both such developments add to the quality of the living
environment as do they demonstrate an overtly positive attitude towards
innovation and willingness to cooperate at the local, regional, and national
level to the overall improvement and development of Orlando. They also
represent a departure from the more hedonistic attractions available
elsewhere across the destination and indicate a slight shift towards a more
balanced economy with obvious benefits to those seeking a more
hospitable and healthy environment. The role of the local university is also
important here in that its commitment to “partnership” underpins
everything it achieves. This is evidenced by the previous two examples
where it is a central player in the development of both the Medical City
and US Tennis facilities at Lake Nona. Proximity, mutual trust, and
recognition of both local and global contexts contribute here with the city
leaders and key actors to a long-term vision for the city.
4.2 Organizing capacity

The unity among key stakeholders across the destination is perhaps best
demonstrated by the recent launch of the regional branding initiative,
“Orlando: you don’t know the half of it,” designed to raise national
awareness of the benefits of Orlando as a destination for investment and
development. Despite its understandable focus on industries other than
tourism and hospitality, it is significant that a number of key actors within
both industries are evident in this new campaign, with them recognizing
the benefits to be accrued by Orlando as a whole. The clarity of the vision
and strategy for the City of Orlando and Orange County is also evident
with the unity of support for Orlando City, the city’s new Major League
Soccer franchise set to commence in March 2015, with the allocation of
tourist tax dollars contributing to the development of a new purpose-built
soccer stadium, part of the wider regeneration of less economically and
less healthy parts of the city. Similar to the development of the Dr. Phillips
Center for the Performing Arts, the soccer stadium represents a good
74 Chapter Five
example of public-private sector engagement and a corresponding high

level of both societal and political support in moving the destination-wide
agenda forward. The two latter initiatives are both crucial to the
broadening of the appeal of Orlando as well as enhancing its cultural and
sporting appeal to both tourists and residents alike.
Orlando also benefits from a highly effective and stable DMO, Visit
Orlando, which has been in existence for over three decades. Its
development as a destination clearly has not happened by chance with the
DMO and its myriad of partners, including all of the key theme park
attractions, consistently working for the broader benefit of the destination.
Although arguably well-supported through tourist taxation dollars, it is a
DMO which is highly proactive in generating its own income while its
engagement with state and national campaigns is critical in maintaining its
leading market position.
Of more recent note, and of particular relevance to this chapter, is its
engagement with many suppliers of health services, with Orlando, and
Florida more broadly, becoming a major health tourism destination with its
warm climate and high concentration of quality hospitals a major
attraction, especially those older markets identified by Hudson (2010).
4.3 Cluster-specific conditions

The third and final set of conditions conducive to successful collaborative
cluster development all again relate to the specific context of Orlando.
While the arrival in Disney in 1971 served as the scale-catalyst for the
development of the wider destination, other industries have also benefitted
from the presence of one or more cluster engines to drive development.
With a strong military history, many high-tech companies remain in the
Orlando area with simulation and modelling industries representing one of
the nation’s true centres of excellence. With around sixty thousand
students and research income now totalling approximately 150 million
dollars, the University of Central Florida, based to the east of downtown
Orlando, represents a significant cluster engine with its reach widespread
across the region and beyond. Its commitment to partnerships across a
range of industries is impressive, with it serving as a key partner to
Medical City and the new facility for US Tennis, as mentioned previously.
In addition, its prominence nationally with the registration of new patents
and new firm start-ups provides further evidence of the breadth and depth
of its reach as it seeks to create a better Orlando. It is again perhaps the
sheer scale of what is currently in existence at Lake Nona—and what is
planned for the future—that continues to help redefine what Orlando
stands for with the greater balance in its economy in the future very much
driven by its health sector and associated healthy and hospitable living.
5. Opportunities for destination development

Although much of the above can arguably relate to development more
broadly, the commitment and unified vision of destination stakeholders
across Orlando is evidence of a collective will to move the city forward in
a more balanced manner to the benefit of both tourist and resident
communities alike. Returning to the beginning and overall aim of this
chapter, all of the above collaborative cluster activity is contributing to the
overall appeal of Orlando as a destination to visit and live, with the
destination ultimately seeking to enhance the wellbeing of tourists and
residents alike. As its attractions mature and markets adapt and change, the
above also provides the need and opportunity for those marketing and
managing the destination to differentiate their destination products and
experiences to enhance competitiveness in what is becoming an
increasingly crowded marketplace.
To achieve such an outcome a number of opportunities exist for
destinations generally and for Orlando more specifically. Firstly, rather
than viewing “wellbeing” as a niche product and/or experience, there is
scope to embed it fully into the wider strategy for the development of the
destination. Although Orlando currently projects a strong hedonistic
image, much of its current brands focus on relationships and the benefits
of families spending quality time together at attractions where all members
of the family can participate. With the various developments taking place
across the destination of a community, culture, and health nature scope for
a subtle shift in brand focus is very real with it offering genuine
differentiation in the marketplace.
Secondly, as a vehicle to achieve the above, it represents a significant
opportunity for all parties to work together in a complementary rather than
competitive manner as benefits exist for both tourism and hospitality and
the various health providers across the destination.
Thirdly, while residents and tourists do not always see eye-to-eye, the
benefits to both of a eudaemonia-oriented destination are clear with a nice
place to live and a nice place to visit, with local residents becoming highly
effective wellness “ambassadors” for the destination.
Fourthly, and in recognition of benefits to both residents and tourists,
scope for co-branding is considerable with health care providers, food and
beverage suppliers, clothing brands, and sporting and activity associations
all serving as ideal co-branding partners, as evident to some degree in the
76 Chapter Five
new regional branding initiative for “Orlando: you don’t know the half of
it.” Thereafter, there exists the opportunity to enhance and then sustain the
volume and quality of experiential aspects of the destination with the
increasing focus on health and healthy living integral to the wider
community agenda, none more so than for older retired communities and
assisted-living facilities.
Finally, there are opportunities for new leaders to take the stage and
implement new, innovative, and inclusive approaches to the development
of wellbeing destination brands. To achieve this, leaders need to be able to
cross the divide between the public health and tourism sectors,
demonstrate experience of successful brand development, as well as have
the ability to bring resident and tourist communities together as both are
critical to the co-creation of the destination brand experience.
6. Conclusions
Through a myriad of collaborative cluster developments, Orlando in
Central Florida is playing its part in the hospitable and healthy debate by
building on its world-class reputation as the home of family theme park
entertainment and attractions through its development of a range of future
potentially world-class facilities, services, and experiences.
Unlike many destinations that strive to achieve such ambition,
however, Orlando has had the considerable benefit of a leadership team
that sees the bigger picture, is prepared to do something about it and more
importantly is willing to invest considerable time, money, energy, and
political goodwill in making things happen. For most destinations, the
issue of destination leadership represents the biggest challenge. Finding
suitably qualified people to take the agenda forward in the short, medium,
and longer term, as destinations seek to embed wellbeing into their core
proposition, is no easy task.
However, the rewards to be gained from the fusion of public health,
wellbeing, and tourism are real, so ought therefore to serve as a suitable
catalyst for stakeholder engagement and for attracting suitably qualified
people to take the lead and advance the wellbeing agenda at destinations
for residents and tourists alike. If this can be achieved, then nice places to
live truly can become nice places to visit with hospitable and healthy
destinations a reality rather than a utopian ideal!
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CHAPTER SIX
MAKING PLACES, SELLING PLACES:

CITY MARKETING AND COMMODIFICATION
GIANDOMENICO AMENDOLA
Immer war mir das Feld und der Wald und der Fels und die Gärten
Nur ein Raum, und du machst sie, Geleibte, zum Ort
Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Vier Jahreszeiten, 1796
1. Spaces, non-places, places

Tourism cannot exist without places in the physical environment. Visitors
look for places that are worth a visit and potentially offer a memorable
experience. The contemporary city, needing tourism to feed its
deindustrialized economy, needs internationally competitive places to
attract and serve families, businessmen, and other visitors. The postmodern
city could not survive without places that produce tourism-based resources
and reinforce its identity. Contemporary tertiary economies are hungry for
places, because they are new sources of urban wealth and jobs. Even great
events, such as Olympic Games and international expositions, which since
the nineteenth century have been urban magnets, must produce places and
become places, to justify the massive investments they require. They leave
their signs in the cityscape with iconic architectures. Yesterday’s Olympic
Games or international expositions (London, Paris, Chicago, etc.) remain
visible as symbolic landmarks in their cityscapes. These monuments and
buildings are still places worthy of visit, or gaze (Urry 1990), because of
their historical significance and their narrative power.
A reason for the success of starchitects is their ability to produce iconic
works of architecture that give birth to new city places. Thanks to the
media, their buildings become icons (i.e., memorable places) even before
they are completed. In the hands of Renzo Piano, Santiago Calatrava,
Norman Foster, even airports can become iconic architecture. Airports,
which have been traditionally considered non-places, may now be
80 Chapter Six
landmarks, expected to provide not only functions but also experiences;

that is to say, they have become objects of tourists’ desires. They are part
of the destination, and not only a transit area, i.e. a non-place à la Augé
(1992).
Trade and shopping have always produced places. The marketplace,
dense of functions and meanings, lies at the core of historical European
cities and, according to Max Weber, has played a major role in the process
of modernization. The marketplace was the “growth machine” of
European cities from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, as well as
the core of the urban fabric (e.g., Italian “Piazze delle erbe”). Today
London’s Bond Street, Rome’s Via del Corso, Paris’ Rue de Rivoli, New
York’s Fifth Avenue are well-known, alluring places able to attract both
residents and visitors, shoppers and flâneurs. Their appeal is not only due
to their shopping opportunities, but also to their lights, crowds,
atmosphere, and historical milieu. They are mythical places in people’s
imagery. They were the centrepiece of the nineteenth century Ville Lumière
and are now the pulsing heart of the contemporary Fantasy City (Hannigan,
1998). Department Stores, from their nineteenth century Parisian ancestors
(Au Bon Marché, etc.) to contemporary Macy’s and Harrods, are special
places where people go ostensibly to shop but in reality, to dream and to
meet other dreamers. These are places where people become consumers,
trying to build their social identity, as they did in Zola’s novel Au Bonheur
des Dames. Shopping malls, which according to Marc Augé are non-
places, are in fact the most real of places, major landmarks of everyday
life, where people flock. They are contemporary agoras, landmarks of
metropolitan life, where people buy, meet, exchange ideas, and come to
look at other people. They are also magnets for tourists, who flock into
them eager for bargains. New York’s Bloomingdales, London’s Harrod’s
and US Maine’s Kittery (the city of “outlet malls”) are major tourist
destinations because they are places where visitors can meet local people
and get the feeling of a full immersion in their world. Tourists flock into
shopping streets not only to find good deals but also to enjoy a full urban
experience. They want to get the so-called “crowd emotion” or to smell the
allure of everyday life.
In the past, special places were created from the bottom up by
everyday people or from the top-down by kings, presidents, or popes for
special events or, chiefly in baroque times, to boost their legitimacy and
acquire popularity. Pope Sixtus V deeply changed the fabric of Rome in
order to welcome, guide, and amaze pilgrims with the wonderful spaces of
the city. Squares and the “Corsi,” created to impress pilgrims coming to
Rome for Holy Year, are now among the main landmarks of contemporary
Making Places, Selling Places: City Marketing and Commodification 81
tourist Rome. Capital cities of nation-states have been designed since 1500
to enchant subjects and visitors; their monuments and places are now
landmarks for visitors and identity symbols for citizens. These special and
outstanding places were major elements of city image and cornerstones of
urban identity. The main themes of city life—government, faith, and
economics—were embedded in the city fabric: the squares in the front of
the king’s palace, the city hall or the cathedral were both functional and
symbolic places. Great places par excellence were the cathedrals, the
churches, and their squares, which were the places where the major themes
of the city life were visible. The marketplace, core of the people’s daily
life, played a major role in urban experience not only as an economic place
(trade), but also as a political and social institution (agorà).
Today, deindustrialization and urban competition have forced cities to
reinvent themselves and their economies. Even coke cities (e.g.,
Pittsburgh, Turin, Glasgow, and Essen) have deeply changed, thanks to
heavy beautification strategies. In order to regenerate themselves
economically, cities are paying more attention to the tourist business;
therefore, they create places to attract and encourage visitors. New
attractions are forged and added to the traditional tourist destinations to
produce wealth and consensus: wealth from tourists and city-users (who
are both city consumers) and consensus from the citizens. It is also true
that resident citizens can become tourists in their own city, lending their
ears to the stories told by the urban book of stone that expert designers and
programmers have made into narratives. The aim of these strategies is to
reduce the difference between citizens and city-users, bridging the gap
between needs and desires.
Current strategies aimed at increasing the practical and symbolic
consumption of the city often rely on history and on the past, which can be
transformed into narratives. History is a major reservoir of memories and
meanings able to make every space a place worth a visit and an
experience. It is the great revenge of the book of stone of the city, which,
according to Victor Hugo in Notre Dame de Paris, was to be killed by the
Guttenberg’s book of paper. In the book of stone of the city, if you want to
and you have the skills to do so, you can read the history of the city, its
people, its culture, and its dreams. History is a major means to create
places; if a narrative history does not exist it must be invented. Today, city
administrators and tourist operators are adding to the book of stone new
pages full of media environments and memory places in order to meet the
demand of the tourist market. A city full of narrative-memory places will
attract more families, visitors, and firms thanks to its ability to produce
experiences and emotions.
82 Chapter Six
Culture is embedded in places, but in order to create experience and

emotions it must be visible. This is the raison d’être of contemporary and
trendy cultural tourism. Experience, the cornerstone of the urban analysis
of Walter Benjamin (1986), is one of the key words associated with
contemporary tourism. A journey that can produce experience and
knowledge is increasingly demanded and, therefore, offered by tourist
operators. A place is a space that because of its meanings can produce
experience. This is what Goethe writes in his wonderful sonnet Vier
Jahreszeiten (The Four Seasons): “Immer war mir das Feld und der Wald
und der Fels und die Gärten nur ein Raum, und du machst sie, Geleibte,
zum Ort” (“The field, the wood, the rock, and the gardens have always
been to me space; now, you, my love, changed them into places”). A poor
old wall of stone, an empty and run-down factory, a small country church
can be an object of experience like a baroque cathedral, a Greek temple, a
fabulous landscape, an ancient Maghreb village, a Mediterranean procession
or a Tuscany grape harvest. A place or an event radiating culture is a
powerful tourist magnet because it promises a cognitive and emotional
enrichment. Often contemporary tourists travel outside the beaten track to
look for “other-spaces,” “other-scapes,” authentic places able to tell them a
story. Even in hidden corners of the city news tourist, eager for “other”
experiences, can find buildings, events, images, smells, and traditions that
can tell them a story. Wherever there is a story to be told and to be heard,
they can find places.
2. Narrative places and city marketing

A tourist place must have some particular properties. It must be
imaginable, it must be symbolically consumed and experienced, and it
must be remembered and told. Above all it must be able to produce
emotions. Emotions are both tourist magnets and products that can be sold.
Once, emotions were considered to be embedded only in romantic or
exotic destinations, such as Marrakesh, Tahiti, and the Taj Mahal; today,
emotional marketing is widely used to make attractive cities that were
traditionally considered monuments of modernity and rationality (e.g.
Berlin, Chicago, and New York). Descriptions full of emotions and
feelings, taken from the pages of promotional literature, are used as
makeup by tourist operators and bureaus in their brochures, which make
every city appealing. Great literary or movie stories are useful to make
places talk.
Tourist places must be, first of all, narrative in order to be consumed
symbolically. Every place that can tell a story can produce emotions. As a
consequence, every place can become narrative thanks to proper

techniques and media supports: lost and abandoned mines, famous writers’
mansions, Jack the Ripper’s haunts, the Mafia’s streets, the Camino de
Santiago or a Pleistocene glacier.
There are many places where great events took place but they cannot
become tourist places because they are not visible, or they are physically
indistinct. These places, though well-known (e.g. the Plymouth Rock of
Mayflower Pilgrims or the Scoglio di Quarto of Garibaldi’s Mille) cannot
be lived or experienced by tourists without technical means that make the
environment speak. Famous battle locations, such as Waterloo,
Gettysburg, Marne, or Normandy, started to attract visitors only when
films and scenography techniques gave them the voice to tell their story.
Inscriptions, tracks, images, film, sons et lumière, and actors make
history visible and places consumable by visitors eager for experiences. In
such a way, almost every city and the entire world as well is able to tell
thousands of stories and fables.
Fake places can have the same appeal of real historical places. Arsène
Lupin’s fans visit the Etretat rocks in Normandy where, according to the
novelist Maurice Leblanc, are hidden the treasures of French kings. Many
tourist destinations are borrowed from popular literature: Sherlock
Holmes’ Baker Street house in London; Nero Wolf’s New York City
mansion on 35th Street, where the brownstone houses described in the
novel do not exist; Margaret Mitchell’s house in Atlanta, which was
rebuilt for visitors to the Olympic Games. In San Francisco tourists queue
up to join the four-hour tour of the places in Dashiell Hammett’s thrilling
novels (five dollars without a reservation, ten dollars with it). The San
Francisco city administration wanted to place a memorial plate in the street
where Hammett’s detective, Miles Archer, was murdered.
According to Marcel Proust, “the real discovery journey is not in
seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes.” The new eyes claimed by
him are often created by cinema. Film commissions that now are active in
many Italian regions have been created to invent and to sell places using
the power of the film screen. Their productivity is often assessed by
counting the number of films that have been shot in a region and the
ensuing growth of visitors. A landscape, a waterfront or a white romantic
farm that evokes emotions from the screen is expected to have an even
greater effect when visited in person.
The screen is an important medium not just for the great cities, such as
New York, Paris, Rome, which have been featured in cinema since its very
beginnings. Small and often forgotten cities, regardless of their past and
heritage, are finding new popularity and visitors thanks to TV fiction
84 Chapter Six
series. Such small cities as Viterbo and Gubbio, thanks to a popular Italian
TV series with Carabinieri, compete in people’s imaginations with
Maigret’s Paris and Marlowe’s San Francisco; thus, they have become
tourist destinations.
Today even Florentine places, which since the nineteenth century Gran
Tour have been deeply rooted in mass imagination as tourist destinations,
such as the Ponte Vecchio, Palazzo Vecchio, Santa Croce, the Officina
Profumo, and Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella, need film promotion.
More than Ivory’s film A Room with a View (1986), based on the well-
known 1908 novel by E. M. Forster, Ridley Scott’s Hannibal (2001) was a
powerful factor in attracting visitors to Florence. In 2001 in many Florence
shop windows it was possible to see the message: “Hannibal was here.” In
such a way, even junk souvenirs shops can become places worth visiting.
The blockbuster 2009 film Angels & Demons from Dan Brown’s best-
seller made the great Roman basilicas tourist magnets crowded by visitors
drawn by the novel and the movie. Until that moment these monuments
were visited only by small number of tourists.
The great problem in urban marketing or in place marketing is the
nature of the marketing itself. Marketing does not consist only in
promotion or advertising. Marketing is a link in the production of place,
along with marketing a place. Marketing defines the characteristics of a
product in order to sell it better. Marketing is a demand-oriented strategy
that takes for granted consumers’ tastes and desires. This is why city
marketing, mainly oriented to potential visitor or consumer demand, can
be risky for many reasons. First of all, it promotes a consumer-oriented
production of places and top-down actions that may marginalize resident
people. Potential visitors and users are becoming the chief reference group
of city administrators. A second and perverse effect of city marketing and
of top-down creation of places is in a growing homogenization of city
forms and images. The globalization of tastes leads to a globalization of
places. Last but not least, contemporary cities are often fragmented into
parts in the mass imagination and are often considered only containers of
special places and iconic architectures that can be easily marketed and
consumed. Such an emphasis on architectural icons (the so-called Bilbao
effect) can break the symbolic unity of the city and reduce it to a collection
of architectural objects. This is a major risk, since the city cannot become
simply a container.
Ultramodern cities are becoming more and more similar: contemporary
Singapore and Milan, Dubai and Frankfurt are designed by same
starchitects, their festival marketplaces look like each other and claims in
their promotional campaigns are similar. City visitors’ and users’
expectations and imaginations are the criteria that lead most of the urban
renewal strategies and promotional strategies. Heritage cities and
traditional tourist destinations, such as Florence and Bruges, Seville and
Reims, trying to match their visitors’ imagination and expectations are
becoming large theme parks.
A major risk in creating or refurbishing places in order to “sell” them is
in privileging the demands of visitors and consumers over the needs of
citizens. The widely-shared aim at transforming citizens into visitors of
their own city is on the one hand an effort to provide residents with “new
eyes” à la Proust, which will enable them to discover hidden and forgotten
beauties of their daily world. On the other hand, the homogenization of
city people into city visitors can induce the former to share the same
imaginary and habits of tourists and visitors. The new iconic places can
cancel or push in the background the everyday places and alter the
inhabitants’ mindscape.
References
Amendola, G. 1997. La città postmoderna: magie e paure della metropoli
contemporanea. Roma and Bari: Laterza.
Augé, M. 1992. Non-lieux. Introduction à une anthropologie de la
surmodernité. Paris: Seuil.
Benjamin, W. 1986. Parigi, capitale del XIX secolo. Progetti appunti e
materiali 1927–1940, edited by Giorgio Agamben. Torino: Einaudi.
Hannigan, J. 1998. Fantasy City. Pleasure and Profit in Postmodern
Metropolis. London and New York: Routledge.
Urry, J. 1990. The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary
Societies. London: Sage.
CHAPTER SEVEN
NIGHT-TIME ECONOMY, TOURISM

AND CONFLICTS:
BARCELONA AND LISBON
EMANUELE GIORDANO, JORDI NOFRE

AND EMANUELE TATARANNI
1. Introduction
For a long period, the night has been regarded as a time for rest and
intimacy. Therefore, urban nightscapes have traditionally differed from
dayscapes, where in an industrial city every activity had its own place and
time (Lefebvre 1974). In the post-industrial city, however, such a spatial-
temporal division has become less clear. Owing to the increasing
“nocturnalization” of Western societies and, consequently, the evermore
desynchronized modes of life (Galinier et al. 2010), the urban night now
appears as a socially constructed, multifaceted and ambivalent phenomenon.
Human activities progressively open themselves up to the night and
compose a new space of work and leisure forcing us to consider the spaces
and times of the city in a new way (Gwiazdzinski 2005). Typically, day-
related activities are extending into the night, producing a nocturnal public
space; thus a range of new codes, actors, and topographies of power
appear in the “city after dark.”
These evolutions have profoundly altered the status of the urban night,
which has turned from a marginal temporality into an economically
productive and socially relevant time-space.
Nowadays concepts like “the 24-hour open city” highlight not only the
importance of the urban night in the revitalization of many post-industrial
cities (e.g., Chatterton and Hollands 2003; Roberts 2006; Malet-Calvo et
al. 2016) but especially the growing nocturnalization of leisure activities in
the post-industrial city.
Night-Time Economy, Tourism and Conflicts: Barcelona and Lisbon 87
As a result, since the 1990s a number of cities have promoted nightlife

as a central component of their tourism strategy and have adopted cultural
and economic policies to brand their cities as desirable places for night-
time activities (Evans 2012).
However, such expansion and commodification has often led to the rise
of critical problems regarding the coexistence of residential communities
and alcohol-fuelled nightlife entertainment uses (Hadfield 2009), undermining
community liveability in the night hours and, more importantly, putting at
risk the sustainable coexistence of diverse urban social groups.
Yet, until now very few studies have questioned the role that the
increasing touristization of the night-time economy plays in this process.
Therefore, this chapter addresses this gap in the context of urban night
studies.
After a short theoretical overview on the touristization of the urban
night in Western post-industrial cities, this paper focuses on two particular
cases which are currently experiencing a critical worsening of the
community liveability due to the expansion and commodification of
tourist-oriented and youth-oriented nightlife in historical quarters of the
city centre: (1) Barceloneta, in Barcelona, and (2) Bairro Alto, in Lisbon.
2. Night-time economy
The term “night-time economy” is now used globally, yet its origins are
related to a very specific context. It was used for the first time by the
members of Charles Landry’s creative cities research organization
Comedia. According to Franco Bianchini, one of the academics then
involved in Comedia, the term can be dated to 1987 and was inspired by
initiatives developed by an Italian politician, Renato Nicolini, who had
been the organizer of a series of cultural festivals, including night-time
activities in Rome, called “L’Estate Romana,” between 1977 and 1985
(Bianchini 1995). Groups such as Comedia used the term in order to
encourage the development of policies related to the deregulation and
development of the alcohol and leisure industries at night (Bianchini 1995;
Heath 1997).
The strategy of developing the twenty-four-hour city was a suitable
response to the progressive suburbanization of urban life in British cities.
The development of the “night-time economy” was seen as an opportunity
to extend the vitality of city centres after five p.m. Indeed, at the time,
owing to progressive suburbanization, city centres had become spaces
where people worked and shopped between the hours of nine and five and
were then abandoned. As a result, they often suffered safety issues after
88 Chapter Seven
dark because of the prevalence of groups such as young people, sex

workers, and drug misusers (Lovatt and O’Connor 1995).
The main idea behind the expansion of the twenty-four-hour economy,
or more accurately at the time an eighteen-hour economy, was to attract
visitors back into the town centre during the evenings and at night-time
through the development of leisure and cultural activities.
The motivations were mainly economic. The night-time economy was
seen as an opportunity to “double” the city economy and transform a time
traditionally considered “dead” time with little economic potential or
market value into a profitable one.
Bianchini (1995, 124) pointed it out clearly: “There are also economic
opportunities. For instance, in the case of important regional cities the
night-time could be used to maximize access to urban facilities from a
wide catchment area. People from that area, many of whom are working in
the daytime, may need longer opening hours in order to access facilities.
More generally, there is the opportunity of ‘doubling’ the city’s economy,
starting perhaps from entertainment but then widening into other areas.”
While the initial development of the night-time economy was related to
specific conditions existing in the UK during the 1980s and 1990s, it has
now become a global phenomenon, though with different degrees of
development according to the national contexts.
As remarked by van Liempt et al. (2015, 409–10) “originating in the
UK’s post-industrial cities, strategies to (re)position the urban night in
terms of economic opportunity and revitalize (parts of) city centres, which
are underpinned by rationalities of urban competitiveness in a globalising
economy, have steadily diffused through Europe, North America and
Australasia and are now also pursued, albeit in modified form, in cities in
the global South.”
This spread of the concept outside the United Kingdom is mainly
related to its association with Richard Florida’s theory of the creative city
(2002). According to him, the wealth and competitiveness of a city in a
post-Fordist economy depends mainly on the ability to attract the so-called
“creative class” (a vague category, which essentially includes those
engaged in work with high knowledge intensity, like artists, scientists,
business leaders, and opinion makers). Yet material rewards (salaries) are
not enough to attract such professionals, which also desire to live in
“quality,” “creative,” “tolerant,” and “exciting” places.
Therefore, according to such a framework, to become important, cities,
besides offering work opportunities, must offer creative environments with
cultural and leisure opportunities capable of attracting these professionals.
In this new competitive context, the presence of a lively and active
nightlife plays an important symbolic role in the celebration of the idea of

an attractive, lively, and cosmopolitan city (Vanolo 2008). This discourse
is still dominant and today “the term NTE is telling with regard to the
obvious links between nightlife, profitability and inter-urban competitiveness”
(Van Liempt et al. 2015, 412).
Yet despite the fact that the night-time economy has gained
prominence in both academic and policy circles, one area that has been
less explored is the night in relation to tourism.
3. Tourism and the night

Over the last few decades a growing number of authors have pointed to a
profound change in the way the contemporary city is produced, regulated,
and consumed. The decline of the industrial city and the consequent
process of deindustrialization have produced a new discourse on the city,
linked to the emergence of a new economic order, and based on creativity,
consumption, and leisure. In this regard Stock (2007) proposed the idea of
a “recreational turn” for European cities. Although this dynamic is the
result of a combination of economic, cultural, and social dynamics,
analysts emphasize the growing importance that tourism has assumed in
this process.
For a long time a residual activity, tourism has become a crucial
element in the constitution of the contemporary city. This “centrality of
tourism” interests not only specific places but the entire city. In addition to
the city’s traditional tourist places, historic centres and museums, there are
an increasing number of new tourist spaces, and “off the beaten track”
tourism is gaining increasing importance (Maitland and Newman 2014;
Füller and Michel 2014).
This new form of urban tourism is characterized by the complement or
substitution of ordinary tourist activities, like museum visits, with an
interest in the mundane and ordinary aspects of urban life. As a result,
“new tourist areas in cities” (Maitland 2008) are emerging, marked by the
coincidence of performances and the physical characteristics of the place,
including independent shops, bars, and cafés, and cultural diversity
(Pappalepore et al. 2010). While this conquest of urban space by tourism
activity has been widely documented, much less attention has been
devoted to the attempts to extend the temporal dimension of tourism
activity through the progressive touristification of the urban night.
According to the international definition, a tourist is a person who
spends at least one night outside his or her home, for leisure or business
purposes. For this reason alone, tourism has a strong link with the night.
90 Chapter Seven
Nevertheless, historically, tourism has been considered and analysed

mainly as a diurnal activity. Over recent decades, however, the situation
has evolved rapidly, and tourism practices have experienced a growing
nocturnalization.
In reality, the existence of forms of night tourism is not a recent
phenomenon. In our civilization the atmosphere of the night has always
been associated with a relaxation of the social codes and thus is associated
with a greater freedom and the possibility of transgression. Already at the
beginning of the last century the pleasures of the urban nights in large
metropolises, such as Paris and London, attracted many tourists. But this
tourist dimension of the urban night was historically limited to a small
number of large cities.
Yet in the last thirty years this situation has dramatically changed. In a
new competitive environment characterized by the development of low-
cost airlines and the fragmentation of holidays, the possibility of offering
attractions and night activities has become a central element of a city’s
tourist competitiveness (Evans 2012). As a result, since the 1990s a
number of cities have promoted nightlife as a central component of their
tourism strategy and have adopted cultural and economic policies to brand
their cities as desirable places for night-time activities.
In particular, night-time tourism has been individuated by several cities
as an indispensable element for attracting the so-called “city breakers,”
mainly young tourists with high spending capacity, who make short leisure
trips in a city without staying overnight in other destinations during the
journey (Guérin 2015; Garcia 2016). As a result of these developments,
the international reputation of a destination’s nightlife scene has become a
crucial element of a cities branding strategy and tourism competitiveness.
A study carried out in Barcelona, a city considered as a model for the
development of this type of tourism, reveals that nightlife is the main
reason for visits for 18% of tourists, a figure that increases considerably
among those under 25 (Camprubi and Prats, 2013). In France, for 73.2%
of the young tourists in the 18–25 age group, “partying” is the first
motivation to go on holiday. The economic value of this market has
become increasingly important with a turnover of 5.6 billion euros, of
which 72.2% is generated by young foreigners. Studies carried out by the
Maison de la France, the organization reasonable for the promotion of
France abroad, have highlighted the economic importance of nocturnal
tourism. According to them, the average expenditure per person is 25%
higher for visitors who go out at night (Quiege 2005). Yet despite these
economic advantages the emergence of a touristified nightlife is also
associated with several problems.
4. The touristification of the night as a source of contrasts

The status of tourism has dramatically changed in the eyes of urban
policy-makers and local elites of most global cities. While urban tourism
was considered a minor economic activity in the capitalist city until the
late 1980s, deindustrialization and the progressive tertiarization of the city
together with the economic revaluation and cultural revalorization of
historical quarters of the city centre have strongly contributed to transform
tourism into a central component of urban economies.
In the particular case of South Europe, this trend has been reinforced
by the current financial and economic crisis which, in some cases such as
Portugal and Spain, has much to do with the recent collapse of national
(urban) production systems. Facing such economic challenges, many city
leaders from South Europe have opted to strengthen the weight of tourism
in local economies as short and mid-term strategies to mitigate austerity
policies imposed by both regional and national administrations.
The touristification of the city centre (Ashworth and Page 2011) has
appeared to many cities as a source of economic development and
opportunities in terms of jobs for young and young-adult skilled and
unskilled workers. However, this process has not occurred without some
negative social, economic, and cultural consequences. In particular,
researchers have emphasized how the rapid expansion of the informal
tourist accommodation sector through online platforms and peer-to-peer
short-term property rentals like Airbnb has generated a growing pressure
on the housing market (Guttentag 2015; Colomb and Novy 2017).
Yet recent studies have highlighted how illegal tourist accommodations
alone are unable to be an explanatory variable for the process of urban
change that numerous neighbourhoods are experiencing. In particular
some recent studies have pointed out how in any large cities of South
Europe, like Barcelona or Lisbon, the expansion and commodification of
youth-oriented and tourist-oriented nightlife in the city centre has involved
the rise of critical problems regarding the coexistence of residential
communities and alcohol-fuelled nightlife entertainment uses, undermining
community liveability during night-time hours, putting at risk the
sustainable coexistence of diverse urban social groups (Malet-Calvo et al.
2016).
Studies on the problems produced by the development of the “night-
time economy” are not new in the literature. While initially the night-time
economy was perceived by cultural planners and local authorities as a
redevelopment strategy capable of extending the “vitality and viability” of
central cities beyond the temporal divides associated with a “five pm
92 Chapter Seven
flight” to the suburbs this initial optimism was quickly matched by

growing concerns. Indeed, several studies have shown that the development of
nightlife is accompanied by an exponential growth of temporal conflicts
generated by simultaneous but antagonistic uses of the same space (Mallet
2014).
In the specific case of nightlife, these conflicts are related to the
difficult coexistence between the city that sleeps and the city that parties.
This produces tensions that crystallize around acoustic problems and over
concerns related to a “mono-use” of city centre spaces, often associated with
excessive alcohol use in bars/clubs and associated anti-social behaviour.
In British and American literature, there is a long tradition of studies
focusing on the contrasts and conflicts generated by the development of
the night-time economy (Hae 2012; Roberts and Eldridge 2009). For
Hadfield et al., “Mass Volume Vertical Drinker has assaulted the concept
[24-h city] and all its good intentions, leaving it for dead in streets
splattered with blood, vomit, urine, and the sodden remains of take-aways”
(2001, 300). In the French literature, a series of works have recently
highlighted the appearance of similar problems in several French cities.
Accordingly, Luc Gwiazdzinski suggests “we assist at a multiplication
of the conflicts between the city that sleeps, the city that has fun and the
one that that crystallize around acoustic problems, closing times of
establishments and businesses and the consumption of alcohol in the
public space” (Gwiazdzinski 2005, 98). For example, in Paris, several bars
were closed by a prefectoral order in 1998, following complaints related to
excessive noise (Mallet 2014). Similarly, in 2000, more than sixty
establishments had to close. In her thesis on the night in Bordeaux, also
Cecilia Comelli highlighted these tensions that cross the city at night,
between nightlife consumers and residents. For her, “the tensions and
conflicts that emerge are fundamentally linked to the presence of groups
with different interests, whose respective conceptions of society are not
compatible, but use the same spaces” (Comelli 2015, 224).
Yet despite this long tradition, until now, very few studies have
addressed the role that nocturnal tourism plays in producing and
aggravating temporal conflicts in nightlife districts.
In order to contribute to this emerging discussion, the rest of the
chapter analyses in details how the emergence of tourist-oriented nightlife
in some neighbourhoods of Barcelona and Lisbon has undermined
community liveability during night-time hours and has even put at risk the
sustainable coexistence of diverse urban social groups.
5. Barcelona
Since the mid-1990s Barcelona has consolidated its global position as one
of the leading urban tourist destinations across the world. In 2014,
Barcelona was the fifth most popular city in Europe in terms of the number
of international tourists, behind only London, Paris, Berlin, and Rome
(European Cities Marketing 2014).
Its popularity can be clearly shown by the growing number of visitors.
In 1990 the number of overnight stays totalled 3.8 million, involving 1.7
million tourists. In 2000, there were 7.9 million overnight stays and 3.1
million tourists. By 2014 this total had reached almost 17 million
overnight stays, with 7.8 million tourists (79.5% of them international
tourists) although the annual sum of tourists and one-day visitors currently
provides an estimated figure of around 30 million visitors (PEUAT, 2016).
Tourism has become one of the most important economic sectors in the
city, creating more than 120,000 jobs and generating more than 26 million
euros a day (Barcelona Tourism Annual Report 2015).
Despite the unquestionable economic advantages, this progressive
touristification has also produced cultural and social problems, mainly
related to a growing pressure on the city centre that has fostered several
conflicts about the use of the city.
At the beginning of the 2000s García and Claver stated that “among
those who use city services, visitors are proportionally on the increase.
Residents may even lose the central status they previously enjoyed, as new
services are directed towards tourists, commuters, and shoppers” (2003,
120). Indeed, in the last fifteen years numerous authors have analysed how
the transformation of the central part of the city as a space for tourism
consumption has led to the loss of more than 10,000 residents and to
significant forms of residential and commercial gentrification.
Among the neighbourhoods that have experienced the most vibrant
protests is Barceloneta, situated on the city’s harbour. Barceloneta, with
16,000 inhabitants and an area of 1.24 km2, is the smallest of the four
neighbourhoods of the Ciutat Viella, the historical centre of the Catalan
capital.
Barcelona’s waterfront emerged as a key urban space in the urban
branding of the city, which has been carried out since the late 1980s and
early 1990s. One of the crucial aims of the urban interventions related to
the 1992 Olympics Games was transforming the then degraded and
deprived old harbour area into a new urban space of recreational and
leisure consumption, mainly for youths and tourists.
94 Chapter Seven
As a result, though a traditional working-class area, since the middle of

the 2000s Barceloneta has experienced a progressive touristification,
especially in summer time. The touristification of this neighbourhood is
mainly due to its one km long beach, which is visited yearly by almost half
a million people, and the development of its night-time economy.
Traditionally, Barceloneta’s nightlife is associated with the presence of
several discotheques near the harbour. Yet in the last year, owing to the
growing demand for restaurants, clubs and bars, night-time economy
activities are also developing alongside the Passeig de Joan Borbo and
Barceloneta’s main squares. Crucially this development has produced a
process of commercial gentrification as traditional bars and restaurants
have been progressively substituted by tourist and nightlife-oriented
venues.
This commodification and touristification of Barceloneta during the
evenings and the nights has provoked increasing tension between lifelong
residents and consumers. First, nightlife activities produce several acoustic
problems. Noise caused by thousands of people talking and drinking
outside as well as private parties in tourist flats is disturbing the sleep of
residents of all ages. The physical layout of the neighbourhood aggravates
these disturbances. As a relatively small, mixed-use neighbourhood
characterized by narrow streets, Barceloneta is particularly prone to
experiencing problems related to noise and disturbance (Roberts and
Eldridge 2009).
As a result, Barceloneta is the neighbourhood of Barcelona with the
highest number of officially registered complaints against excessive noise
(Peu 2016). The acoustic pressure of this twenty-four-hour city is
especially significant in the summer, when the temperature is high and
residents sleep with their windows open.
At the same time, residents protest against the increasing anti-social
behaviour associated with the excessive consumption of alcohol. Some
residents have declared they feel unsafe walking in some of Barceloneta’s
main streets at night. According to them, tourist behaviour is responsible
for the growing complaints against the touristification of the neighbourhood.
Protests against “drunken tourism” have become a main element of
resident’s resistance, showing how the commodification of nightlife is
central to understanding the residents’ loss of quality of life, as echoed by
research conducted in other Barcelona neighbourhoods (Cócola Gant
2015). Indeed, some residents have affirmed that they are not against
tourism in general but tourism characterized by certain kinds of behaviour:
a position summarized by the slogan “we want tourism of paella not a
drunken tourism.”
Crucially, the case of Barceloneta shows how despite the economic

advantages associated with the development of urban tourism, the
progressive touristification of the night-time economy could potentially
put at risk the peaceful coexistence of diverse urban social groups.
6. Lisbon
Lisbon has been catapulted into one of the most visited city break
destinations in Europe. In recent years the Portuguese capital has been
ranked as Europe’s Leading City Break Destination (2013) and Europe’s
Leading Cruise Destination (2014), and has been nominated for Europe’s
Leading City Break Destination (2017), Europe’s City Destination (2017)
and Europe’s Leading Cruise Destination (2017). Without doubt, the
increased weight of tourism in Lisbon’s gross local product has been
remarkable. The number of cruise passengers has grown from 164,259 in
2002 to 500,872 in 2014 (Lisbon Port Authority 2015) and the number of
passengers landing at Lisbon airport has grown from 5,243,954 in 2004 to
9,092,464 in 2015, while the number of hotels has grown from 135 in
2004 to 301 in 2013 (Tourism of Portugal 2016). Along with this, the
search for a new, authentic experience closer to local inhabitants and their
everyday life has entailed a revolution in the tourist accommodation
market in the city, especially regarding the soaring informal short-term
rentals sector. A growing number of tourists and visitors have begun to opt
for alternative accommodation, much more authentic and economic than
large hotels. The recent touristification of central areas of Lisbon has much
to do with: (a) the implementation of neoliberal urban policies since the
1990s, as a response to the deindustrialization of the Lisbon’s metropolitan
area and the loss of population of the city centre due to an intense process
of suburbanization; and (b) the reinforcement of neoliberal policies, as a
response to the last economic and financial crisis in Portugal (2011–2016)
(Nofre et al. in press). In the particular case of Bairro Alto, processes of
touristification intersect with both its gentrification since the late 1990s
and its studentification since the mid-2000s. Interestingly, Nofre et al. (in
press) argue that the current urban nightscape in Bairro Alto is both a
product and a factor of gentrification, studentification and touristification.
Traditionally characterized by fado music, sex work and crime, the
urban night of Bairro Alto witnessed significant changes since the late
1990s with the arrival of first gentrifiers and mass tourists as a consequence of
the celebration of the 1998 Universal Exhibition in Lisbon. The rapid
touristification of the city over the last five years have involved the rise of
complex, rapid, non-linear, multifaceted processes and impacts mainly
96 Chapter Seven
involving, apart from urban rehabilitation fostered by local administration:

(a) the arrival of new population groups, displacing lifelong residents
(especially the elderly population); (b) the demise of traditional retail and
small-sized handcraft manufacturing, which have been replaced by tourist-
led businesses; and (c) the promotion of new forms of commodified and
youthful hedonist leisure activities putting pressure on community
liveability (in some cases during night-time hours, like in Barrio Alto); and
(d) the worsening of community liveability during night-time hours.
Interestingly, the nightlife of the Portuguese capital (and especially of
Bairro Alto) is known as one of the longest and most vibrant in the whole
of Europe and the world, as the website of the Lisbon Tourism Promotion
Agency advertises. However, the recent expansion and commodification
of tourist-oriented and youth-oriented night-time leisure economy in some
parts of the historic city centre and in Bairro Alto has involved the recent
rise of negative, unexpected and undesired impacts such as: (a) high
alcohol and drugs consumption during night-time leisure activities; (b)
high noise level in public spaces during night-time hours; (c) the
worsening of community liveability during night-time hours; (d) street
cleanliness and high noise level in nightlife hot spots of the city centre; (e)
insecurity in some nocturnal public spaces; (f) liminality and labour
precarization; and (g) race, class, and sexual-based exclusion in nightlife
spaces. A short ethnographic note of Rua Atalaia (Atalaia Street)
illustrates well these effects.
Along with the Erasmus Corner in the upper area of the quarter, the
part of Rua Atalaia between Arroz Doce bar and Spot bar is the most
crowded area in Bairro Alto at night. In less than one hundred metres,
between Travessa da Queimada and Travessa do Poço da Cidade,
approximately five hundred people may congregate outdoors. Many drink
beer, which incomprehensibly is much cheaper than water. The
soundscape in this part of the street is formed by a noisy sum of Brazilian,
American commercial, funk, and rock music; hundreds of nightlife
customers chatting loudly, some drunkards singing and screaming
hooligan-like hymns, Mtv’s Geordie Shore slogans, or stag parties’ war
shouts; dozens of taxis and private cars honking their horn because they
are blocked by the crowd standing up in the middle of the street; the trash
truck working until two a.m.
The worsening of community liveability in Bairro Alto has become
critical. However, current policy instruments, strategies, good practices,
and joint actions between different actors of the urban night that are in
place have not been able to address such negative impacts. Proposals
recently launched by both the local administration and the Municipal
Nightlife Commission, such as the reduction of opening hours for bars,

dancing bars and discotheques and the mandatory installation of sound
limiters in clubs, together with the reinforcement of police units patrolling
nightlife hot spots of the city like Bairro Alto, have not entailed a
significant reduction of negative impacts, as venues’ owners, residents and
some municipals (off-the-record) agreed in focus groups and interviews
realized during the Safe!N project for Safer Nights in Lisbon.
Different social actors of the urban night in Bairro Alto have been
demanding an integrated Strategical Plan of Nightlife in Lisbon, but the
city council has been incapable of addressing such demand, which could
be the most crucial action to develop new effective nightlife policies and
governance solutions to create more sustainable, inclusive, and safer nights
not only in Bairro Alto but also in other nightlife spots.
7. Conclusions
This chapter has explored how the rapid expansion and commodification
of tourist-oriented, youth-oriented nightlife in two south European cities
(Barcelona and Lisbon) has involved some negative impacts regarding
community liveability in “touristified” historical parts of the city centre. In
the areas selected (Barceloneta and Bairro Alto), the interplay between
recent touristification and rapid expansion and commodification of tourist-
oriented and youth-oriented nightlife has involved the rise of critical
social, spatial, and institutional challenges that need to be urgently tackled
and addressed.
Indeed, the changing nature of the night-time economy is deeply
connected with a broader, multi-sided, complex process of urban change,
since three distinct but interrelated urban processes (touristification,
gentrification, and studentification) are closely linked with the rise of new
modes of urban nightlife, which largely contribute to worsening the
community liveability, especially during night-time hours. Facing such a
critical challenge, local governments of both areas have been incapable of
creating new management tools to promote sustainable urban and social
development of the “nocturnal tourist city,” guaranteeing community
liveability and fostering urban coexistence between different social groups
of the urban night.
This leads to two pivotal questions: (1) how can both local
administrations improve their regulatory framework in order to respond to
the increasing complexities emerging from the intersection of global
processes such as touristification, gentrification, studentification, and the
expansion of the tourist-oriented and youth-oriented nightlife facilities?;
98 Chapter Seven
and (2) how can these unexpected, negative impacts be tackled and
addressed in order to successfully foster and implement safe, smart and
inclusive “tourist nights”? Without doubt, scholars and stakeholders need
further in-depth and breakthrough knowledge of the touristification of the
urban night. But only by bringing together a spatial, social and institutional
perspective, such knowledge will become an opportunity for the
development and implementation of new community-based urban planning
policies aiming at ensuring community liveability and peaceful urban
coexistence between different social groups in the “tourist city.”
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CHAPTER EIGHT
BEYOND VENICE:
HERITAGE AND TOURISM
IN THE NEW GLOBAL WORLD
MARXIANO MELOTTI
1. The Rape of Europe

A beautiful but terrified girl appears to be clinging to the horns of a huge
white bull cavorting in the waves. From a now distant beach, in vain her
girl friends gesticulate and weep. It is the scene of a crime, but also a
famous painting. In the form of a bull, Zeus, king of the gods, abducts
Europa, daughter of the king of Phoenicia, and carries her off from the
coasts of the Middle East to the island of Crete. When, at the end of the
nineteenth century, an American socialite, Isabella Stewart Gardner,
managed to buy this work by Titian (1422–1576), one of the greatest
Italian Renaissance artists, she was probably unaware of its high symbolic
value. That painting evoked the myth on which Europe was founded: an
ancient Greek tale, revived by Roman poets, which was very popular in
the seventeenth century European courts and is still celebrated as the
starting point of the cultural history of the continent. This strange couple, a
god in disguise and an abducted princess, gave birth to Minos, king of
Crete and builder of the first maritime empire, regarded as the forerunner
of Greek culture.
Titian’s Rape of Europa (1562) (Fig. 8-1) is probably the most
precious item in the collection assembled in Boston by Isabella Stewart
Gardner: proof of her aspiration to acquire the best pieces available on the
international market. Like other members of the American elite, she
wished to create a high-quality collection as rapidly as possible. This
fashion, which assumed the traits of a massive “raid” (Saltzman 2008), in
a few decades led to the formation of world-class museums in the States,
with a global redistribution of important items from the European cultural
heritage.
102 Chapter Eight
Fig. 8-1 The Rape of Europa by Titian

(The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston)
As American collectors raided the old continent in search of

masterpieces for their mansions, Europe left Europe and moved overseas:
an important step in world cultural history, reflecting the new transatlantic
relationships. Zeus and Europa seemed to continue their fated trip from the
Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic coast of North America. Once again The
Rape of Europa marked a new beginning: the shift of the heart of Western
culture to the States.
I will dwell upon one aspect of this process: the dialogue between
Europe and the States in the emerging of a new global heritage system
made of tourist resorts, shopping malls, themed parks, etc. A world of new
monuments devoted to shopping, leisure and tourism.
In this system historical theming plays an important role: folklore,
history and archaeology give a veneer of culture to consumption. This
transforms it into an experience related to heritage and tradition and
increases its authenticity and intensity. This practice, mainly connected
with the processes of globalization and postmodernization, is characterized
by the spread of “liquid” phenomena mixing leisure, shopping and
education.
Beyond Venice: Heritage and Tourism in the New Global World 103
2. From Venice to Boston: the reinvented Europe

of Isabella Stewart
The Rape of Europa was only one of the many treasures of Isabella
Stewart Gardner’s collection. It was probably acquired on account of its
Venetian flavour and its princely pedigree: it was painted by a Venetian
artist and was produced for a Spanish king, Philip II, and was later
admired in Orleans’ collection in Paris. She needed “authentic” Venetian
items to decorate her Fenway Court (now known as the Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum), the strange Venetian folly she built in Boston to host
her collection (Fig. 8-2). Titian’s amazing painting not only exalted the
Venetian and Renaissance atmosphere of the palace, but also extolled its
owners.
Fig. 8-2 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

(photo by Nic Lehoux)
This Venice-style palace in the middle of Boston shows an interesting

kind of transatlantic relationship between heritage and tourism. The
building, completed in 1903, was created on the model of Palazzo
Barbaro, an ancient Renaissance palace overlooking the Grand Canal,
which Isabella Stewart and her husband used to rent every two years.
104 Chapter Eight
There they enjoyed behaving like real Venetian patricians and hosting
friends and artists: a life, among antiques and canals, which was brilliantly
defined as their “gondola days” (McCauley et al. 2004).
We are at the heart of the “American Grand Tour,” a well-known
socio-cultural practice that spread in the late eighteenth century: many
members of the wealthy American upper class visited Europe, in the wake
of the European tradition of the Grand Tour, the educational trip that the
North European elites used to take to complete their education by visiting
monuments, museums and archaeological sites in Italy, Greece and other
Mediterranean countries. Venice, together with Rome and Florence, was
one of the main destinations.
For Europeans this trip was a sort of initiation rite. As Samuel Johnson
(1709–1784) commented, “a man who has not been in Italy is always
conscious of inferiority from his not having seen what it is expected a man
should see” (Boswell 1791). With this temporary entry into a world
perceived as alien and primitive despite its treasures, the members of the
affluent ruling class confirmed their social role.
The American Grand Tour kept this educational and initiatory function,
but with an emphasized status-symbol aspect. These rich Americans
wished to show off their wealth, as well as their intellectual refinement,
which enabled them to understand European history and heritage no less
than the British aristocrats. According to a traditional approach, heritage
was used to assert a social and cultural identity.
The novels by Henry James (1843–1916), a well-known American
writer who spent much of his life in Europe and eventually became a
British subject, despite some picturesque traits (which partially survive),
depict the complex and often conflicting relationships between the “new”
American affluent class and the “old” European nobility, including the
fallen Italian aristocrats, obliged to sell their ancestral treasures to
American collectors, and the decadent and haughty British aristocrats,
fighting to avoid a similar destiny.
The American elites were divided between inclusion and distinction: a
conflicting relationship shifting from the lure of being accepted as part of
the old world and the desire to affirm a new independent and dominant
role. Hence, despite any stereotyped representation, Isabella Stewart’s
naïve habit of suggesting a connection between her family and the House
of Stuart (also spelled Stewart in Scotland), which reigned in Britain in a
period of flourishing court culture (1603–1714). But there is something
else: these American “aristocrats” did not just buy valuable ancient
European paintings to form important brand new collections; they even
began to recreate that admired old European heritage in their new world.
Step by step, this led to a new system of built heritage, largely based on
the European one and—particularly interesting—often constructed with
original stones.
Isabella Stewart not only recreated a stunning fifteenth century
Venetian palace in Boston, but she incorporated in it numerous authentic
fragments from Renaissance structures, including Venetian mullioned
windows. This building is something more than a clumsy replica or an
architectural oddity: original pieces from the European past crossed the
Ocean to form a new original American heritage. The “stones of Venice”
(Ruskin) became stones of Boston.
3. A Museum with a view: Windows and the tourist gaze

In any tourist experience “a room with a view” is a crucial element, as
reveals the title of Forster’s famous novel (1908). The view is a cultural
construction that cuts through the landscape and reshapes it in a series of
frozen but vivid images, which often reflect other previous and anticipated
ones, but also build an original memory. And this view often passes
through a window.
The mullioned windows of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in
Boston are quite interesting. They are the symbolic gates connecting you
with the landscape outside. Through these windows from Boston you see
Venice; thus Boston itself becomes a piece of Venice. History, with its
atmosphere, enters the building through the oriental shadows created by
the Venetian windows.
These important elements help to give authenticity to heritage fruition
and to transform a museum space into a tourist place. Here we discern a
conceptual use of the window as architectural framework of what was
called “tourist gaze” (Urry 1990; Urry and Larsen 2011).
The non-neutral role of these windows seems to be confirmed by a
famous portrait of Isabella Stewart by Anders Zorn (1894), which is
displayed in that building (Fig. 8-3). She is painted in front of a mullioned
window of her “real” Venetian palace, from which you can get a glimpse
of the Grand Canal.
Venice, with its shimmering waves and tourist memories, enters
Boston through these windows, intertwining reality and fiction. We can
single out an early seed of postmodern theming: heritage is used to create a
cultural atmosphere. Any national approach is far away. What matters is
the pleasure of the experience with its related identity issues, starting from
Isabella’s desire to be a princess and live like a Venetian patrician.
106 Chapter Eight
With her museum we are already in a post-historical context: a place

built on history and to show history, but where paradoxically history does
not matter and the past and the present live together without problems, in a
continuous flow of time where everything is contemporary.
Fig. 8-3 Portrait of Isabella Stewart by Anders Zorn

(The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston)
This relation with time is quite delicate. Isabella disposed that after her
death nothing should be moved or removed. Thus she transformed the
museum into a mausoleum and an architectural caprice into a heritage site.
The crystallization of the space is quite important in the formation of
tourist highlights. As for Venice, we can also recall a quite interesting
exhibition, “Picturing Venice” (2015), at the Lady Lever Art Gallery in
Liverpool. It clearly shows how the tourist image of Venice has been
created through a slow but continuous reproduction of paintings and
photographs of the same places, monuments and objects (canals, bridges,
gondolas), which has transformed the actual town into a system of tourist
views.
The beginning of this process was strongly connected with the Grand
Tour. Visitors, in search of souvenirs, induced local artists—the first of
them the famous Canaletto (1697–1768)—to produce serial images of the
town, with a progressive passage to a sort of postmodern iconic
representation. The many views of Venice by John Singer Sargent (an
excellent American painter, frequent guest at Palazzo Barbaro), which are
displayed in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, are only a small part of
a phenomenon that still persists today, through iPhone pictures and

Facebook albums.
The heritage and tourist places are dismantled and become a series of
images supposed to transmit an atmosphere. The “view” is sufficient to
recreate the place: if you reconstruct the view, you reconstruct the place.
Any historical or philological element is superfluous. Thus you may have
Venice in Boston or wherever you like.
4. Towards a new themed heritage

This process has encouraged the spread of a new hybrid heritage, mixing
contexts and cultural sceneries. In just a few decades the American
landscape was populated by an amazing number of buildings that recall or
replicate ancient European monuments. A continent “without history,”
largely unable to understand and enhance its own native culture, built a
heritage system widely based on European history. Of course, there was a
clear continuity between the new and the old world, which throughout the
colonial period were part of the same political and cultural entity.
The affluent and refined members of the cosmopolitan elite were in
search of a different cultural system, not based on colonial heritage or
national rhetoric. Monuments and official buildings were frozen in
stereotypical models, reproducing the neo-classical style prevailing in
European capitals. In contrast, mansions and private buildings were spaces
of freedom, where new individual needs were satisfied and new creative
languages were tested. Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque styles seemed to
offer a rich and alluring repertoire of images and atmospheres comfortably
distant from the British colonial style. There they could foster their
identity fantasies, cultivate their Grand Tour memories and live their
sophisticated lives. Once again, as often happens in heritage relationships,
space and time were compressed into the same dimension, founded on
otherness and exoticism. It was in this framework that theming spread as
reference language of the new American heritage.
The grand mansions along the coast of Newport, Rhode Island, in
styles ranging from Tudor to Versailles, attest this new creative approach
to the past. It is a system of princely history-themed mansions: a sort of
gated community, which offers an early example of leisure-oriented and
themed urbanization.
It was the same cultural context that led Isabella Stewart to build her
Venetian palace in Boston: history was no longer conceived as the
educational framework of national identity, but, rather, as leisure space
where to pick and choose ambiences and implement fashionable lifestyles.
108 Chapter Eight
The only point in common with the traditional “national” use of

heritage was its function of identity tool, marking a social status. The new
little Versailles of Newport testifies to the new role of single families and
individuals, who began to present themselves as a kind of aristocracy.
William K. Vanderbilt created the Marble House (1888–1892),
inspired by Versailles’ Petit Trianon, at a cost of eleven million dollars, of
which seven million was for the marbles. His brother, Cornelius
Vanderbilt II, created The Breakers (1893–1895), a seventy-room Italian
Renaissance-style building, inspired by the sixteenth century palaces in
Genoa and Turin. The Berwinds created The Elms (1901), modelled on a
mid-eighteenth century chateau near Paris, where they exhibited their
collection of Oriental jades, Renaissance ceramics and eighteenth century
French and Venetian paintings. Theresa Fair Oelrichs, the “Nevada silver
heiress,” created Rosecliff (1902) (Fig. 8-4), modelled after Versailles’
Grand Trianon, the garden retreat of the French royal family.
Fig. 8-4 Rosecliff, Newport, Rhode Island

(photo by Magnus Manske, public domain)
This history-themed heritage system was not limited to architecture.

The new aristocracy also mimicked European elites’ immaterial heritage,
hosting “lavish parties” and “fabulous entertainments,” as are nostalgically
defined by the Preservation Society of Newport County (2015): from the
“fête champètre” at Chateau-sur-Mer mansion (an elaborate country picnic
for over two thousand guests) to the fairy tale dinner and a party featuring
famed “magician” Harry Houdini at Rosecliff.
This approach to heritage was a mainstream tendency in America and
was not limited to Newport’s “gilded age,” as attests the gorgeous Hearst
Castle (1919–1947), built near San Simeon, California, by a press
magnate, William Randolph Hearst. This building is probably the most
fascinating example of this free relation with the past, leading to a new
hybrid fantasy-style, intertwining ages and cultures: the Roman Empire
meets the Spanish Cathedrals, in a mix where leisure and ostentation are
the only common elements.
All these mansions have become part of American heritage. They are
authentic monuments of American history, which document the marvelous
lifestyle of its elites, and, as such, are now protected, restored and visited.
This acquired heritage dimension gives them the same ontological
status as their European models: the trans-cultural, trans-temporal and
trans-spatial perspective with which they were built is further enhanced by
the trans-cultural, trans-temporal and trans-spatial perspective of their
tourist consumption. Venice and Boston, Versailles and Newport,
Renaissance and Romanticism, modern and postmodern coexist as part of
the same tourist world. Furthermore, their original leisure dimension as
summer resorts is reflected in their new dimension as tourist attractions.
The new extended leisure-class visits them as archaeological sites: the
birthplaces of the postmodern leisure and tourism society, of which their
builders were the unaware hero-founders.
The Cloisters (1927–1938), in northern Manhattan, New York, is
another interesting case. This branch of the Metropolitan Museum,
devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe, was built with
authentic pieces of Spanish and French medieval cloisters. Columns,
capitals and frescoes were removed and remounted together in a fake
medieval building made of concrete (Fig. 8-5).
In itself the reuse of ancient original pieces is not new. We can recall,
for instance, the insertion of precious Roman and medieval columns and
capitals in the upper cloister of San Fruttuoso Abbey, near Portofino, Italy,
when it was rebuilt in the sixteenth century. But, in the New York
Cloisters Museum, the diverse ages and cultures are levelled and
homologated. The various elements of European heritage are not simply
juxtaposed, as usually happens in museums, but are remounted to form a
new coherent building. Heritage is not only exhibited, but created.
History and heritage are frozen in a precise way, according to the idea
that everything may be reduced to a stereotype. But, at the same time,
there is an innovative approach, due to the assumption that heritage is only
110 Chapter Eight
a cultural construction and may be freely reinvented. Owing to its

inventive reshaping of the past, the Cloisters is an early example of themed
space: history is used to create a pleasant environment making the cultural
fruition more rewarding.
Fig. 8-5 The Cloisters, New York

(photo by Marxiano Melotti)
In the same framework we may place another history-themed museum,

the Getty Villa in Malibu, near Los Angeles, which a well-known
magnate, J. Paul Getty, built in the 1970s to host his wonderful (though
often contested) collection of Greek, Roman and Etruscan pieces. It is a
replica of an ancient holiday villa by the sea, the Villa of the Papyri at
Herculaneum, a magnificent example of the leisure-oriented lifestyle of
the ancient Roman elite. Getty used that model to build a themed
environment consistent with his collection and capable of recreating and
transmitting a classical Mediterranean atmosphere. At the same time, this
villa was a monument to the new dominant role of the American upper
class. The gulf of Naples, with its elegant Roman mansions, moved to
Malibu: the bull-like Zeus with his beloved Europa completed his
crossing…
All these buildings, mixing cultures and eras, leisure and identity,
tradition and innovation, testify to the longue durée of a particular cultural
approach to heritage. From the late nineteenth century, it bridges the gap
between the Romantic-age Grand Tour and contemporary tourism as well
as between modern and postmodern culture. Heritage is used to create a
pleasant environment and an inspiring atmosphere, without particular
attention to cultural contexts, and history is exploited to let you enjoy your
leisure moments in a typical postmodern way.
These buildings, designed on European models, are examples of a new
global heritage. They celebrate together novelty and tradition: the new role
of the American elite and its roots in the European tradition and in the use
of heritage by the old European elites, accustomed to living in princely
palaces. But, at the same time, they testify to an original approach to the
past, free from national conventions and increasingly oriented to leisure
and individual identity issues. It is something similar to what has recently
happened in China and in the Emirates.
This is a pivotal passage. European heritage is used in a traditional way
to show the power, wealth and refinement of the new American elite and,
indirectly, to assert its new “imperial” role. As Titian’s painting in the
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum metaphorically shows, heritage is used
to prove the “passing of the baton” from Rome to London and from
London to Washington. But, at the same time, European heritage is used in
a different post-political and post-national way: the alien and distant
European heritage becomes an instrument of leisure and individual self-
celebration.
5. The Venice of America

Among the many themed reinventions, one deserves particular attention:
the Venice of America near Santa Monica, Los Angeles (Fig. 8-6). This
seaside housing-estate was built in 1905 by a tobacco magnate, Abbot
Kinney. It mimicked Venice, with vaguely Venetian-style buildings and
small independent villas along a system of artificial canals with gondolas
and gondoliers, but it also comprised an auditorium, an amusement park, a
miniature railway and some world heritage-themed attractions.
It was a pioneering project, but was derided as “Kinney’s folly.” Its
presentation as “a veritable Coney Island” (the Brooklyn neighbourhood
where the first Luna Park had opened in 1903) shows a new approach to
theming: leisure consciously prevailed over historical and architectural
aspects. Its model was not the City of Venice (unlike the coeval Stewart
Gardner Museum in Boston), but the iconic amusement park in New York
(Stanton 1987). Moreover, it was filtered through the new cosmopolitan
expo-culture, due to the international exhibitions periodically recreating
alien eras and alien cultures. In fact, this new Venice also included local
attractions and buildings in Japanese and Egyptian styles. Gondolas and
camels, mummies and belly-dancers, restaurants and opera-singers were
the seeds of an innovative multi-sensorial approach, inspired by a picturesque
112 Chapter Eight
view of the world and a tourist gaze that were destined to flourish later in
Las Vegas and other “fantasy cities” (Hannigan 1998). Exoticism and
leisure prevailed over history and culture.
Fig. 8-6 The Venice of America in 1909

(Metro Transportation Library and Archive, Los Angeles)
Its innovative approach confirms the rapid pace of socio-cultural

change. It was not the figment of a millionaire willing to build a
sumptuous palace to show off his wealth and refinement or to freeze
history in an elite museum; it was the business project of another kind of
millionaire, willing to create a new urban system able to meet the wishes
of an emergent leisure-class.
Indeed, this Venice on the Pacific coast was a sort of “missing link”: it
marks the passage from the Romantic approach of the Grand Tour to the
new modern and postmodern orientation of mass-society, with its mass-
consumption, mass-leisure and mass-tourism. It shows the often forgotten
“modernity” of the 1920s, but was already out of fashion in the 1950s,
when a new leisure-class was ready to populate Las Vegas hotel-casinos.
6. The “Gondola Days” reloaded: Venice in Las Vegas

Between the elite Venice of Isabella Stewart and the much more popular
Venice of Las Vegas (Figs. 8-7 and 8-8) the distance is not as great as it
seems, and even shorter is that between the Getty Villa in Malibu and the
more or less coeval Caesars’ Palace Hotel in Las Vegas. Yet the socio-
cultural context has greatly changed: the happy few have given way to
well-off masses in search of leisure, consumption and social recognition.
Nevertheless, the principle is the same: you can use and mix together
every historical and cultural period to enrich your leisure and your
consumption experience and, at the same time, to demonstrate that you
could be a king or, at least, live like a king.
Thus the Venice canals with their mullioned windows and their
romantic gondolas pass from Venice to Boston and from Boston to Las
Vegas. But the opulent reconstruction of Venice in Las Vegas is only one
of the many attractions of this strange city, where you can also find an
Egyptian pyramid, a Tour Eiffel, a Manhattan skyline and the Roman
follies of the above-mentioned Caesars’ Palace.
Theming is not a merely spurious and confused copying of alien
cultural elements: it is a new original and coherent cultural system, of
which the tourist resorts and the shopping malls are the new monuments.
Its main trait is a substantial overcoming of a national view of history,
where heritage is strongly connected with the country’s cultural roots.
Here, through hybridization, you may single out the supranational
approach and the multicultural background of the new global system.
Theming is the main language of this fantasy city, conceived to serve
gambling, leisure and tourism. The leading purpose was not to replicate
monuments but to create an enjoyable and pleasant atmosphere, in order to
further an integral experience of consumption. As Curtis (2000) sharply
noted, “the experience of place has been replaced by the place of
experience.” It is a world apart, an alien space, where—between reality,
fantasy, archaeology, tourism and media memories—leisure is immersed
in a displacing flow of spatial and temporal quotations. We are beyond the
traditional “staged authenticity” (MacCannell 1973). Mimicry is a playful
and conscious experience: this is a real new world, offering a hyper-
concentrated experience of urban life. “You go to Las Vegas precisely
because you want to be overwhelmed by an excessive visual ordeal” (Fox
2005, 49).
Las Vegas’ Venice does not claim to be a “unique” place: it is only one
of the many intriguing attractions in the city, just like the real Venice is
only one of the many marvelous attractions in the world. Yet, together
with the other Las Vegas themed resorts, it offers not only a “virtual Grand
Tour” (Franci and Zignani 2005), but also a new original “view” to be
captured, consumed and remembered. It is a new highlight of global
tourism, which allows an all-in-one postmodern experience.
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Fig. 8-7 Las Vegas’ Venice (Royal Geographical Society)
Fig. 8-8 Las Vegas’ Venice (photos by Marxiano Melotti)
The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino (inaugurated in 1999 and enlarged

in 2008), with its 4,049 rooms, 3,068 suites and 11,000 m2 casino, claims
to be the world’s largest hotel. It is a real microcosm of postmodern
culture, which provides a scale reproduction of some Venice tourist
highlights, such as St Mark’s Campanile, the Rialto Bridge and the Ducal
Palace, with its distinctive mullioned windows. The actual town is
dismantled into a series of landmarks and reshaped in a hybrid multi-
experiential postmodern way. Everything is as if it were portrayed in one
of the hyper-realistic paintings that Canaletto “mass-produced” for his
overseas customers, but with a touch of disenchanted cosmopolitan
consumerism.
Inside the buildings there are imposing flights of steps, elaborate foam
and urethane statues, over-decorated corridors and even ceilings reproducing
frescoes by famous Venetian Renaissance artists, such as Titian, Tintoretto
and Veronese. This completes the illusion and creates a continuum not
only with Venice’s Renaissance and Baroque palaces, but also with the
elegant interiors of Newport’s Versailles.
A system of canals extends the reconstruction and creates the
conditions for a gondola experience. Tourists, as in Venice, can admire
gondolas as part of the landscape and hire them to ride past the shops and
the restaurants. Gondoliers, often Asian women, sing popular and romantic
Italian songs (Fig. 8-9).
According to current cultural trends, where authenticity is primarily a
sensorial experience and a playful deception aimed at enhancing
customers’ pleasure, brochures invite you to go for a ride on one of the
resort’s authentic Italian gondolas, though they are three metres shorter,
have small trolling motors and hidden foot controls, and gondoliers “wear
earpieces, like Secret Service agents” (Curtis 2000).
The official website of the hotel presents this attraction as the core of
the Venetian experience: “No trip to Venice—or The Venetian—would be
complete without a graceful and romantic glide down the Grand Canal in
an authentic Venetian gondola. Float beneath bridges, beside cafés, under
balconies and through the vibrant Venetian streetscape as your singing
gondolier sweeps you down the Grand Canal for a ride like no other” (The
Venetian Hotel Las Vegas 2015). The leisure and consumption experience
eliminates any difference between the two Venices. On Tripadvisor
tourists seem to appreciate it. One of them even pointed out that in this
little American Venice canals are not as dirty as in the Italian town. The
comments by Italian visitors are quite interesting: “The finest Venice I
have ever seen. Better than the original and that in Los Angeles. It is funny
and modern, but it always recalls the original Venice” (Peppineddu10
2014). “Who has really visited Venice, like us, here may see the perfect
and identical reproduction of the square, with bars, artificial canals,
gondolas and gondoliers. Almost equal!” (Anto8678 2015). Some go even
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further: “We have never been to Venice, but we enjoy this fake very
much!” (Mario D 2014).
Here the canals are the nice “view” that accompanies your shopping,
your eating out, your gambling, and, why not, your sexual adventures:
exactly as in the real Venice.
Fig. 8-9 Gondolas and canals at the Venetian, Las Vegas

(photos by Marxiano Melotti)
Like other Las Vegas resorts, the Venetian Hotel also offers cultural
attractions: between 2001 and 2008 it hosted a Guggenheim Hermitage
Museum, a joint-venture between two outstanding institutions with great
international experience in art marketing and popularization. Something
similar happens in Bilbao and Abu Dhabi (Melotti 2014).
In Las Vegas Luxor and Caesars’ resorts also use arts, history and
archaeology to make consumption a cultural experience and to build a
sense of heritage and tradition around and inside leisure activities (Melotti
2008). According to Fox (2005), the commercial purposes of the resorts
distort the mission of the museums (“faking museums” is the malicious
title of the chapter). But Barbara Bloemink, managing director of the
Guggenheim and Guggenheim Hermitage museums in Las Vegas, maintained
that the glittering fake surfaces represented by the replicas do not
overwhelm the authentic museum collections: “the Strip is about surfaces
that seduce you, whereas paintings are in and of themselves real objects
that draw you underneath the surface into meaning” (Fox 2005, 46).
Anyhow, these museums exert an important function: art exhibitions
and historical items enter a world of entertainment and create the bases for
a rewarding edutainment activity, consistent with the “liquid” experiential
framework. At the Bellagio resort, you can even eat in a French restaurant
adorned with authentic Picasso masterpieces.
A museum, especially if prestigious and media-connected, gives
authenticity to the consumption experience. Therefore, despite its replicas
made of concrete, resin and foam, the place becomes an “authentic”
cultural site. At the same time, the “authentic” Renaissance masterworks
in the Guggenheim exhibition and the replica frescoes on the ceilings of
the resort create an attractive postmodern context mixing ages, places and
objects with different ontological status. The authentic Titian on the wall
of the fake Venetian building of Stewart Garden Museum is not that far
away…
Among the many reinventions of Venice for tourist and shopping
purposes, the case of San Marcos Premium Outlets, near the small town of
San Marcos, Texas, is quite interesting. This Venice-themed mall offers a
disproportional and clumsy reproduction of St Mark’s Campanile and
Ducal Palace; besides, the canals have been replaced by a large pool with
gondolas. However, with its six million visitors a year, it is “one of the top
attractions in the state” (San Marcos 2015). In 2006 an ABC’s talk show
bombastically named it “the third best place to shop in the world.”
Once again gondolas and mullioned windows are used to recreate a
Venetian atmosphere. But we are far from the opulent and accurate
reconstructions of Las Vegas, and even farther from the memories of the
Grand Tour and the imperial dreams of art collectors and magnates. Here
the idea is not to give birth to a new Venice or to suggest the elegant
lifestyle of the ancient and modern Italian towns, but only to provide a
setting for the shopping, as do other Renaissance-themed malls in Italy and
in China.
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The most curious aspect of this mart is its relationship with the
territory. The town was named San Marcos de Neve in 1808 by a group of
Mexican settlers in the then New Spain. San Marcos was the evangelist
Mark, the patron saint of Venice. Yet there was no direct connection
between the Italian town and that settlement, apart from their common
Roman Catholic religion.
It is not clear whether the mall was named after the local town or after
Venice’s patron saint, conforming to the international tendency to themed
consumption. However, we can single out a surprising form of glocalism:
that copy of Venice (or perhaps of Las Vegas Venice) is not a mere
reproduction of a global pattern, but, rather, an invention reflecting both
the heritage of the local community and its European roots.
7. Beyond Las Vegas. Dreaming of Venice in China

Theming is a powerful and effective language. It enhances any activity by
plunging it into the indistinct realm of “history” and transforming it into a
sort of heritage experience. This reminds us that consumption and its
places are the new heritage and the main identity tools of our age.
Thematization is the global bridge uniting eras and cultures and
intertwining producers and consumers of any class, age, culture and value-
system.
Theming is now a global practice. Some American inventions have
become international models to be exported or imitated. Amusement
parks, global events, tourist resorts, shopping malls and even entire urban
centres are fertile soil for such developments.
The American taste for huge history-themed parks, hotels and malls
has spread everywhere, with stunning results in some countries competing
on the global stage to show off their new wealth and their new inclusion in
international trends, from tourism to fashion, from shopping to finance.
The Chinese case is particularly amazing, owing to demographic and
economic dimensions and the social and political context of the country.
Theming has taken root in the regime’s culture: big buildings celebrating
nation’s pride and power have been joined by others (malls, resorts,
skyscrapers and gated communities) celebrating leisure, consumption and
individual achievement. Themed parks, themed malls and even themed
landscapes, mimicking or replicating European cities, villages, monuments
and other tourist landmarks, are spreading around China, where postmodernity
is flourishing along with modernity.
The new themed heritage marks China’s entry into international
tourism, business and mass-consumption, but, conforming to a national
(and nationalist) custom, the country presents this new global dimension as
a national success. As was cleverly put, China, which once regarded itself
as the centre of the world, is becoming the centre that contains the world
(Bosker 2013). Alien cultures appear miniaturized in malls and urban
systems, embedded in the galloping growth of a country able to merge
modernity and postmodernity as well as communism and capitalism. This
recalls an ancient Chinese saying: “One bed, different dreams” (tongchuang
yimeng, 同床异梦).
The “moderately well-off society,” envisaged by Deng Xiaoping
revitalizing an old Chinese expression (xiaokang shehui, 小康社会), now
has its skyscrapers, villas, theme parks, and shopping malls, where the new
upper-middle class displays its lifestyle, often modelled on European
patterns. In particular, its younger members, “vanguards in consumption
while laggards in politics,” show off individualist behaviour and hedonistic
consumption, using top-brand products and expensive cars as effective
status symbols marking the difference between the present and the
previous (pre-reform) lifestyle (Tsang 2014). Many families of this class
satisfy their aspirations by living in themed communities, where they can
“imagine themselves playing starring roles in ‘pseudo-reality’ real estate,
impersonating affluent cosmopolitan members of a Chinese-cum-European
bourgeoisie” (Bosker 2013).
History repeats itself. The same happened in the States about a century
ago, with the consolidation of an economic aristocracy, and, some decades
later, with the formation of a larger wealthy class. There is a global
language, crossing ages and cultures, which uses heritage theming as an
identity tool. The fascination of old-time Europe, filtered by memories of
the traditional Grand Tour and contemporary mass tourism, unites the
world. Anyhow, this explains the spread in China of a number of theme
parks, which, as was aptly noted, “are to East Asian capitalism what folk
dancing festivals were to communism” (Buruma 2003).
Among the many Venice-style projects realized in China, we may
recall the Venice Water Town in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang: a real
estate development with five-floor buildings, balconies and ogival
windows overlooking canals and, of course, gondolas. It is more elaborate
than the Venice of America in California and more serious than the playful
and sumptuous Venetian resort in Las Vegas. Here Venice is the exterior
skin of a residential area.
In this reinvention, the suspension of reality is permanent and not
temporary, as in Las Vegas (Bosker 2013). But, just for this reason, this
imitation is paradoxically closer to the real contemporary Venice than
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other replicas. It is no longer the Grand Tour Venice of the “gondola days”
but, unwittingly, the everyday Venice behind the tourist stage.
We have to remember that the floating towns, made of intricate small
canals and romantic stone bridges, belong to the Chinese tradition. Yet, to
gratify the tourist gaze, the new town was named after Venice.
The Grand Tour was a powerful tool of collective-imagery building,
able to reshape the self-representation of the local communities. Italy
itself, which became a political entity only in the second half of the
nineteenth century, has largely built its own rhetoric of “nation of beauty”
on the admiration by the “Grand Tourists” and has often rebuilt its towns
and monuments pandering to that alien gaze.
Similarly, China, well-aware of the mechanisms of international
tourism, presents and promotes its ancient canal towns, such as Tongli,
Suzhou and Zhouzhaung, as “little Venices:” a definition clearly inspired
by the tourist imagery.
Thus an American tourist visiting Tongli was “very surprised to find a
town of this type on his tour through China”; and, while its pedestrian area
seemed to him too “noisy,” he found its canal area “quite lovely and
interesting,” also since “gondolas give rides down the canals, just like in
Venice” (IgolfCA 2011). Similarly, another American described Zhouzhuang
as “charming,” “lovely,” “picturesque,” and “photogenic.” But his
comment, when faced with “the sides of the canals lined with restaurants
and gift shops,” was lucid and disenchanted: “Sure, some would call it
cheesy… but then, so is the real Venice of today’s Italy, with its hyper-
commercialization.” Gondolas confirm their function: “The only good way
to experience it is via a boat ride. The ‘gondolier’ is typically a woman,
and—yes, like real Venice—many of these women would belt out a
Chinese folk song for the promise of a tip” (Globalist3000 2011).
But sleeping in the same bed not always entails different dreams,
especially when you stay in a huge resort hotel-casino… Thus, in the
global play, following the new financial and tourist flows, the Las Vegas
Sands Corporation, which manages The Venetian in Las Vegas, in 2007
opened another Venetian Resort Hotel Casino in Macau, another capital of
gambling. It has the same large-scale replicas, the same canals and the
same gondolas. But what really is it? Another mimicry of the Italian town,
a duplicate of its Las Vegas copy or an original expression of the new
global heritage? For certain it is one of the most successful tourist
highlights in the town, unfailingly present in any tourist photo-album.
The Venetian Macao was considered the first step of an “Eastern
touristic imagination” of Italy and the simulacrum through which Chinese
tourists “experience and learn about Italy” (Hom 2015), and are inspired to
travel to Italy (Pearce et al. 2013).
Hom (2015) thinks that “these built environments give rise to a
hyperreal Italy that encapsulates the ideological forces of a globalized
consumer society.”
Theming culture, global consumption patterns, multinational business
companies, international tourism and transnational flows have created a
new heritage system that meets these global challenges with a trans-
cultural and trans-temporal approach, where everything is playfully moved
and playfully moves.
But this Chinese parallel world, despite its young age, already has its
ghosts. The fast growth is not always successful. The New South China
Mall, which opened in 2005 in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, with its
9.51 million square metres and 2,350 retail outlets, could claim to be the
largest mall in the world, at least until the opening of the Dubai mall (it
was nicknamed the Great Mall of China). Its seven wings, themed on
different cities, nations and regions of the world (Amsterdam, Paris,
Rome, Venice, Egypt, the Caribbean and California), included a St Mark’s
Campanile, an Arc de Triomphe and an Egyptian Sphinx. The project was
completed by an amusement park, featuring a great indoor roller coaster, a
multiplex cinema and 2.1 km of artificial canals with gondolas for hire.
The owner, an instant-noodle king, apparently wanted to leave a visual
document of his achievements and to build a monument to his native town
(Shepard 2015).
According to the Chinese usage, canals were designed to form a real
transport network. Gondolas had not only to create a picturesque view, but
also to carry the customers between the various wings. Unfortunately,
when it was opened, 99% of its shops were unoccupied. The place, which
“never had the chance to die for it wasn’t born to begin with,” rapidly
became “a monument to the irrational resolve that China is willing to put
into its large-scale projects” (Shepard 2015).
Now this mall is almost completely abandoned and has become an
archaeological site of present-day society, but anyway worth visiting. It is
difficult to say if this will be the future of other themed spaces and a sort
of destiny of contemporary society. But, of course, tomorrow’s
archaeological sites are nurtured today, and the present consumer society,
once surpassed, will be only a nostalgic memory. On the other hand, the
wretched status of this mall may be regarded as something more than an
occasional failure. In fact, it seems a sign of the coming crisis of
postmodern society.
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Fig. 8-10 Florentia Village, Wuqing, China

(photos by Marxiano Melotti)
However, most Chinese themed malls enjoy good health. Among them,
we can mention the Florentia Village in Wuqing (between Beijing and
Tianjing) and its later replicas in Shanghai and Guangzhou. This brand,
which has planned other malls in Quingdao, Wuhan, Chengdu and
Chongquing, belongs to a Sino-Italian joint-venture, promoted by an
Italian group working with McArthurGlen, Europe’s leading company of
designer outlets.
As its name suggests, Florentia Village offers an Italianate experience
(Fig. 8-10). Its website describes it as “the first authentic Italian shopping
centre” in China. It is an interesting case, showing an Italian heritage self-
thematization in an international context. In this reinvention every aspect
of cultural heritage is interchangeable and mixable: it uses the name of
Florence but it mimics Venice, with canals and bridges, and hosts a sort of
Colosseum, the well-known landmark of Rome. Despite a prevailing high
quality of the reconstructions and a surprising attention to details, the
likeness to its Italian models remains rather vague. Yet the diffusion of
Italian songs around the streets helps to create a pleasant Italian atmosphere.
Once again, in the wake of the Las Vegas model, history is used as an
exotic “sign,” to insert the shopping experience in a spatial “otherness”
with recreational and tourist purposes. Florence and Venice are only
nominal brands and Italian Renaissance is exploited to inspire an idea of
tradition, style and luxury, enhancing the shopping experience. The fake
Italian squares and Venetian canals (Fig. 8-11) are enchanting tourist
“views,” worthy of being photographed; but, as also happens in the “real”
heritage places, they are often photographed together with the signs of
some global brands, which are the “views” of the new world heritage. This
entails a crucial change in the tourist gaze and, more broadly, in the
cultural behaviour: shopping and heritage fruition are closely interrelated
practices which form one rewarding activity.
Fig. 8-11 Photographs on the canal and in front of a Gucci shop.

Florentia Village, Wuqing, China (photos by Marxiano Melotti)
The main global luxury brands, such as Armani and Prada, represent
important icons in the social and cultural imagery of a large part of the
world population and help to form consumer’s identity, so important in
present-day societies. Shops and stores, with brand labels and luxury
items, are real “monuments” of the contemporary global society, worthy of
being regarded as “views” and heritage places. Their insertion in brand-
new themed spaces, as well as their presence in traditional heritage towns
or ancient buildings, creates a cultural loop between the past and the
present, history and consumption, stones and goods, which boosts this
function. The Gucci shop in a Chinese fake Venice and the Gucci shop-
museum recently opened in a Florence medieval building are both equally
“real” and are parts of the same global heritage.
In such a context there is no need for philological correctness:
atmosphere is more than enough. This Venetian Florence is a system with
references to tourist and heritage icons, relating to international shopping
and tourist imagery. Michelangelo’s David, which is present on its posters
and brochures, does not necessarily imply a reference to Italian heritage. It
simply labels a generic international shopping culture. Therefore, he may
even wear American blue jeans: another example of the global transatlantic
cultural relationship.
Yet, beside the triumphant press-office presentations, customers’
comments differ considerably. On Tripadvisor an Italian visitor wrote that
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“the structure is similar to an Italian outlet, built by Italians but with fakes
of the Italian monuments that strangers like” (Mauro S. 2015).
Interestingly, he detected an imitation of other Italian malls rather than a
recreation of Italian heritage. As other Italians, he recommended the
Italian restaurant, offering “typical meals prepared with Italian raw food.”
On the contrary, Chinese visitors, increasingly accustomed to international
experiences, detect the fake Italian flavour of the outlet and do not conceal
their disappointment for its sloppy thematization.
But we have also to consider another element: the “alien” character of
the themed space. This Italian-style shopping mall, as usually happens in
the Chinese heritage-themed towns, spread in a hyper-consumed urban
development area, in the middle of a serial system of residential
skyscrapers hosting thousands and thousands of new city dwellers. We are
beyond exoticism (Hendry 2000) and also beyond the bourgeois
aspirations of the rising middle class described by Bosker (2013). There is
a new urban population destined to live in giant buildings, monuments to
the growing power of the new China but also expressions of a dull
individual life and lifestyle.
In contrast, the urban-themed spaces, like the themed parks of the past,
offer a dream (and a space) of freedom, and, perhaps, despite the global
patterns of international consumption, also a dream of individual
achievement and differentiation: blue canals instead of grey condos; two-
store shops instead of forty-store skyscrapers; romantic two-people
gondolas instead of crowded undergrounds. From this point of view the
Florentia Village is an oasis, offering a supposed different urban and
lifestyle model, which, owing to its “otherness,” becomes a heritage
experience. Here we find the same Grand Tour fascination that induced the
“urbanized” British and American elites to visit the “primitive” Italian
towns, with their odd canals, narrow streets, and old buildings.
These Venice-themed malls do not seem to mimic Venice but, rather,
the Chinese interest in it. The Italian designers have developed their
picturesque view of what Chinese consumers might think of Venice, as the
Chinese were unable to recognize the poor quality of their reproductions.
Anyway, the success of these malls is not due to the quality of their
mimicry but to the sense of displacement that they induce.
But, perhaps, there is also another reason, subtly related to the ancient
ties between Venice and China. Venice, which was for a long time the
dominant naval power in the eastern Mediterranean, was one of the main
European trade centres and an important point of arrival for Chinese
goods. Marco Polo (1254–1324), his father and his uncle, who went to
China in the late thirteenth century, were Venetian itinerant merchants.
Marco Polo was not the first European to visit China, but he was the first
to leave a detailed description of it, which seems to have inspired even
Christopher Columbus. On the other hand, Marco Polo, who worked in the
service of Kublai Khan for many years, informed the Chinese about
European religion, culture, uses and traditions. Moreover, Venice, after the
conquest of Byzantium by the Turks (1453) and before the establishment
of the sea route around Africa, exerted remarkable control over trade
between Europe and Asia.
In modern China Marco Polo, above suspicion of colonial or imperialist
mindset, has become an acclaimed hero and is ritually mentioned in political
speeches, media messages and tourist brochures, to strengthen friendship
ties with Italy. And in Venice Marco Polo’s house is quite popular among
the Chinese tourists and seems to be one of the reasons why they visit the
town, of course besides its traditional appeal.
In this light the Venetian theming of many Chinese shopping malls has
also a subliminal function: recalling the ancient commercial relationships
between China and Italy. In postmodern global society the slow trade
along the Silk Road has been replaced by fast shopping in Venice-themed
malls.
8. Back to Italy. Meta-thematization

and self-heritagization
Theming has become a global language and, thanks to its effectiveness,
has reshaped large part of the heritage system. The Europe-themed
heritage, after the States and China, has even thematized its European
model, which seems to have become a thematization of a thematization,
i.e. a sort of meta-thematization. This retroaction is a good example of the
dynamic character of transatlantic relationships.
The Venice-themed shopping malls are not confined to the American
and Chinese new worlds, far away from Italy. Even around Florence and
Venice there are now themed malls, built as little Renaissance towns, with
walls, towers and statues, or decorated with heritage signs.
The above-mentioned McArthurGlen chain, among other themed
outlets, manages a Florentine-style mall in Barberino del Mugello, near
Florence (opened in 2006), and a Venetian-style mall in Noventa del
Piave, near Venice (opened in 2008). The style is the same as in the
Chinese Florentia Village.
This is in no way surprising. This similarity shows the contemporary
convergence of cultural heritage, commercial activities and tourist
policies, due to the processes of globalization. But there is something else,
126 Chapter Eight
which is worth mentioning: tourists increasingly combine their visits to

Florence or Venice with visits to these themed shopping malls and tour
operators have begun to include them in their trips. This creates a
continuum between heritage and tourism, shopping and leisure.
The website of the Barberino shopping mall informs that from this
outlet “you can reach the historical centre of Florence in just half an hour”
(McArthurGlen 2015). The new themed mall becomes the core of the
tourist experience and Florence, the real heritage town, a side attraction
that may be visited afterwards (Fig. 8-12).
Fig. 8-12 A new Renaissance at the Barberino Outlet, near Florence

(photo by Marxiano Melotti)
In the mall near Venice there are no canals, but a gondola is placed as a
landmark in the middle of a square. According to a tourist blogger, “the
buildings are laid out along streets, plazas and squares, some of which are
lined with covered archways to give you the Venetian feel while you shop.
There is even a gondola to remind you of where you are” (Page 2012). But
what does the fake gondola remind you of? That you are in a fake Venice
but in a real mall or simply that you are in a new Venice, mixing the past
and the present?
Theming has gone even further: it seems no longer necessary to build
themed malls around heritage towns. Owing to the increasing flows of
international tourism and the rising expectations of their administrators,
historical villages and heritage towns tend to assume the aspect of
shopping malls: real heritage assures “view” and “atmosphere,” favouring
cutting-edge experiences of tourism, shopping and leisure. In Italy this is

still a relatively recent process, but has already provoked heated debates.
In particular, it has drawn the naïve criticism of the defenders of a
mythical past when the country was not affected by mass tourism,
commodification and globalization.
In Venice, however, self-heritagization is not a new phenomenon. Its
famous Carnival itself, often regarded as a distinctive element of its
intangible heritage, is a recent reinvention mainly due to tourist purposes
(Melotti 2010).
Even earlier, when the emblematic St Mark’s Campanile collapsed
(1902), the town decided to rebuild it, in order to preserve one of its
landmarks. That reconstruction was also a form of freezing its cultural
landscape, in a period of incipient touristization.
The reconstruction (completed in 1912) aroused vast interest and
inspired many replicas worldwide, including that on the campus of the
University of California, Berkeley (1914). Really, St Mark’s Campanile in
Venice, though absorbing the cultural and historical influence of the town,
is not more authentic than its coeval towers in Denver (1909–1911) and
Boston (1915) and its later replicas in Las Vegas and in the Epcot theme
park of Walt Disney World in Florida. All of them are modern constructions.
Yet, in Venice, the cultural resistance to tourism has a long-standing
tradition. In 1910 a well-known poet and political activist, Filippo
Tommaso Marinetti, one of the founders of the Futurist movement,
speaking at the Fenice Theatre against “the Venice passatista” (as he
defined it, in contrast with his advocated Venice futurista), called its
inhabitants to “repudiate the Venice of strangers” [forestieri], to “fill its
small stinking canals with the rubbles of the collapsing palaces” and to
“burn the gondolas, rocking chairs for cretins” (Marinetti et al. 1910).
The same year there appeared the Italian translation of The Stone of
Venice by John Ruskin (1851–53). This seminal work criticized the culture
of reconstruction and suggested that the city should be left in its decaying
state. Two years later, in a short novel, Death in Venice (1912), Thomas
Man depicted a decadent image of the city, a prototype of a crystallized
and dying town.
The debate on the “Disneyization” (Bryman 2004) of Italian heritage is
growing and Venice has inspired many reflections on the effects of
modernization and global consumerism (Moltedo 2007; Somers Cocks
2013; Scappettone 2014). According to Settis (2014), too many people
“succumb to the rhetoric of a Venice lagging behind the world; a town that
should be made worthy of the twenty-first century with megabuildings,
megaships and awesome technologies.” But, at the same time, he remarked
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that “the mere passive preservation of the city frozen as a tourist attraction
and its reduction to theme park of itself decrees and prepares its death.”
The centre of Venice—like that of other heritage towns—is a broad
system of hotels, food streets, souvenir shops and luxury outlets. Tourists
and consumers, accustomed to themed spaces and perhaps aware of its
American and Chinese replicas, in Venice find exactly what they expect:
the usual goods to buy in pleasant surroundings with canals, gondolas and
mullioned windows. But, despite any “apocalyptic” views, there is still a
great difference between Venice and its replicas: a lively local community,
though increasingly involved in tourist activities. Besides, many shops are
situated in authentic medieval and Renaissance buildings, where shopping
itself becomes cultural tourism.
Many Venetians seem to fear the transformation of the town into a
tourist resort and periodically rise up to defend the “local culture.” In 2010,
when a Venetian authority ruled against the introduction of fibreglass
gondolas, the main newspaper of the town proudly headlined: “Venice says
no […]: here only traditional boats by our artisans” (Gazzettino 2010). The
same year gondoliers were harshly criticized for singing Neapolitan songs
instead of local ones. A politician, willing to defend Venice not only against
the effects of globalization but also against the meddling of other parts of
Italy, made a vibrant protest: “The gondoliers singing ‘O Sole mio’ show
lack of culture and scarce attention to Venetian identity. They decrease the
quality of our tourist offer and give a warped image of Venice: that of a new
Disneyland, hardly related to the territory” (Materi 2010). But it was a battle
against the windmills. The gondoliers continue to sing what tourists like and
to give them what they are in search of: a sensorial picture of Italy, where
everything is mixed, as at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas or the Florentia
Villages in Wuqing. At the global level, the “local” is Italy, not Venice.
Also, in Florence the process of commodification has become quite
evident. Among the many tourist activities, there is one that deserves
mentioning: Florence boat tour. That is how it is advertised: “Come aboard
a Florentine gondola for a romantic and unique cruise on the River Arno!”
(Florencetown 2015). Once again experiential and sensorial tourism
overcomes historical correctness: gondolas (generically presented as
“traditional wooden boats”) are moved from Venice to Florence. A new
tradition is invented, with the same trans-cultural and trans-spatial
mechanisms that had transplanted these typical Venetian boats to the
Chinese “Florentia Village.”
Fig. 8-13 Cruise ship in Venice

(photo by Andrea Pattaro, Telegraph, November 1, 2012)
Fig. 8-14 A “big ship” in front of St. Mark’s Square

(photo from Phil Lambell’s blog)
130 Chapter Eight
We have gone even further. International trends, in an increasingly

ageing society, have enhanced cruise tourism. In a sort of revitalized
Grand Tour, huge cruise ships stop in Venice and cast their anchors in its
harbour (Figs. 8-13 and 8-14). When arriving and departing, they pass
along the ancient town, including St Mark’s Square. This has aroused a
lively political and cultural debate on the future of these cruises, bringing
enticing figures of tourists (between 1.8 million in 2012 and 2013 and 1.4
million in 2017). Among the many interventions against the presence of
“Big Ships” in the Venice lagoon we can recall Settis (2014), Tattara
(2014) and Testa (2014).
Over and above the local tourist policies and the struggle in defence of
the natural and cultural landscape of the town, this new maritime Grand
Tour is quite interesting. Most of these ships are substantially higher than
the town: the “Divina” is 67 m high, twice the Ducal Palace, and 333 m
long, twice St Mark’s Square. The visual relationship between steel and
heritage is quite uneven. These giant floating hotels recall the imposing
buildings overlooking Venice’s replicas in Las Vegas and Macau, and
their passage near the real monuments recreates the dichotomy between
hotels and replica monuments in those resorts.
Cruise ships represent not only an up-to-date version of Las Vegas
hotels but also a further postmodern version of the gondolas in a world
where the decadent (and expensive) “gondola days” have become more
efficient (and more affordable) “cruise weeks.”
Venice has become a sort of giant postcard, frozen in its self-
heritagization. From the ship you see the whole town, with its monuments
and its tourists. From the town you see the ship: the new cultural landscape
of Venice. It is a double mirror, reflecting the new mutual relationships
created by tourism and the global market.
9. A floating Disneyland?
The passage of these giant ships endangers the stability of the buildings
(we must not forget that Venice is an “old” delicate city largely built on
the sea) and the huge quantity of cruise visitors, together with the many
other tourists coming from mainland, deeply impacts on everyday life in
the city. The Municipality (Comune) of Venice has about 263,000
inhabitants, but only 56,000 now live in its centre, the most visited part
(where in 1951 they were 175,000). In 2015 the arrivals numbered 4.5
million and 10.2 million stayed overnight (Città di Venezia 2016; IUAV
2017) while the total number of visitors was calculated as 28 million
(Tebano 2017). It is obvious that the narrow streets and bridges of the
town, not designed for such an amount of people, are crowded by masses
of tourists. The tiny and picturesque public transport service, operated by
water-bus, is costantly packed with tourists: a critical situation, worsening
during the recurrent special events, such as the Carnival, the Biennale
Exhibition and the annual Film Festival.
The city centre is facing a fast process of touristification, crossing and
overlapping other ongoing processes, widespread in many Italian towns:
the gentrification and retailization of city centres. Local shops, including
local handycraft shops, are replaced by tourist and consumption-oriented
shops: “typical” restaurants and wine bars; shops selling Chinese-made
souvenirs, from miniaturized resin gondolas to fake Murano glasses, from
Carnival masks to plastic fans; and, of course, retail shops of the main
Italian and international fashion and luxury brands. From this point of
view you cannot perceive any substantial difference from the Venice-style
shopping spaces inside the Venitian resort in Las Vegas or the Venitian
atmosphere of the Chinese Florence Village shopping malls, with their
Prada and Tommy Hilfiger shops along the artificial canals: the same
global luxury shops and the same Chinese-made souvenirs. This is a kind
of transnational and experiential shopping authenticity overcoming
boundaries and any traditional ideas of authenticity based on place and
history.
In such a context the case of Fondaco dei Tedeschi is particularly
interesting. It is a brand-new shopping mall, open in 2016 inside a
thirteenth century building, renovated during the Renaissance and now
transformed by a famous Dutch architect, Rem Koolhaas, into “a lavish,
high-end shopping centre,” as Vogue has defined it (Bobb 2016). The
“redesign of the four-story Fondaco is nothing less than extraordinary, as
Koolhaas and his team have created a space that brilliantly balances the
old with the new, like exposing the old brick walls in certain areas,
maintaining the original archways and untouched corner rooms.” It is a
textbook operation of theming: history is used to culturalize the
consumption experience. But, at the same time, it is a marketing tool,
capable of re-enhancing some authentic aspects of the history of the city,
whose richness along the centuries was built on international commerce
and luxury retails. The Fondaco, which was a “commercial trading centre,”
“celebrates authentic Venetian culture and its richness, vastness, and
dedication to luxury and commerce. Historically, people came here to
trade, buy, and sell. Today, people travel here to take a piece of Venice
home with them, and now they can, thanks to this retail renaissance.” The
commercial and tourist reinvention of Renaissance is a sort of historical
132 Chapter Eight
output of a long-durée process that has created what we now call

globalization.
The Fondaco is a space of effective convergence of touristification and
gentrification: different layers of city-users consume the same space where
they find a different but convergent answer to global issues. Residents—
including the affluent ones—find a tool of modernization of their city
centre overcoming its touristification, and an alluring space where to
affirm their identity of modern, fashionable, up-to-date consumers.
Tourists find an effective shopping space where they can perform their
consumption experience in a sophisticated and safe urban context, which is
also serial and therefore recognizable, since remind them the gentrified
retail spaces where most of them usually perform their usual urban
consumption activities.
This process defines the urban lifestyle of the “chic cities,” which
contributes to the global success of tourism as one of the main meaningful
socio-cultural experiences (Prentice 2009).
The same Vogue observer, deeply intrigued by the operation, remarks
on an interesting conceptual aspect: the Fondaco “is a place of discovery
for those in desperate search of the real Venetian treasures after weeding
through the fakes and phonies in the city’s bustling souvenir stores.” As
explained by the CEO of the company owning the store: “We wanted to
bring back the authentic crafts of Venice,” since “those things you see in
the streets are mostly made in Asia. We wanted to sell the best of the best,
to pay homage to the real beauty and artistry that exists here” (Bobb,
2016). In other words, the themed store, inserted in the very city centre in
order to use the history and the context to create authenticity and enhance
the pleasure of the shopping experience, becomes a kind of paradoxical
island and fortress of authenticity inside the touristy environment that is at
the basis of its existence.
The city centre, too costly and touristy, is left by residents, who sell or
transform their homes into b&bs: 7150 on Airbnb with 27,648 bed places
(Tebano 2017). We are facing a huge and fast process of tourist
crystallization of the whole city centre, whose economy is now largely
tourism-driven. The contradiction has been clearly pointed out: Venice
“cannot stand the attack of tourists, but without them it cannot live”
(Cappelletto 2017).
For a long time, scholars have underlined the difficult coexistence of
residents and tourists in Venice and the necessity of new rules for tourism
(Costa and Martinotti 2003, Quinn 2007). Yet, only recently, after UNESCO
threatened the exclusion of Venice from the World Heritage List or its
inscription on the List of World Heritage in Danger (2014), there
developed a serious discussion about the role of tourism and the future of
the city. UNESCO delivered a detailed report on the state of Venice and its
lagoon pointing out the various socio-economic dynamics affecting them
(UNESCO 2014) and proposed some measures to contrast the degradation
(UNESCO 2014 and 2016). Therefore, the Italian Government, together
with the City of Venice, was obliged to issue a report on the state of
Venice with some actions aimed at the conservation of the site (Rapporto
2016) and to launch a “Pact for the development of Venice” (Presidenza
del Consiglio 2016). UNESCO reiterated its request to update the
Management Plan of the site in order to sustain it in the long term
(UNESCO 2017). Despite a lot of political rhetoric, this was a useful debate,
showing how it is difficult to manage large-scale heritage sites like Venice
and to find a satisfactory balance between local and global dynamics, as
well as between heritage conservation, economic development, and socio-
cultural issues.
Meanwhile, the costant growth of tourism in Venice (as well as in all
Italy) and the substantially unchanged pressure of cruise tourism, despite
some minor attempts of regulation, are creating a dangerous context. The
patience of the residents, in the face of the obvious economic vantages
entailed by tourism, seems to have reached a point of no return: there are
often protests and petitions against tourism and cruises; citizens have
formed associations against the “Big Ships” and some environmentalist
groups even staged attacks against them. In June 2017, in an unofficial
referendum, almost 18,000 Venetians voted against the arrival of “Big
Ships” in the lagoon. Disquieting posters and labels against tourists
(“Tourists not welcome”, “Tourists go home”) are spreading along streets
and canals, and T-shirts showing cruise ships with shark teeth threatening
fishermen are sold around the town.
Owing to the fame of the city and its major role in global tourism,
international media are paying increasing attention to these processes. In
magazines and on websites, Venice is more and more often referred to as a
huge theme park: for instance, L’Espresso defined it as “a sad Disneyland”
(Di Caro, 2016) and the New York Times labelled it as a “Disneyland on
the sea” (Horowitz 2017). This contributed to the popularization of the
sociological concept of “Disneyization” and to enhance a concern about
the effects of tourism on urban centres, already affected by other new
fears.
Furthermore, the media amplifies the discontent of the population by
publishing photos of “disrespectful” tourists who go around in bathing
suits, wash completely naked at public fountains, plunge into canals from
bridges, swim in St. Mark’s Square when flooded, do stand up paddle
134 Chapter Eight
boarding along the canals, eat and camp in front of churches and historical
monuments, and deficate in the streets.
Not rarely, and not by chance, these images mix up tourists and
migrants. They are, of course, two expressions of the present global
mobility, but they are quite different groups, with different impact on
towns and society. Bauman (1997, 1998) pointed out this clearly: in spite
of the vanishing boundaries between the phenomena in the “liquid
society,” there exist two distinct groups of travellers: those “high up,” who
travel for pleasure in an attractive world, and those “low down,” who flee
an inhospitable world as drifting vagabonds. Nevertheless, both tourists
and migrants sometimes meet the same mistrust and the same hostility.
The reaction againts tourists often reflects an age-old suspicion
towards the strangers, regarded as potential threats to space, resources, and
lifestyle. Not by chance in Latin hospes (host) had the same root as hostis
(enemy). At the same time the strangers are sacred guests to be hosted and
dangerous enemies to be diverted. And in an age of fears and crisis every
hospes could hide a hostis.
What occurs in Venice is not surprising: it is part of a more complex
and general process of the renegotiation of the relationships between local
and global, as well as between quality of life and economic dynamics. In
such a context, residents, exacerbated by years of economic crisis and
betrayed by the phantasmagorical promises of the golden-age of
globalization, have begun to contrast international tourism, now regarded
as the main incarnation of a demonized globalization. The same happens
in many other European tourist cities, from Rome to Barcelona. This
increasing anti-tourist stance can be read as one of the signals of the crisis
of that kind of urban experience related to globalization and postmodern
culture, in a general context of reassessment of globalization and passing
of postmodernity.
Even if we are slowly overcoming the liquid society, some main issues,
related to the postmodern patterns of space consumption and mobility
behaviour, seem not destined to disappear. We have to recall that a
significant part of the emergent tourism is composed of Chinese people,
who are now discovering that kind of mass tourism, based on a mix of
culture and shopping, that we have begun to overtake. Yet, even if they
mimic Western monuments and cities, they do not necessarily mimic
Western tourist behaviour. Nevertheless, with their own approach to
authenticity, heritage and tourism, as well as to globalization, they will
foster that model of tourism based on ludic reinventions and happy forms
of consumption we roughly define as postmodern. Furthermore, in certain
cases, like Venice, we can single out a number of local policies involuntarily
destined to enhance some aspects of today’s postmodern tourism. City

administrators, in order to face the main problems related to tourism (such
as overcoming of carrying capacity, degrade, and Disneyization) and to
meet the fears and the hostilities of the citizens that they govern (and are
voted by), tend to define governance models based on increasing controls
of mobility and tourism. In such a context, for instance, the Mayor of
Venice is contemplating ways to limit the number of visitors to the city, its
central area or St. Mark’s square, including numeri clausi, entrance tickets,
and turnstyles (Di Caro 2016). A local expression, perhaps, of the
renovated political culture of walls.
Yet, such tools, far from protecting the city, its inhabitants and its
supposed identity, risk increasing that Disneyization that worries many
intellectuals, politicians, and ordinary citizens. Tickets, fences, and
turnstyles are powerful instruments that transform the space and the ways
of consuming and even thinking about it. Paradoxically, the entrance ticket
could be the final element in the process of transformation of the city into
a theme park. Something consistent with the self-heritagization process of
the whole country. Difficult times for hospitable cities…
Tourist cities like Venice have to govern tourism and fears, but they
should also accept their new (or renovated) global role of leisure and
consumption districts. They should accept that they are elements of the
complex worldwide network defined by and defining a “new global
heritage,” made of old and new monuments, stones and resins, originals
and fakes, inhabitants and travellers. A transnational and transtemporal
system that, in a kind of global “stretching”—to quote Giddens (1990)—
interconnects and hybridizes Venice, Boston, Las Vegas, Wuquin, and
many other places. A system made also of malls, “Big Ships” and, why
not, flip-flops and plastic gondolas, where eveything enters and fosters not
only the tourist gaze and the tourist behaviour, but also the normal urban
life and urban culture.
Venice is not dying, as many fear, but it is giving birth with pain to a
new phase of the global culture.
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PART THREE:
SOME ITALIAN CASES

CHAPTER NINE
URBAN REGIME AND POLICY PERFORMANCE:

THE CASE OF TURIN
SILVANO BELLIGNI AND STEFANIA RAVAZZI
1. An urban regime
Turin is one of the biggest Italian cities. It was the first capital of Italy in
the nineteenth century and has long hosted the headquarters of FIAT
Automobiles S.p.A. (now FIAT–Chrysler Ltd.), Italy’s largest industrial
organization. The city experienced an economic and demographic boom in
the 1950s and 1960s, mainly driven by the manufacturing sector, and then
a strong industrial and demographic decline during the 1970s and 1980s.1
In the past two decades, the city experienced the consolidation of its urban
regime and a significant change in its policy agenda.
After the 1993 elections, which resulted in the unexpected victory of a
new mayor, Valentino Castellani, a moderate Catholic professor at the
Polytechnic University of Turin, a novel alliance between the Party of the
Left Democrats (Partito dei Democratici di Sinistra, PDS)2 and the local
1
According to the national censuses, the metropolitan area (Turin and about
twenty surrounding municipalities) counted about 1.7 million citizens in 2011,
about 200,000 less than in 1971, when it recorded its peak. While in 1971 the
workforce was mostly composed of low-skilled workers, in 2011 the active
population was mainly composed of service sector employees.
2
After the fall of the Communist regimes, the PCI (Italian Communist Party) split
in two parties: the PDS (Partito Democratico della Sinistra = Democratic Party of
the Left) and the more radical PRC (Partito della Rifondazione Comunista = Party
of the Communist Refoundation). In 1998 the PDS became DS (Democratici di
Sinistra = Democrats of the Left) and in 2007 PD (Partito Democratico =
Democratic Party), which combines most members of the former DS with a part of
the leftist wing of the former DC (Democrazia Cristiana = Christian Democracy),
the moderate Catholic party which ruled the country for almost 50 years. In 2017
PD also underwent a split.
Urban Regime and Policy Performance: The Case of Turin 143
liberal bourgeoisie was initiated. The new mayor led the municipal
administration for two consecutive terms of office until 2001, when a
professional PDS politician, Sergio Chiamparino, replaced him for other
two consecutive terms. Although the two mayors were different in
background and style of action, the latter continued in the wake of the
former, maintaining the alliance with the liberal bourgeoisie and
implementing most of the projects planned or started during the previous
years.
A wide, heterogeneous, and elite governing coalition consolidated in a
few years (Belligni and Ravazzi 2012): centre-left politicians, prominent
academics, businesspeople (from the construction sector, the manufacturing
industry, and the service sector), and civil society leaders heading the
city’s main interest organizations. As in many other urban regimes, Turin
saw the institutionalization of special-purpose organizations, such as non-
profit foundations, development agencies, and associations aimed at
fueling wide support for the new agenda. The governance arrangements
consolidated around some key organizations: the Turin Municipality, the
Piedmont Region, the two local academic institutions, FIAT in the first
phase, and the two bank foundations based in the city. These foundations,
in particular, played an essential role in terms of resource commitment and
brokerage between the political environment and the business sector
(Belligni and Ravazzi 2012).
The new policy agenda focused on three main axes. The first was a set
of policies concentrated on housing expansion, renovation of the urban
centre, and major infrastructures. To mention just the most important
public works, an impressive underground railway (more than 7 km of
open-air tracks, which had split the city until then, were laid underground),
the first subway line, more than 110 million cubic metres of new buildings
in the abandoned industrial areas, urban regeneration projects in some poor
neighbourhoods, the expansion of the two academic institutions (the
Polytechnic and the University of Turin), the restoration of many buildings
and all the squares and monuments in the historical centre, the
construction of a new railway station, and the renovation of the old one.
The 2006 Winter Olympic Games, which Turin unexpectedly gained in
2000, brought the city large financial resources, contributing to this set of
policies and updating it through new infrastructures and buildings. The
visible result was a drastic reshaping of the urban landscape.
The second set of policies evokes the idea of an urban district for the
“knowledge sector.” The Polytechnic and the University, in collaboration
with the Municipality, the Region and the two bank foundations based in
144 Chapter Nine
the city, created a new research centre,3 two business incubators, and three
hubs to host innovative companies: Environment Park for green-economy
companies, Virtual Reality & Multi Media Park for the film industry, and
Turin New Economy for the design sector.
Last but not least, the city invested a huge amount of resources and
efforts in activities and projects for entertainment and leisure. Large-scale
arts and design events, music and film festivals, and food and wine fairs
became the most visible component of the city’s new cultural life, but a
completely renewed museum system and new theatres were also launched,
and a Film Commission created in order to attract film companies to the
region.
The main purpose of this huge renovation plan was to foster a radical,
non-incremental change in the local economy and living conditions, in
order to attract new residents, workers, and flows of consumers and
capital.
2. Performances
Assessing the impact of a complex policy is hard work, yet the evaluation
of a whole agenda is even harder. Conscious of the difficulty of identifying
causal chains that link an urban agenda to its outcomes, we combined two
approaches.
The first approach looked at how the urban transformation has been
perceived and judged by citizens (Tab. 9-1). In this case, the sources used
are opinion polls on the satisfaction regarding local policies and on the
popularity of the local government.4
3
The new institutions covered many fields: information and communication
technology, aerospace, physics, genetics, chemistry, biotechnology, economics,
and cultural heritage restoration.
4
The surveys cover three distinct periods. Three surveys date back to the end of
2002 (Abacus 2002, Ipsos 2003, Demos 2003), when the agenda was already
shaped, some policies under implementation and others close to the end. Three
were carried out between 2004 and 2005 (Osservatorio del Nord Ovest 2004 and
2005, Cresme 2005), in the midst of work for the Winter Olympics. Two surveys,
aimed at measuring perceptions of the changes and future prospects for the city,
were conducted between 2009 and 2010 (Demos 2009; Di Braccio 2011).
Popularity polls on the mayors of the main Italian cities added information on the
satisfaction toward the local government (IPR Marketing 2008-2010).
Table 9-1 The perceptions of the residents
Retrospective evaluation Perspectives on the future

Image of the city How it is How it will be
Policies and public What is and what is not
What will be offered
services offered
Life conditions How people live in the city How people will live in the city
The second approach looks at the outcomes through the lens of the
governing coalition’s own goals, as publicly announced. The main
strategic planning documents that draw the roadmap for the future city are
the 1995 Master Plan and the two Strategic Plans of 2000 and 2006. The
three main objectives and the four intervention areas of the documents are
summarized in the following table (Tab. 9-2).
Both evaluation perspectives offer a partial view of the outcomes, but
together they give form a sufficiently clear picture.
Table 9-2 Policy areas and systemic goals of the new urban agenda
Internationalization
Urban
Culture
planning
Environmental… …Sustainability
Economic Social
growth quality
Metropolitan governance
2.1 Citizen perceptions

In 2002, a year after the election of Sergio Chiamparino as city mayor, the
prevailing sentiments among citizens were still distrust and dissatisfaction.
Almost one out of two of them believed the city’s centrality in the national
sense was lower than in the past (Ipsos 2003).
The years of excitement and hyperactivity in view of the 2006 Olympic
Games partially modified this pessimistic judgment. For the first time,
52% of Turin citizens declared that they were satisfied and the image of
146 Chapter Nine
the city had become positive: a “creative city,” a city “of art, culture and
knowledge” (Cresme 2005); and 56% of them declared that cultural
activities and the quality and accessibility of public spaces had improved,
although urban mobility, environmental quality, and inequalities between
rich and poor districts were considered unsolved problems (Cresme 2005).
In 2009, perceptions of the nationwide importance of Turin were
reversed compared to those of 2002 (Fig. 9-1).
60
2002 2009
50
40
30
20
10
0
less important the same more important
Fig. 9-1 How the residents perceive the role of Turin in Italy (2002–2009)
Source: Demos 2009
In 2011, when the economic crisis was still underway, the picture became
more complex. One out of two citizens was satisfied with the local
government, and perceptions of quality of life were encouraging: in 2011
quality of life was better than ten years before for 47% of citizens (Di
Braccio 2011). In this climate of renewed pride, however, some shadows
remained. While the cultural policies were considered successful, job
opportunities and mobility policies still seemed highly unsatisfactory (78%
and 66%). Furthermore, critical concerns about the quality and stability of
the transformations were diffused among young people: only 34% of them
were satisfied with the urban policies (Di Braccio 2011).
The picture that emerges from the surveys is therefore ambivalent.
From a backward-looking perspective the judgment is generally good
(Turin is improved compared to the past), although there are criticisms
about some highly problematic policy areas. In terms of future
perspectives, the city is perceived as still in the balance, especially in
relation to quality of life and labour market: The situation could improve,
but the risk of economic decline and marginalization is around the corner.
2.2 Policy evaluations

The first policy area addressed by the planning documents concerns the
physical layout of the city. The intent of the PRG (Piano Regolatore
Generale = General Town Planning Scheme) and the Strategic Plans was
to transform the old one-company town into a modern post-industrial
metropolis through a new land-use policy focused on the enhancement of
historic districts, the conversion of brownfield sites and the development
of new residential and commercial neighbourhoods, full of green spaces
and served by efficient infrastructures.
The outcomes in this policy area are broadly in line with the
expectations of the decision-makers, but negative effects also became
evident in recent years. On the one hand, the physical appearance of the
city comes out as clearly improved. Turin is now considered a city to visit
and to live in (Winkler 2007). On the other hand, the urban transformation
seems to have not solved, and even to have amplified, some problems, in
particular territorial inequalities, excessive urban density and ineffective
management of some public services. Turin has become, after Naples and
Pescara, the city with the largest portion of land with a high degree of
urbanization. Social polarization has increased, with the gentrification of
the historic centre and the migration of the working classes in the suburbs.
On the eve of the 2011 municipal elections, the new residential areas of
the Spina 3, although equipped with five shopping centres, were still
deficient in transport links and entirely devoid of the promised structures
and public spaces (kindergartens, primary schools, parks with facilities and
meeting places for children and families), while the public works in the
Mirafiori district suffered from poor integration within the social context
and from planning activity, not enough attentive to socio-economic
impacts. The Olympic legacy is full of “infrastructural pitfalls” (Harvey
1989), costly for future generations and difficult to exploit for present
ones.
However, this policy area can be evaluated as the most successful, at
least according to a traditional view of urban development. The largest
benificiaries of this part of the agenda were, on the one hand, the real-
estate business community (although the economic crisis has lowered their
gains) and, on the other, the city government, which collected part of the
financial resources through land-use taxation (Radicioni 2011; Fregonara
2011).
148 Chapter Nine
Data relating to the goal of “boostering economic growth” (excluding

those concerning the housing market and the construction industry) offer a
more problematic picture.
In Turin, “indicators of local GDP and productivity show a situation of
progressive difficulty that puts Turin increasingly farther from other urban
areas of the country, particularly that of Milan” (Casalino and Cominu
2010, 36–7). In terms of economic growth, according to the Global Metro
Monitor (London School of Economics Report 2010), in the period
between 1993 and 2007 Turin was located near the bottom of the list of the
150 cities listed, not only at a great distance not only from Milan and
Rome, but also from Amsterdam, Oslo, Lille, Monaco, Copenhagen, Lyon,
Stockholm, Glasgow, Marseilles, and Barcelona.
The attempt to foster the conversion of the local economy towards
high-skilled sectors shows a positive side and a negative one. The level of
research and development expenditures in Turin ranks above the OECD
[Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] average
(although its national rank has declined sharply between 1994 and 2004)
and the percentage of science graduates is higher than the Italian average
(Casalino and Cominu 2010). However, the city’s main manufacturing
company is progressively abandoning the area, a big settlement agreement
with Motorola failed after few years, the Virtual Reality & Multi Media
Park was recently closed owing to a deficit, and the performance of the
Environment Park remains modest. Moreover, the ISTAT System of
Territorial Indicators showed a bleak picture even before the advent of the
2008 economic crisis: from 1999 to 2007, the industry sector (excluding
construction) suffered a decline of over 20% in number of firms and in the
meantime services, trade, transportation and financial activities came to a
stop. The slight increase in the number of hotels and restaurants (12%) is
too small to delineate the beginning of a diversification of the local
economy. On the whole, the economic growth in the city is still largely
driven by the manufacturing sector (Winkler 2007; Comitato Rota 2007
and 2009). The unemployment rate also confirms the problematic
situation: after Rome, it remains the highest among the large cities in
central and northern Italy, with a labour market increasingly populated by
temporary jobs (Casalino and Cominu 2010; Cominu 2011). This picture is
worsened by the aging index (one of the highest among the large cities in
central and northern Italy) and by the low education level of the
population, with a percentage of graduates lower than many other Italian
and European cities (Comitato Rota 2010).
The third promised modernization scheme concerned culture as a
driving force for local development. In this regard, the official documents
explicitly aimed at building a touristic vocation for the city through the
creation of a museum system and the development of a policy sector
focused on attracting international and national events. Looking at the data
offered by the Regional Observatory on Tourism and the Regional Culture
Observatory, the cultural sector has had a low impact in terms of tourist
flows, employment, and profits.
With regard to social policy and wealth redistribution, the Report on
Poverty and Social Exclusion, prepared for the Ministry of Welfare
(2009), concurs with the ongoing process of impoverishment and the
spread of serious economic and financial difficulties among an increasing
percentage of families: a situation that welfare policies have not been able
to cope with, despite the support of non-profit organizations and bank
foundations. The economic crisis has undoubtedly worsened poverty, but
welfare policies were consciously planned to maintain the status quo rather
than deal with new problems (Castellani and Damiano 2011, 51). This can
clearly be defined as a case of policy drift (Hacker 2011), where the
constant absolute level of expenditure actually hides a lack of adaptation to
new risks and challenges.
The unfavourable prospects for urban development are compounded by
the extremely high level of public debt that the Municipality generated in
the past twenty years: in 2008 Turin was among the most indebted Italian
cities (Comitato Rota 2009).
Looking at the environmental sustainability of the metropolitan area,
the Legambiente ranking on urban ecosystems offers a critical picture
(Legambiente and Ambiente Italia 1994–2013). As far as the sustainable
mobility system and sustainable consumption are concerned, the data on
Turin are quite modest compared to the prospected goals. In 2013, with
regard to the overall sustainability of its urban ecosystem, Turin ranks 86
(out of 104 cities), well below the national average (Legambiente and
Ambiente Italia 2013). Although Turin’s air quality is one of the worst in
Europe, mobility policies have produced neither significant changes in
terms of reduction of PM10 (Particulate Matter with a diameter of 10
micrometres or less) nor significant shift toward alternative modes of
mobility (Legambiente and Ambiente Italia 1994–2013; ISPRA 2008). The
number of buses is even smaller than in 2002 (ISTAT System of Territorial
Indicators) and the use of public transport has declined; the motorization
rate, albeit reduced, remains higher than in Milan and Genoa (the other
two nodes of the past industrial triangle); pedestrian and bicycle areas have
increased, but remains lower than in many other Italian and, more so,
European cities. In terms of green spaces, Turin ranks well below not only
cities like Modena and Bologna, but also nearby Genoa (Azzone and
150 Chapter Nine
Palermo 2010). The waste disposal system performs well, while not
excelling in the national rankings: Turin is more virtuous than many other
major Italian cities, but the per capita production of waste and the per
capita consumption of electricity for domestic use have grown slightly in
recent years (Legambiente and Ambiente Italia 1994–2013; ISPRA 2008;
Legambiente 2010; Tortorella and Chiodini 2010).
As for instruments of governance, the Municipality has managed to
present itself as able to coordine resources and expertise through the
promotion of a series of innovations aiming at modernizing the tools of
local politics (Belligni 2005; Dente et al. 2005). Nevertheless, these
innovations were closed to ordinary citizens (who were never involved in
the decision-making processes) and the Metropolitan government remained
more a symbolic goal than a real committment by local political institutions.
Finally, though Turin achieved greater international visibility, the
overall outcome of policy efforts is quite uncertain in terms of better
integration in the international system (Castellani and Damiano 2011). The
number of foreign students is increasing, but it is far from qualifying the
local higher education system as a key node in the international network
(Musto 2010). With regard to the productive sector, Turin is still excluded
from the club of the continent’s most central and influential cities. Turin
ranks far below Milan and Rome in terms of multinational activities in the
service sector and the high-tech industry,5 as well as in the transnational
network of global services. As for degree of attractiveness, Turin does not
appear in the ranking of the thirty major European cities, while Milan
occupies the eleventh place and Rome the twenty-sixth (Mariotti and
Piscitello 2006).6
The following table presents a summary of the results of Turin’s urban
regime, taking into account both citizen’s perception and the analysis and
statistics on the social and economic situation. What emerges is a critical
picture with some positive elements, as the urban agenda has only weakly
approached the goals promised (Tab. 9-3).
5
The multinational activity index is calculated as the sum of foreign workers in
multinational Italian firms and workers at foreign multinational firms based in Italy
(Mariotti and Piscitello 2006).
6
Attractiveness is defined as the ability to attract and retain investment by large
international corporations in strategic services and high technology (Mariotti and
Piscitello 2006).
Table 9-3: An assessment
↑ Still consolidated industrial sector

↓ Weakness of all the other productive sectors
↓ Low internationalization and attractiveness
↑City image ↑Increasing tourist

↓Infrastructural flows
pitfalls ↑Wide offer of leisure
↓Low public services activities ↓ Low air
↑Better waste in the new ↓Marginal economic quality
management neighbourhoods impact of the cultural
system sector ↓ Decreasing
↑ Short-term growth ↓ Good satisfaction for use of public
↑New bycicle ↓ No economic some public services transport
paths and diversification ↓ Increasing poverty system
pedestrian ↓ Stagnation of the ↓ Policy drift in social
zones high-tech sector and environmental ↓ Sustained
↓ High public debt policies urbanization
↓ Few job
opportunities for
young workers
↑ Process innovations
↑ Good satisfaction for local government
↓ Missed management of the metropolitan area
A gap between goals and outcomes is inherent, to a certain extent, in any

policy change. In addition, the critical economic downturn has contributed
negatively. But the explanation partly lies in some specific characteristics
of this urban regime.
3. The causes of low performance

Clarence N. Stone (2002) distinguishes between strong and weak urban
regimes. The strong regimes are not only the most long-standing, but those
that develop a sustained capacity to solve urban problems. From this
viewpoint, the Turin urban regime is closer to the category of weak
regimes. According to the findings collected through semi-structured
interviews, two main criticisms seem to explain the low performance.
152 Chapter Nine
A first factor has to do with what some interviewees have called “the
deficiencies of the agenda,” which include limited feasibility, selectivity,
and systemic control. From this perspective, the agenda’s low effectiveness
does not lie in the difficulty of the extraordinary effort led by the
governing coalition, but in the agenda’s excessive scope. One protagonist
stated: “This oversizing was a conscious choice. We decided that our
approach had to temporarily transcend criterions of feasibility and
sustainability.”
However, in the light of other European and American experiences, an
urban agenda usually focuses on a limited number of priorities (Haughton
1996; Quilley 2000; Peck and Ward 2002; Di Gaetano and Strom 2003;
Harding et al. 2004; While, Jonas and Gibbs 2004; Coulson and Ferrario
2007; Hansen and Winther 2007 and 2010; Rousseau 2009; Andersen and
Winther 2010; Blackeley 2010). The governing coalition does not
normally aim at controlling the whole range of local policies and does not
try to invest in all directions, but tends to concentrate ideas, expertise, and
resources on one or two key points, whose implementation should pull
urban change.
In the Turin case, a low propensity to establish strategic priorities led
to a heterogeneous agenda made up of a mix of different directions. This
diversification probably amplified the risk of expertise fragmenting and
resources dispersing. After twenty years, looking back at the experience,
several protagonists state that strategic choices could (or should) have
been concentrated mostly on the development of the high-tech industry
and the knowledge sector.
The second critical aspect concerns governance arrangements,
especially the effective support of the business actors in formulating and
implementing the agenda. Their role was not properly complementary. In
terms of expertise, the business community did not respond to the
expectations of the political actors. As the first mayor of the city recalled,
“We started from the idea that we had to involve the local business
community and we believed that their direct voice would bring lots of
ideas. We were wrong: Business actors, as much as any other human
beings, are focused on their small experience and it is not easy to broaden
their vision beyond the hedge.” In terms of implementation, the business
community rarely intervened with direct financial resources and several
decisional processes ended up in a stalemate because of the free-riding
strategies of the business actors. Almost only in specific cases of profitable
exchange with the public sector (especially in relation to the rules for land
use and the construction permits) the business community clearly
contributed to implement the agenda.
The interaction between these two critical factors (inadequacy of the

goals in relation to the resources and reliability of the coalition) explain
the unsatisfactory outcome and the failed systemic change of the Turin
urban regime.
4. Conclusions
The attempt to change the city through a new pro-growth agenda
substantially failed in relation to several goals. The main performance
indicators show that, almost twenty years since the agenda building, the
expected transformation of the city from a manufacturing capital to a high-
tech, creative, and sustainable metropolis is still far from being achieved.
Although the land-use policies, infrastructural policies, and cultural
initiatives can be defined as successful, a new diversified economic
context, alternative to industrialism and able to foster local growth,
employment, sustainability, and trust in the future, has not emerged. The
local economy is still driven by the manufacturing sector (and partially by
the construction sector) and the outcomes of the agenda have been modest
even before the global economic crisis.
This failed metamorphosis can be explained by the weaknesses of the
urban regime, despite its favourable political and financial conditions. Two
factors, mutually interconnected, were the main causes of these
weaknesses. The first concerns the quality and the development of the
agenda, excessively ambitious and dispersed in relation to the available
resources and skills. The second has to do with asymmetries in degrees of
involvement (and risk-taking) between the local government and the
business community: while the former often declined to exert a driving
role, the contribution of the latter (in terms of projects, organization, and
financing) was discontinuous and partial, primarily led by opportunistic
strategies and by a search for small gains.
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University Press.
CHAPTER TEN
PROBLEM AREAS AND OPPORTUNITIES

IN A COMPLEX CITY:
THE CASE OF ROME
FIAMMETTA MIGNELLA CALVOSA

AND FIAMMETTA PILOZZI
An anomalous modernization has left deep rifts in the shape of the city
which will heavily condition those who want to draw imaginative scenarios
for the future. Therefore, it will be wiser to rework the existing in an
invention that transfigures it, following the Borromini lesson to draw good
from evil.
W. Tocci, I. Insolera and D. Morandi (2008)
1. Introduction
The city is traversed by flows of people, traffic, money, communications,
goods and materials (even waste constitutes a flow) and, at the same time,
is characterized by the interdependence of its parts, since it is that very
system of interconnected relations that determine its vitality. It is for
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development this reason that
the contemporary city can seem like the casing of such series of flows and
can itself amount to the materialization of the intersection of these
multidirectional vectors, at times coinciding and at others clashing.
While behind the chaotic picture of the contemporary city there is a
complex set of urban systems, whose interactions cannot be completely
regulated, it becomes increasingly necessary to elaborate a form in which
they are at least fruitfully and sustainably managed, even if not completely
incorporated. It is in this sense that the urban space takes shape as a flow
management system, but also as the sum of individual spatial activities
whereby its inhabitants give shape to their city (Mignella Calvosa 2012).
Problem Areas and Opportunities in a Complex City: The Case of Rome 159
Therefore, it becomes particularly important that forms of organization

and self-organization are created in order to deal with environmental
pressures and growing flows, to activate ecological rebalancing projects
and also to contribute to giving an identity and the capacity to promote
relations to places, making the city and the many complexities
distinguishing it, still able to bring about social and human construction
processes.
Rome is a very good example of a complex city. With its 2,864,519
inhabitants, it is the most populated city in Italy and the fourth most
populated city in Europe after London, Berlin, and Madrid. The
municipality of Rome covers 1,285 km², which corresponds to seven times
the area of Milan and is equivalent to the sum of the areas of Amsterdam,
Athens, Berne, Brussels, Copenhagen, Dublin, Lisbon, Paris, and Vienna.
This extension is undeniably the outcome of the way in which the
municipality has developed after the Unification of Italy, guaranteeing the
interests of the recipients of urban land values, safeguarding the interests
of the landowners and real estate companies. Therefore, the city is not
compact, with an organization of space that has been affected by a
regulatory framework that is the result of constant compromising, with
speculative pressures at times present in the political management of the
city. The spreading of the inhabitants over such a huge area means that
Rome has the highest number of circulating vehicles over its territory in
Italy and the longest metropolitan rail network (short-distance and local
trains), while it is the main railway hub for the centre-south of Italy.
Adding together the commuters, the overall arrivals for either tourism or
work, by air, boat and train, the MPs, the embassy and international
agency personnel, the military, priests, foreigners and the not registered
homeless, it is calculated that on a daily basis Rome hosts a million people
besides its residents, bringing the total to almost four million people.
In most cases, such a complexity of people, institutions and cultures
has hardly ever been transformed into vital energy for the city, able to give
life to heterogeneity and wealth of stimuli and drive for life and urban
development, but has become synonymous with fragmentation,
opportunities that are interpreted, experienced and managed mainly as
problems, with excellences that “survive,” despite the weakness of the
governance systems for development factors, and struggle to “make a
system.” By means of a sort of “Glad Game,” it is nonetheless possible to
attempt a reflection which provokingly examines the critical areas and
threats that the city faces in an attempt to perceive the potential space in
each of them to create opportunities for sustainable development, where
160 Chapter Ten
“sustainable” qualifies an economic growth that respects environment,

social cohesion and self-organization.
2. Rome the green city

Just a few hundred metres from St. Peter’s cathedral, right in the city
centre, there is a green area where goats are reared, and not for the purpose
of developing an environmental education in a specifically managed green
area. The goats are kept there just as they would be kept on any Apennine
plain (Fig. 10-1). Some months ago, a goat ran away from its herd and
made its way inside the Valle Aurelia Metro A underground stop, just a
few hundred metres from the rural urban area (Fig. 10-2), creating panic,
and even indignation, among citizens and institutions, according to some
first-hand online newspaper accounts.
Fig. 10-1 Goats in Rome
A similar stir was caused by a porcupine seen walking around in the

Marconi quarter, which had come from an unmanaged green area just a
few metres from the These two anecdotes portray a Rome that is, as is
well-known, one of the European cities with the greatest ratio of green
areas: two-thirds of the council territory make up today’s citizen
Ecological Network, a structured functional system of areas of naturalistic,
agricultural and recreational importance, therefore free green areas that are
not built on, which all together represent roughly 82,500 hectares, i.e. 67%
of the entire area of Rome, 128,500 hectares (Cignini and Dellisanti 2012).
In most of this area we find archaeological sites, villas, monuments

and, above all, a real wealth of protected natural areas, with habitats of an
extraordinary biodiversity value and ecological niches hosting over 1,300
plant species (20% of the Italian flora), 5,200 insect species and 170 other
species of mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles (Cignini and
Dellisanti 2012). It is important to stress, moreover, that 51,729 hectares of
agricultural land (40% of the total council surface area) make Rome the
most extensive agricultural municipality in Europe.
The vastness of the green patrimony must not just be considered as
being limited to well-defined spatial contexts at local level. Rome’s
peculiar feature is its huge number of green spaces interspersed among the
built-up areas, many of which are not used as accessible spaces of public
green managed by the local councils in charge (Fig. 10-2).
Fig. 10-2 Green areas typologies in Rome municipality

Source: B. Cignini and R. Dellisanti 2012
Such contexts are the sign of the amazing biodiversity that

distinguishes the urban spaces of Rome and, in all likelihood, represent
residual elements that are psychologically necessary to maintain a
“physical” relationship between citizens and green spaces, even if only in
terms of spatial contiguousness and “within sight.” In fact, these spaces
can be the subject of conflicting interpretations with regard to their utility
and contribution to the improvement of city’s ecological sustainability.
They are mostly unkempt and look “wild” and for this reason are often
162 Chapter Ten
perceived as contexts of degradation, unwieldy spaces forcing road and

pedestrian circulation to apparently irrational detours with respect to those
that would be shorter.
Nevertheless, it is fundamental to regard these contexts as of
inescapable and non-negotiable value, where the risk of cementation must
be avoided at all costs. Green areas, if taken care of and used by everyone,
clearly hold a value for citizens. On the other hand, even unmanaged but
simply protected green areas represent a value both for the preservation of
biodiversity in urban contexts and for the maintenance of a daily contact,
at least only visual, between humans and nature. Wherever the green areas
do not work as places to establish and foster explicit relations between
humans and nature, they can in fact represent a sort of “calm space” which
is nonetheless necessary to conserve an overall human and environmental
equilibrium. On the other hand, well-kept and functionally useful green
spaces can, as mentioned above, be transformed into specific places of
activation/reactivation of the relationship with nature, as happens for
example, with the creation of “specialist” interstitial spaces (it suffices to
think of Rome’s Rose Garden or Botanical Garden, or the urban vegetable
gardens) which also become ideal places where to develop knowledge,
experience, curiosity, but also relations, socialization, opportunities for
play, leisure time and wellbeing. In doing this, the departure point must be
the awareness of the potential in Rome’s green areas in order to make the
city of the future significantly more biophilic: a city conceived to foster a
cohabitation between humans and nature that may reactivate the inherent
capacity of humans to interact in nature, which is closely correlated to
their socio-psychological needs (Kellert and Wilson 1995; Beatly 2010).
In fact, if to consider sustainable urban development from the ecological
point of view means to reason in terms of protection of the ecosystem,
what is lost is the stimulation and preservation of the human being-nature
relationship.
While the realization of eco-compatible urban development policies
and practices for the conservation of the ecosystem patrimony represents
an essential means for the ontological objectives of the sustainable (and
smart) city, the biophilic city aims at the recovery/activation of relations
and mechanisms of biological interaction, both material and cognitive,
between people and nature, as well as between artefacts and nature itself,
where the bio-urbanistic planning at the origin of the edification is oriented
by the preservation of a balance in which the organic form/function
relations are not subordinate to the mechanical form/function instances.
The realization of eco-city planning interventions cannot exist, however,
without a regulatory system that supports the fulfilment of processes of
new forms of urban generation/regeneration based on renewed practices of

coexistence between buildings, men and nature (with regard to this, one
must think of the city planning interventions by local government for the
transformation of abandoned green areas into collectively run urban
vegetable gardens, or also the consequences of specific city planning
decisions on land use). For Rome, architecture and biophilic city planning
can represent an answer to the historical dynamics of unhealthy urban
development, which for years has typified expansion, favouring changes of
direction thanks to the use of shared project practices, the opposition to
destructive changes, the encouragement of reclamation, regeneration and
“urban microsurgery” interventions.
To face the challenges posed by global development, the Rome of the
future cannot but be smarter and slower at the same time: the quality of the
contribution of information and communication technology will in fact be
measured in relation to the interaction between citizens’ actual demand
and the answers that they are given by public polices, defining the rules of
transformation and regeneration of the urban area which might consider
the ecological variable as the basic variable.
3. Rome and the traffic

It has been highlighted that the characteristic of contemporary thought,
trapped in an acceleration that dazes and paralyses it, lies in the way of
considering mobility in space without being able to conceive it in time,
where, “before the emergence of a human world that is consciously co-
extensive with respect to the whole world, everything happens as if we
backed off before the need to organize it, seeking refuge behind old spatial
divisions: borders, cultures, identities” (Augé 2009). The very compactness of
the city is undoubtedly a feature that must be considered at the base of a
sustainable urban development and is connected to a government of the
territory that has kept in mind the different problems of urban space
management and, in particular, the dynamics of mobility. It is in fact
thanks to the evaluation of such parameters that one can contribute to
bringing about fewer risks of segregation. However, the comparative
analysis at international level of the increase of big metropolises in
advanced countries, and even more so in emerging ones, shows that in
many cases an urban territorial governance is completely absent,
particularly from an environmental viewpoint.
The city is often presented as a haphazard spatial system in which it is
extremely difficult to intervene a posteriori to rationalize settlements and
mobility, thus making the city sustainable. Therefore, the crucial subject
164 Chapter Ten
today is including the protection of the environment as a vital element of

the general management of the territory in urban governance practice, with
citizen participation. Urban governance is strongly linked to environmental
governance and this means not only intervening on buildings, which must
be sustainable from the insulation and energy exchange point of view, but
being committed to using up less land, planning new constructions in the
gaps, regenerating abandoned spaces, restoring the run-down structures,
and localising basic services with accessibility and mobility in mind. The
fact remains that the most ecological features of a high density urban area,
besides having a lower pro capita energy consumption, lie in a greater use
of public transport and moving around on foot or by bicycle, and hence in
a mobility plan that is directly linked to the town planning scheme. The
integration of these two forms of city planning is one of the mainstays of
good environmental governance.
The previsions for Rome’s planning scheme show how the very
expansion of the city continues to be designed following lines of
development that are not founded on at least a cognition of those who are
and, above all, will be the future inhabitants of the city and their relative
needs, which they will express as the users of urban spaces. Rome appears
as a sprawling city, whose expansion has taken place like wild fire from the
city centre towards the periphery. Unfortunately, this has not been
accompanied by an adequate public transport system, with the
consequence that most Romans use their own means of transport and
urban mobility has become unsustainable. And yet the ability to move
around the city and relate to others represents the very essence of being a
citizen and deeply affects the environment (Mignella Calvosa 2012).
The territorial extension of the municipality of Rome has a huge
internal mobility system and four million people, made up of residents,
commuters and city-users, can only make use of a considerably undersized
underground network, lines A and B, plus eight regional railway lines. The
public transport system is integrated by a bus network that is totally
insufficient to satisfy the population’s needs for mobility in terms of the
number of routes, frequency and service. Despite the ongoing works to
increase the underground system to create lines B1 and C and the project
for line D, it is clear that even in the near future these interventions will
not be able to even partially represent a sustainable urban mobility
management in the municipality of Rome.
Just as in the past, the need for metropolitan rail networks continues to
be underestimated, with a concentration on motorway ring roads forcing
people to use their own cars. In other words, priority continues to be given
to the interests of the landowners and permission for property speculation
through the urbanization of new areas, rather than regenerating, reusing

and reclaiming the existing ones (it suffices to recall the new football
stadium at Tor di Valle and the increase in cubic metres of cement that this
could entail). In fact, the urban regeneration interventions continue to
represent oases or exceptions, almost “phenomena” which students of
architecture in search of best practice should visit now and again in order
“to see them first hand.” There is no systematic intervention order, but
there is political action for single spots (whereby we mean also the original
definition of “circumscribed spot”). Improvization in the management of
urban development, as well as determining the total unsustainability and
irrationality of the city’s growth processes, is thus translated into
unsustainable urban mobility, not only from the ecological point of view,
but also, and even more, from the economic and social one, since
interventions always go ahead, foreseeing the construction of buildings
firstly, and afterwards, if one is lucky, that of infrastructures connected to
them. In the case of Rome, the expression of hardship lies in the urban
traffic, which is not a sector problem but the consequence of the city
planning policy which has been followed for over a century and has
conditioned the city’s shape and mobility.
By identifying specific city planning interventions and developing new
project-creativity, it is in a city like Rome that one could and should
reconstruct a safe, equal, democratic, and sustainable environment. For
example, the relations and services that are being developed on the internet
can undoubtedly create new scenarios for the use of the city in this
direction. The new areas of interaction that the internet has opened up
make it possible to put the real next to the virtual space, where new
practices can be set up for the enjoyment of the services offered by the city
and, at the same time, new interaction practices, which integrate but do not
substitute personal relations.
In fact, paradoxically the development of the internet has broadened
mobility practices, since it has increased the possibilities for contacts and
relations. Indeed, the population clusters characterized by a more
“aggressive” mobility are also those who use virtual mobility assiduously
and often alternatively to real mobility. As stated, while it is true that real
and virtual mobility do not substitute, but integrate, each other, it is with
regard to the work processes and use of services that the internet can
considerably modify or reduce routine urban mobility, which is the most
intense, unsustainable and heavy form of mobility, both for environment
and people.
Italy is the fifth country in the world for mobile phone use and, after
South Korea, China and Australia, the fourth for smart phone use (Nielsen
166 Chapter Ten
Company 2013). This represents an extraordinary opportunity to stimulate

forms of intervention with the aim of adopting smart solutions for urban
mobility. This is shown by the incredible success recorded by the car
sharing service Car2Go since its introduction in Rome in March 2014. It
was set up in Germany in 2008 with an initiative by Daimler, the producer
of Mercedes, and is based on the use of an application enabling the user to
localize the vehicle of the fleet that is nearest his or her place of interest
and to book it for thirty minutes, within which time the car must be
reached and the rental period started. Once the rental is complete, the car
can be left at any point within the urban area being served. The service is
today active in twenty-five cities in Europe and America and it is
interesting to note that in Germany, where it has been working for six
years, there are just below 70,000 registered users, while in Rome alone, in
June 2014, after only two months of activity, they were already 110,000.
Car2Go racked up 45,000 clients for about 500 cars being shared; at the
same time the company closed its London and Birmingham offices, where
the number of clients did not even reach 10,000. While the company
attributed this failure to the English people’s strong attachment to their
own cars, it is rather intuitive that its huge success in Italy is due to the low
level of public transport services, which is quite insufficient in Rome and
considerably more widespread in London. Just a few weeks following the
arrival of Car2Go, ENI [Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi = National
Hydrocarbons Agency] introduced its own car sharing service with Enjoy
(with 25,000 registered users in Rome in the first six weeks of activity),
with a greater variation in the concept of intermodality, owing to the
setting up of exchange car parks and, in particular, the agreement with
Trenitalia (one of the subsidiaries of Ferrovie dello Stato, the Italian State
Railways). This immediately induced Car2Go to stipulate a partnership
with Italo Treno, the main competitor of Trenitalia.
The recent story of Car2Go and Enjoy and the changes that are already
taking place in the mobility habits of many Romans show how, once
again, an intervention that is useful for the improvement of urban mobility
comes from the private sector—and not from long-term public policies—
demonstrating also how the road to sustainable mobility needs dynamic
equilibriums in which self-organization and self-regulation establish the
continuous adaptation to the change brought about by external influences;
such processes allow the various components of each system to cooperate
in order to achieve new equilibriums. However, in the case just analysed,
since the objective is mainly company profit, the risk is that new dynamics
of exclusion can stem from such an important and decisive service for
citizens of large slices of the population resident on the outskirts of the
city. In fact, both services can be accessed only in a delimited area of the
city, which does not include the most populated outskirts which also suffer
from the absence of an efficient and capillary public transport system, thus
remaining at risk of exclusion and segregation. Rome is therefore an
example of how it is possible to find fertile ground for setting up
sustainable mobility processes, but also of how good interventions can
increase the risk of excluding and segregating important bands of the
population when they take into account environmental sustainability rather
than social sustainability.
4. There is a state within the city:

the impact of the Holy See
As is well-known, the greatest density of historical and artistic heritage in
the world is concentrated in Rome, where the relative tourist flow in 2014
reached 16,374,835 arrivals, recording an objective rise with respect to the
figure of 15,473,134 in 2013, but continuing to be at a lower position with
respect to cities like London, which reached 16,784,100 tourists in 2014.
The capacity of the city’s attractions, however, does not seem to be
governed and the problem is once again the governance of opportunities. It
must also be stressed that Rome is the only city in the world that hosts a
state within a state and at least three diplomatic offices for each country:
one to the Italian state, one to the Holy See and one to the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
These factors of extraordinary complexity/opportunity highlight even
more so how the way in which Rome has developed shows the strategic
and planning incapacity to direct the development potential inherent in the
excellences distinguishing it. This is particularly so in relation to mobility,
which, as mentioned above, has not been governed by long-term plans or
strategies or social and spatial integration objectives, or with the aim of
satisfying the growing needs of a global tourist population, thus defeating
any principle of urban quality whatsoever. In such an outdated and deep-
rooted situation, the only possible action draws on the existing one for a
recovery in terms of cultural valorization and the valorization of the
diversities present in the city.
The greatest offer of archaeological heritage to the world and the status
of capital of Catholicism and seat of the Pope represent the two principal
realities on which “to exercise” the ability to climb to the top of the
ranking of the most visited cities in the world. The “Pope Francis effect,”
in particular, continues to generate extraordinary flows of religious
tourism. In general Rome is involved in the trend of tourism growth of the
168 Chapter Ten
great capital cities: the figures supplied by the Ente Bilaterale del Turismo
del Lazio show a rise of +5.63% for arrivals and +4.84% for those who
stayed the night with respect to 2014. Of the 13,043,567 total tourists who
stayed in Rome’s hotels in 2014, 5,216,353 were Italian (+4.63) and
7,827,214 were foreigners (+6.31%). In this context, the “Pope Francis
effect” is confirmed by the increase of tourists from Argentina: 63,370
arrivals and 162,901 overnight stays in 2012, while in 2014 there had been
131,125 arrivals and 341,720 overnight stays. Furthermore, it is
particularly significant that from 27 March to 18 December 2013 over
1,500,000 tickets were distributed by the Prefecture of the Papal
Household for the Wednesday papal audiences: twice those of the previous
year.
Owing to the presence of the Vatican and the current configuration of
the factors of attraction, both tourist and pilgrimage flows must be
managed as the real generators of continuous growth in economic terms
and, above all, in terms of the social value underpinning such cultural
interactions. It is thus essential to proceed with a policy for the
revalorization of the elements of strength in Roman culture, which are
firmly anchored to the presence of the Vatican but also to the force of the
cosmopolitan identity of the city. This is in order to valorize those mobility
flows, which are often heterogeneous, inconstant, temporally undiluted
and, therefore, difficult to evaluate and manage. They must be perceived
no longer as a burden, but as an element with which to win the challenge
of hospitality, so as to make Rome, even more than ever, the chosen
crossroads of identity, cultures, mediations among institutions, and
dialoguing diversities.
The pedestrianization of the road running along the Imperial Forum is
undoubtedly a positive sign in this direction, as well as all the
interventions increasing pedestrian areas and cycle lanes, the natural
catalysers of “face-to-face” meeting and interaction, “at eye level” (Jehl
2010), in which it is possible to enjoy not only the visual landscape but
also the “smellscape” and soundscape which, thanks to the widespread
naturalistic patrimony, are of extraordinary experience value; in the same
way, all those opportunities of enjoying public spaces must be positively
considered on the occasion of great events, which should not be regarded
as “exceptional,” as happens today, or as moments in which the
management problems are reinforced to the advantage of the city. The use
of “excellent” spaces, such as the Circus Maximus, for the Rolling Stones
concert, or Piazza San Giovanni, for the annual Labour Day concert,
besides representing important opportunities for culture, image, and
economic valorization of the city, gives it the status of an open museum,

made even more enjoyable by an increase in the pedestrian areas.
Rome probably cannot be defined a global city, in Sassen’s meaning,
but is fully entitled to being considered a cosmopolitan city. This is an
extraordinary opportunity, which requires an improvement in both private
and public services, the breaking down of spatial barriers to the integration
of the outskirts, the promotion of a deep change in the way of welcoming
tourists, the redefinition of Rome as a safe city, the enhancing of the still-
fragmentary museum system which strives to gain a position on the new
media scene, more generally an improved communication of that identity
linked to the real splendour that the Eternal City can legitimately boast.
References
Augé, M. 2009. Pour une antropologie de la mobilité. Paris: Payot.
Beatley, T. 2010. Biophilic Cities. Integrating Nature in Urban Planning.
Washington DC: Island Press.
Cignini, B. and Dellisanti, R. 2012. “Roma capitale della biodiversità,”
Report on the state of environment. Nature and public green space.
Roma: Dipartimento tutela ambientale e del verde – Protezione Civile.
Jehl, J. 2010. Cities for people. Washington DC: Island Press.
Kellert, S.R. and Wilson, E.O. 1995. The Biophilia Hypothesis.
Washington DC: Island Press.
Mignella Calvosa, F. 2012. “La mobilità sostenibile,” in G. Martinotti and
S. Forbici eds., La metropoli contemporanea, Milano: Guerini.
Nielsen Company. 2013. The Mobile Consumer. A Global Snapshot
(report) – Online document:
https://www.google.it/#q=Nielsen+Company.+2013.+The+Mobile+Co
nsumer.+A+Global+Snapshot%2C+February
Tocci, W., Insolera, I. and Morandi, D. 2008, Avanti c’è posto, Roma:
Donzelli.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE VARIABLE GEOMETRY

OF URBAN GOVERNANCE:
A COMPARATIVE RESEARCH
FORTUNATA PISELLI
1. Introduction
Globalization and growing international competition, the weakening of the
nation-state and the devolution of powers in favour of local institutions are
creating greater space for action by the decentralized levels of government.
Italian cities, especially now that mayors are elected directly by citizens,
exhibit greater dynamism than in the past and wider margins of autonomy
in the implementation of their policies. Different areas of action open up
for urban governments.
At a local level, there are urban regeneration programmes through the
new tools of integrated action promoted at European and national levels
with the explicit intent of improving the quality of life of the inhabitants of
decayed neighbourhoods and fighting social exclusion, renewing important
parts of the territory, and upgrading all the external material and
immaterial economies (infrastructures, research centres, universities,
training systems, services to businesses, etc.) whereby the innovative
activities of knowledge economy can grow and flourish.
At a supra-local level, there are initiatives to improve the competitiveness
of cities on the international market through the adoption of strategic
plans, marketing operations, candidatures for “great events” (sporting or
cultural), and bilateral or multilateral partnerships with cities in other
countries to promote projects of common interest and at the same time
enhance their own resources and attract external investments (Perulli 2000,
2007; d’Albergo and Lefèvre 2007). It has been widely emphasized that
decisively important factors for the success of urban policies (but, of
course, not only these) are the practices and quality of governance
The Variable Geometry of Urban Governance: A Comparative Research 171
(Bagnasco and Le Galès 2001; Le Galès 2002; Burroni et al. 2009). Amid
the new opportunities that arise for city governments, there has been
growing interest among scholars and researchers in urban policies and
their effectiveness. This article presents some results of a research project
on six Italian metropolitan cities. The principal focus was on local policies,
the purpose being to identify the factors that foster policies able to produce
collective goods in an enduring and effective manner.1
2. The research design

This is a brief outline of the research. Six metropolitan cities were selected:
Turin, Florence, Venice, Naples, Bari, and Palermo. The following table
shows the mayors and councils studied, and the party majorities in
government (Tab. 11-1).
Table 11-1 The councils analysed
Municipality Mayor Majority Period

Bari S. Di Cagno Centre-right 1999–2004
Abbrescia
Napoli Rosa Russo Jervolino Centre-left 2001–2006
Palermo Diego Cammarata Centre-right 2001–2006
Torino Sergio Chiamparino Centre-left 2001–2006
Venezia Paolo Costa Centre-left 2000–2005
Firenze Leonardo Domenici Centre-left 1999–2004
Various survey techniques were used for the case studies, both
qualitative and quantitative. In the first phase of the research, a
background study was conducted to reconstruct the city’s political, social,
and economic profile. In the second phase, more than 200 interviews were
1
This article is based on the results of research financed by the PRIN project
“Comuni, interessi locali e pianificazione strategica in Italia,” coordinated at the
national level by Carlo Trigilia and at the local level by Fortunata Piselli and
Francesco Ramella. The main results were published in the books Città
metropolitane e politiche urbane (Burroni et al. 2009) and Governare città: beni
collettivi e politiche metropolitane (Piselli, Burroni and Ramella 2012). The case
studies were entrusted to Alessandro Lattarulo and Onofrio Romano (Bari), Andrea
Biagiotti and Natalia Faraoni (Florence), Luciano Brancaccio (Naples), Laura
Azzolina (Palermo), Filippo Barbera and Valentina Pacetti (Turin), and Terenzio
Fava (Venice).
172 Chapter Eleven
carried out with key informants (mayors, councillors, and independent

experts) and analysis was made of the documentary materials collected on
local policies. In particular, the local policies were studied by surveying
and evaluating the most important “local collective goods” (henceforth
LCGs) produced in the council period considered. With this expression we
defined the local collective goods and services made available to citizens
following decisions by the municipal administration. These local collective
goods might be tangible (for instance, an industrial area, a regenerated
district, or a newly constructed waste-to-energy incinerator) or intangible
(for instance, the introduction of an online service, a new care service or a
new research project). These are goods that have direct impacts on the
quality of urban life and the competitiveness of the local economy. They
relate to the concept of “local collective competition goods” used in recent
years in the analysis of production systems (Crouch et al. 2001; Burroni
2005; Trigilia 2005).
The LCGs studied were identified with the aid of local administrators
(mayors and councillors, sometimes flanked by managers or technicians).
Selection was made of the two LCGs deemed most important and
significant (among those produced during the council period in question)
in the following sectors: environment, traffic and mobility, housing,
economic development, social policies, security, education and culture.
The interviews with the local administrators, particularly with the mayors,
made it possible to reconstruct the overall picture of local governance,
with specific regard to the executive’s style of leadership and its “vision of
government.”
In order to “evaluate” the local policies, besides the judgements of our
researchers, we relied on the opinions expressed by a “jury of experts”
especially formed for this research. In each city at least three “expert-
specialists” for each sector of intervention were selected, together with
four “general experts” (key informants with good knowledge of the local
administration’s activities). Chosen for the juries were competent persons
not directly involved in the decision-making process examined. These
panels of key informants (between twenty and thirty for each case study)
served to furnish “independent judgements” on the effectiveness and
innovativeness of the LCGs indicated by the administrators and on the
configuration of the decision-making process.2 The information collected
2
In particular, the key informants were asked to express judgements on various
aspects of the LCGs examined (attributing a score in a range from one to ten):
firstly, on “decision-making effectiveness,” i.e. the results achieved in terms of
outcomes; secondly, on their innovativeness—in terms of both process and
product—compared with the decision-making practices previously prevalent in the
in the six case studies made it possible to reconstruct the effective agenda
of the municipal executive council and to analyse the “histories” and
decision processes of eighty-five LCGs, distinguished between micro-,
meso- and macro-sectors.3
3. The factors influencing the performance of LCGs

The judgements expressed by the experts and the researchers evidenced
considerable differences in the results achieved by the council departments.
On what did this variability in the performance of administrative action
depend? To answer this question, we singled out two types of factors: the
context factors and the process factors. The context factors refer to the
context within which the LCGs were produced; the process factors to the
specific modes of their production, i.e. to the decision-making procedures
and the configuration of the policy network. Within the context factors, we
distinguished the urban factors from the political factors. The urban
factors (“city effect”) referred to the different socio-economic environments
in which the administrators had to operate, as well as to the presence of
widespread social capital, and prior cooperation networks (i.e. virtuous
relations) between public and private actors. The political context instead
same sector. They were also asked to express judgements on more specific
characteristics of the decision-making process: 1) “sector integration,” i.e. the
extent to which the LCGs were part of systematic action within the sector of
reference; 2) “intersector coordination,” i.e. the extent to which the decision-
making process envisaged cooperation and involvement by other councillors or
public institutions in order to frame the measure within a broader intersector
perspective; 3) “openness” of the decision-making process, i.e. the extent to which
the administration was open to participation by citizens and/or civil-society
organizations. The qualitative interviews with the key informants and local
administrators also made it possible to collect detailed information on the decision-
making network, i.e. on the influence structures, social networks and actors
deemed most important in the decision making.
3
Micro-sector LCGs—no matter how effective and innovative—have very limited
sector incidence, because they address circumscribed issues, with impacts
restricted only to the actors directly concerned and wholly negligible regulatory
implications for the sector considered. Meso-sector LCGs are measures that have
limited but not negligible effects, because they address issues that significantly,
even if partially, impact on the sector in question, because of the extent of the
beneficiaries and their regulatory implications. Macro-sector LCGs are measures
that have a very high incidence, of structural type, because they concern a large
number of people and have very strong regulatory capacity for the entire sector in
question.
174 Chapter Eleven
referred to various elements relating to both the characteristics of the

council (“council effect”) and those of the sector within which the LCGs
were located (“sector effect”). More specifically, the “council effect,”
which concerned politics, referred to the stability of the executive, the
leadership of the mayor and the popular support enjoyed by the latter.
Conversely, the “sector effect,” which concerned policies,4 referred both to
the structural characteristics of the sector within which action was taken
and to the quality of the public services furnished to citizens in that sector
at the beginning of the council’s mandate. All factors determined different
starting points for action by the various councillors, both between cities
and within the same administration, making their work either easier or
more complicated. Our research data partly confirm and partly belie the
importance of the contextual factors, which proved to have rather limited
explanatory capacity.
More significant for explanatory purposes were the process factors,
which pertained to the specific modes of production of the LCGs. That is to
say, they concerned the dynamics of the decision-making process, the
configuration of the policy network, and the policy style of the councillors.
Indeed, it was this latter factor, i.e. the “governance effect,” which exerted
the greatest influence on the performance of the LCGs. We found, in fact,
that an inclusive approach (an integrated and coordinated policy style open
to civil society) usually exerted a positive influence on the performance of
LCGs. However, not all the dimensions that define governance (integration,
coordination, and openness) had the same importance. Of the three
components analysed (see footnote 2), of decisive importance was
interjector coordination, i.e. collaboration with other councillors and/or
local public institutions in order to frame the measure within a broad and
integrated action programme. Besides the coordination of the policies
concerning various sectors, an important role was played by the openness
of the decision-making process. However, contrary to the findings of the
normative approaches to the theme of governance, the openness of
decision-making to social and economic actors is not always a necessary
and sufficient condition to obtain good results. Of this the administrators
interviewed were well aware. In fact, one of the most interesting results of
our research is certainly the marked differences in styles and forms of
policy-making, not only between cities but, also within the same city,
between the various council departments, or in the modes of production of
4
The “sector effect” refers to the well-known thesis of Lowi (1972, 299): that
“policies determine politics,” i.e. the contents of policies condition the actors
involved, the form of the relations established, the resources deployed and,
consequently, their results.
one collective good with respect to another within the same council
department.
But let us consider the “histories” of some particularly emblematic
policies, some of them successful, others more disappointing. This will shed
light on how the factors influencing the performance of LCGs operated,
illustrate the different ways in which policy-making was configured and
reveal the dynamics that helped or hindered the implementation of effective
and innovative policies.
4. A variable-geometry pattern
We will begin by considering two successful policies in the housing
sector: Demolition of the “Torri” in Via Artom, Turin, and Regeneration of
the “Navi” in Le Piagge neighbourhood, Florence.5
Both schemes were part of urban renewal programmes for areas in
crisis with the purpose of upgrading them from both the physical-
architectural and the economic and social point of view: in the case of
Turin, an Urban Recovery Programme (Programma di Recupero Urbano:
PRU), and, in the case of Florence, a Neighbourhood Contract (Contratto
di Quartiere). These are two policies with innovative management
methods because they must involve local economic and social actors, as
well as the residents, in the definition and implementation of the projects
for urban and environmental regeneration.
In Turin, the measure concerned the demolition of two decayed buildings
in the suburban district of Mirafiori, known as the “Torri” (Towers), which
symbolized the damage caused by the uncontrolled development of the
city during the 1950s. The objective, which was fully achieved, was to act
at various levels to improve life in the district and to stimulate its social
and economic vitality. From the outset, institutional actors, businesses,
local authorities, and tenant associations participated in the decision-
making process. A consultation board made decision-making alternatives
and opposite proposals public and manageable. The main alternative was
between extraordinary maintenance work, which was supported by the
ATC (the Turin social housing institute), and demolition of the buildings.
But the ATC soon withdrew its opposition and fully cooperated during the
implementation phase. The councillor assumed personal responsibility for
the scheme and adopted a strategy of precommitment: he publicly announced
5
All the policies considered in this article have macro-structural importance, with
the exception of the Regeneration of the “Navi” in Le Piagge neighbourhood,
which has a meso-sector significance.
176 Chapter Eleven
the precise date for the demolition and the transfer of the tenants, pledging
to reimburse costs due to possible delays (for instance, hotel accommodation
for families). He took personal action to solve problems with great
humanity and sensitivity: he gave all the tenants his mobile phone number
so that they could report him any kind of difficulty. To facilitate the
delicate process of transferring the tenants, the councillor contacted an
association specialized in the accompaniment and facilitation of complex
processes, which assumed the role of “mediator” between tenants and
institutional actors when difficulties and delays occurred.6
In Florence, the project concerned the renovation of two buildings
known as the “Navi” (Ships) in Le Piagge neighbourhood. The architect
who drew up the project, with the assistance of the municipal technical
office, compiled a plan guide divided in various lots to be renovated. The
restructuring of the first fifty-two flats began during the first mandate of
mayor Domenici.
In accordance with the decision-making procedure established by the
Neighbourhood Contract, the tenants, through self-management committees,
actively participated in the projects for renovation of their flats.
Nevertheless, besides the measures foreseen institutionally, the councillor
made especial efforts to involve the tenants and to encourage their
commitment. He established direct and constant contacts not only with the
residents of the “Navi,” but also with all the associations and committees
in the district. The conditions were thus created to steer a plurality of
subjects towards shared goals, to deal with critical issues, and to foster all
the forms of spontaneous interconnection and collective action that
underpin local self-government. The only criticisms were those of one
local community of Le Piagge, expressed through one if its members: a
highly active priest, who, although he had endorsed the overall project for
the district’s renewal, claimed a more active role in the decisions.7
In the housing sector, we now consider two other policies with more
disappointing outcomes: Redefinition of the contract with Romeo Gestioni
6
The key informants’ scores deemed the project more important for product
innovation (6) than for process innovation (5), given that for several years there
had been talk of demolition. They expressed positive evaluations of sector
integration (7), decision-making coordination (7) and the openness of the decision-
making process (6).
7
The opinions of the key informants were positive as regards the effectiveness (7)
of the project and process innovativeness (6.7), while product innovativeness was
judged not entirely satisfactory (5.7). They also deemed as positive the measure’s
consistency with the goals of sector policy (6.7), decision-making coordination
(6.3) and the openness of the decision-making process (6.7).
and programming maintenance plans, in Naples; and The ranking list for
assignment of social housing, in Palermo.
In Naples, the action primarily concerned the solution of conflicts in
interpretation of the contract with the manager of the municipality’s real
estate (Romeo Gestioni S.p.A.), which for many years had blocked
practically all plans for maintenance of the municipality’s housing stock,
with severe consequences for the tenants. After the appointment of various
commissions and recourse to civil lawsuits, the tribunal finally specified
the parameters regulating the relationship between Romeo Gestioni and
the Naples municipality. Then were compiled five plans for maintenance
of the housing stock to a value of around fifteen million euros each. The
first two plans addressed the most severe housing emergencies and
situations with pending prosecutions. When the third maintenance plan
was launched, in order to address chronic but not urgent problems, the
councillor began discussions with the tenant associations and the district
councils concerned. Finally, he engaged in separate discussions with the
spontaneous tenant committees, with which relationships had been
decidedly conflicting. In comparison with the magnitude of the problem,
this policy was characterized by the extreme fragmentation of the
decision-making process, which, although it resolved some formal
disputes between Romeo Gestioni and the city administration, failed to
produce positive discussion and forms of cooperation between the actors
in the policy network that might form the basis for joint action and the
production of stable goods.8
In Palermo, the objective was to quantify the demand for social
housing, draw up a ranking list of those entitled to it in accordance with
regulations set out in the call for applications and then allocate the
dwellings available. The intention was therefore to impose order on the
long-standing disarray of the public housing stock, belonging to the
municipality and, all the more so, to the Autonomous Social Housing
Institute (Istituto Autonomo Case Popolari: IACP), to verify the level of
illegal occupancy and to re-establish lawfulness. More than twenty years
had passed since the last call for applications, issued in 1978, and the
regional commission competent at the time had not yet prepared the
ranking list, which was produced only ten years later, in 1988. Finally, in
2002, competence for drawing up the lists, and therefore for allocation of
social housing, was transferred from the regional administration to
8
Not surprisingly, therefore, the scores assigned by the key informants were
among the lowest: 4.3 for effectiveness; 4 for product and process innovativeness;
4.7 for sector integration; 5 for coordination and openness of the decision-making
process.
178 Chapter Eleven
municipalities. This provided the opportunity to revise the mechanism for

verifying the ranking lists and to impose order on a situation now out of
control: especially because the spiralling rate of illegal occupancy, which,
under the pressure of a socially explosive problem, seemed endemic and
irremediable. The decision-making process was particularly conflicting,
mainly because of the resistance raised by the regional commission of the
Autonomous Social Housing Institute (IACP) and an important tenant
association (SUNIA = Sindacato nazionale unitario inquilini e assegnatari)
against a new call for applications. Since this annulled the old ranking list,
it threatened the entitlement to social housing of people and families who
had been on the waiting list for years. The opinions of the key informants
on the effectiveness of the policy were decidedly negative. Firstly, around
eleven thousand applications were made, a number much lower than that
of 1978 and presumably much below the amount of people with
entitlement. Secondly, only eleven dwellings were assigned according to
the new ranking list, while a further twenty-four, again according to the
new ranking list, could not be allocated because they were already being
occupied illegally.9
We now discuss a comparison between the four policies considered.
This will furnish an exact idea of the extent to which their results were
influenced by the context factors and the process factors described above.
In all four cases the administrations took public housing measures
addressed to less affluent social groups, but the difference between these
policies is evident. Let us consider the “city effect.” The initial conditions
of the cities were certainly quite different in terms of urban planning and
housing. The two administrations of the centre-north started from less
complex and difficult situations, and they could also rely on very different
levels of public support. At the beginning of the council periods studied,
although the index of satisfaction with municipal housing policies was low
in this specific sector, it was higher in Florence and Turin (more than one-
third of consensus expressed) than in Naples and Palermo (where it was
respectively twenty-eight and sixteen per cent). Also, the policy sector
exerted an influence, in that the contents of the policies structured the
decision-making arena, and thus also conditioned the results obtained.
Housing policies, like those relative to the environment and traffic, are
9
The judgements of the key informants were decidedly negative: 3 for
effectiveness; 4 for process and product innovativeness; 3 for sector integration
and decision-making coordination. The openness of the decision-making process
was deemed sufficient because, in this case, according to the key informants,
greater public participation would only have complicated the realization of the
project further.
localized and have direct impacts on the lives of citizens. These policies
are, therefore, objectively more “difficult” and more liable to provoke
dissent than, for instance, social and cultural policies. The latter did not
encounter significant opposition and were managed in a climate of
consensus and cooperation. Hence the decision-making processes in the
four cities exhibited different forms and areas of interaction. Apparent in
Turin and Florence was an effective public action which had the resources
and organizational abilities necessary to obtain external funding. It was
also able to maintain its autonomy and thus safeguard the public focus of
the measures. By contrast, in Naples and Palermo the complications
induced by the specific circumstances of those cities, and by the type of
policies pursued, severely restricted the freedom of action of the decision-
makers with regard to the solutions foreseen. In Palermo, the
administration’s action was hindered by the executive of a regional public
body and the mentioned tenant association (SUNIA). In Naples, the
administrators were subject to the pressures and constraints applied by the
large business group which had managed the city’s assets for more than
fifteen years and had been in constant litigation with the municipality.
Suits and counter-suits had excessively delayed implementation of the
policy and more than once had forced the administrators to review and
revise the procedure.
In Turin and Florence, the administrations adopted innovative
instruments within an integrated approach to housing problems, and with
the explicit intent to act simultaneously on various dimensions of the
phenomenon: physical, social, economic, and cultural. The administrators
had devoted all their personal resources and commitment to ensuring that
all the individual and collective subjects concerned had access to, and
participated in, decision-making. They had elicited people’s desires and
needs, and listened to them. Moreover, by providing correct and specific
information, they had been able to direct diverse exigencies towards a
shared goal through a relationship of reciprocal trust. In Naples and
Palermo, by contrast, the administrations appeared unable to handle
innovative instruments of urban regeneration or to experiment new forms
and practices of governance. Consequently, decisions were taken either in
a routine way or in emergency style. In Palermo, the action was planned
top-downwards to resolve a critical situation ongoing for many years. It
was decided by a small group of institutional actors, with the scant
involvement of civil society organizations. The only association that
played an active role in the decision (SUNIA) was opposed to the measure.
In Naples, the decision-making process involved a larger number of actors.
But the separate bargaining procedure used, and the impossibility of
180 Chapter Eleven
positive discussions among the various actors, once again produced a

closed decision-making process (based on decisions taken by the majority
of the “strong” participants), which constantly failed to yield stable goods.
The administration made no effort to motivate citizens to organize
themselves and participate; nor did it seek to promote and support collective
resources of civil society. Finally, also the management of conflicts was
indicative of the different strategies pursued by the institutional actors. In
Florence and particularly in Turin, not only did disagreement arise, but it
was encouraged because it was regarded as useful. The reasons for the
conflict were made public so that they could be directly discussed by the
actors involved, and they were resolved through reasoned debate intended
to achieve a shared objective. In Naples and Palermo, by contrast, housing
policies were more likely to create contradictory tensions than to resolve
them. Especially in Naples, the reasons for the dissent expressed by the
tenant committees were ignored, which generated malcontent and distrust
in the administration.
These cases demonstrate that only inclusive practices—ones whereby
all the public and private actors with interests and competences regarding
the project are involved in the decision-making process—can favour the
effectiveness and efficiency of public policies. And yet, other policies
show that also a style closer to traditional government, centred on the role
of the public administration and less open to local society, can produce
good results. Consider, for example, the Agreement on the Mirafiori
Industrial Area in Turin and the Executive Plan for the Historic Centre in
Bari.
In Turin, the project was one of the most important initiatives of mayor
Chiamparino’s first mandate and one of the most significant initiatives of
industrial policy undertaken at local level. It involved the purchase, by the
City of Turin together with the region of Piedmont and the province of
Turin, of more than three hundred thousand square metres in the industrial
area of Mirafiori (disused for many years). The crisis that hit the Turin
company FIAT in the autumn of 2002 threatened its very survival, with
severe impacts on the city, not only occupational but also symbolic. A
positive solution was found in the agreement reached on the industrial
area, mainly on the initiative of mayor Chiamparino and the FIAT
managing director, Sergio Marchionne. With a more or less covert trade-
off (Berta 2006; Pichierri, Pacetti 2007), FIAT pledged to install a Grande
Punto car assembly line at Mirafiori (initially intended for the FIAT plant
in Melfi), thus averting the definitive closure of the Turin factory. The new
assembly line was inaugurated on May 26, 2006, in the presence of the
local authorities, and in October the company announced new positions.
When some differences of opinion within the city council had been
resolved, the decision-making process involved the municipality, the
province, the region, and the company. It was extremely rapid and
effective: the first official meeting between the company and the local
administrations was held at the end of June 2005 and the agreement was
signed on August 3 of the same year. The policy network comprised a
small group of actors with high decision-making power: the mayor, the
municipal councillor for industry, the regional councillor, the managing
director of FIAT Auto, the head of human resources at FIAT (who led the
negotiations) and the presidents of the provincial and regional administrations.
These were actors with prior cooperative relations and who enjoyed
reciprocal respect. The trade unions were almost entirely excluded from
bargaining on the industrial plan drawn up by FIAT Auto; but they were
informally involved in the bargaining between public actors and the
company management through the municipal councillor for industry, who
was a former trade-union official.10
In Bari, the project was conceived to promote the regeneration and the
economic and social renewal of the San Nicola neighbourhood in the core
of the old city: physically an extremely central district, but which was
avoided by the city’s inhabitants because of its decay and high crime rate.
The motion to adopt the Plan, which, as part of the Urban Project, was
eligible for funding by the European Community,11 was unanimously
approved by the municipal council on January 24, 2000, and subsequently
ratified by the regional executive council on July 9, 2002, which thus gave
the go-ahead for the Plan’s implementation. The main provisions
concerned the renewal of the city’s housing stock, the improvement of
urban furniture (paving, lighting, etc.), and the opening of new businesses,
with training courses for their managers. The policy was successful. It
initiated gradual improvement and also encouraged forms of regeneration
by the residents themselves. Today San Nicola is a vibrant neighbourhood
with a wide variety of businesses and public meeting places (bars,
restaurants, etc.), which attract numerous customers throughout the day
10
The key informants deemed the project to have very high effectiveness (8), as
demonstrated by the inauguration of the new assembly line at the Turin plant. They
also passed positive judgement on its innovativeness (both process 8 and product
8), even though similar projects had been undertaken at other plants in the region.
They also expressed positive opinions on the degree of sector integration (8) and
decision-making coordination (7), while they gave the lowest score to the openness
of the decision-making process (2).
11
URBAN is an EU programme for the economic and social regeneration of
disadvantaged city neighbourhoods.
182 Chapter Eleven
and also in the evening and at night. For these reasons, the assessments by
the key informants were entirely positive as regards effectiveness (7) and
innovativeness of process (6) and product (8). However, because the
project was poorly integrated with other policies, negative assessments
were made of the degree of sector and interjector integration. The
decision-making network, with only four actors, reflected the institutional
phases of the decision-making process, both those of start-up and
implementation. It comprised only the councillor of reference, the
municipal council, the design team and the municipal bureaucracy.
Also, these few examples demonstrate the variety of policy styles not
only among the cases studied but also within the administrations (as show
the two above-discussed policies in Turin). This was confirmed by the
analysis of all the LCGs considered. In Palermo, for example, policies centred
on a government approach coexisted with governance-based ones,
characterized by wide openness to local society, as in the case of commercial
policies (reorganization of local markets and initiatives to curb price rises).
The same was the case in Venice, where social and environmental
policies envisaged the greatest possible openness to participation by
citizens and associations, while other policies (in the cultural sector, for
instance, the purchase of Palazzo Grassi) were managed by a small group
of institutional actors. Moreover, diverse strategies were pursued not only
by different council departments but also within the same department as
they produced one collective good rather than another.
Thus, among housing policies in Florence, the project for regeneration
of Le Piagge neighbourhood (described above) was certainly open to all
the actors involved in the decision. By contrast, in the case of the recovery
of the former Murate prison (located in the city centre), the same
councillor used a completely opposite strategy: he managed the process
independently with his technical and administrative staff, deliberately
excluding any external interference so as to ensure that part of the complex
was allocated to public housing and to resist the strong speculative
pressures by private actors.
5. Conclusions
We conclude by synthesising some of the most interesting findings of our
research. As we have emphasized, the case studies revealed marked
differences between the strategies and modes of urban government which
evidently impacted on the effectiveness and innovativeness of the LCGs. To
explain the reasons for this variability in performances, we distinguished
two types of factors: “contextual factors,” referable to the different socio-
economic and political environments in which the various councillors

operated, and “process factors,” referable to the diverse decision-making
approaches adopted in the production of the LCGs. As we have seen,
contextual factors exerted a certain influence: the urban dimension (city
effect) and the political dimension (council effect and sector effect)
conditioned the results achieved by the various LCGs. However, they did so
to a limited extent, thus demonstrating that the weight of the local
institutional context is not a sort of “iron cage” decisively conditioning the
action of local actors.
On the contrary, the research evidenced the prominent role played by
the councillors and the influence of the various forms of decision-making
adopted (governance effect). Where, as in Turin and Florence, the
institutional action was characterized by an explicit endeavour to involve
all the relevant public and private actors in the decision-making process
and a good level of coordination and trust was reached among the
participants, successful policies were implemented. By contrast, where, as
in Naples and Palermo, there prevailed a top-down attitude little open to
dialogue and the institutional actors were unable to establish some sort of
coordination and positive discussion among the participants, the results
were disappointing.
Therefore, while on balance the policy style based on an inclusive
governance approach produced the best results, a style centred on the
traditional government approach was not enabling to produce public goods
with effectiveness and efficiency, as in the case of Bari. Also in Turin, the
agreement on the Mirafiori industrial area (which of all the collective
goods produced had the lowest degree of openness in the decision-making
process) was a policy with notable effectiveness and efficiency.
In other words, while inclusive practices intended to promote the
involvement and collaboration of various sections of local society
exponentially increase the likelihood of good performance, in some cases
the particular configuration of the decision-making arena and the type of
policy concerned may render a more resolute and non-inclusive style by
the councillor equally efficacious. It is consequently important that
explanations of local governments’ performance refer to what the literature
terms “actor-based institutionalism” (Scharpf 1997; Crouch 2005). In
order to explain the process and product of local policies, one must bear in
mind not only context factors but also, and indeed especially, situational
specificities and the actions of individual and collective subjects, which in
many cases function as outright institutional entrepreneurs.
To summarize: contrary to the findings of many urban studies, which
often identify the existence of a regulatory model unique to each city, our
184 Chapter Eleven
research highlights the variable geometry of urban governance. This

means that in the decision-making processes there is not always “one best
way” to bring about the solution and that it is always necessary to take into
account the possible idiosyncratic features of the actors involved.
References
Bagnasco, A. and Le Galès, P. eds. 2001. Le città nell’Europa
contemporanea. Napoli: Liguori.
Berta, G. 2006. La FIAT dopo la FIAT. Storia di una crisi. 2004–2005.
Milano: Mondadori.
Burroni, L. 2005. “La governance territoriale dell’economia in Italia,
Francia e Regno Unito,” Stato e Mercato 1, 131–66.
Burroni, L., Piselli, F., Ramella, F. and Trigilia, C. eds. 2009. Città
metropolitane e politiche urbane. Firenze: Firenze University Press.
Crouch, C. 2005. Capitalist Diversity and Change. Recombinant
Governance and Institutional Entrepreneurs, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Crouch, C., Le Galès, P., Trigilia, C. and Voelzkow, H. eds. 2001. Local
Production Systems in Europe. Rise or Demise? Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
D’Albergo, E. and Lefèvre, C. eds. 2007. Le strategie internazionali delle
città. Bologna: Il Mulino.
Le Galès, P. 2002. European Cities. Social Conflict and Governance,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lowi, T.J. 1972. “Four systems of policy, politics and choice,” Public
Administration Review 32, 298–310.
Perulli, P. 2000. La città delle reti. Forme di governo nel postfordismo.
Torino: Bollati Boringhieri.
—. 2007. La città. La società europea nello spazio globale. Milano:
Mondadori.
Pichierri, A. and Pacetti, V. 2007. “FIAT, gli ostacoli sul cammino della
ripresa,” Il Mulino 5, 814–23.
Piselli, F., Burroni, L. and Ramella, F. 2012. Governare città. Beni
collettivi e politiche metropolitane. Roma: Donzelli.
Scharpf, F. 1997. Games Real Actor Play. Actor-centered Institutionalism
in Policy Research. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Trigilia, C. 2005. Sviluppo locale. Un progetto per l’Italia. Roma and
Bari: Laterza.
CHAPTER TWELVE
GENTLEMEN, PROFESSIONALS
AND PROFITEERS: THE CASE OF NAPLES
GUIDO BORELLI*
1. Introduction
Real estate development is one of the few areas that a person can enter
with little expertise and become wealthy in a short time. With the right
financial backing, a little business savvy and careful attention to detail,
you too can earn whatever you want to earn.
Tanya Davis, Real Estate Developers’ Handbook 2007
The Expo 2015 is regarded as a saving grace for Milan and its suburbs.
The loud and vulgar propaganda claiming it promotes a healthy and
environmentally sustainable food production hides the most venal interests
of a few large property speculators (...). The Expo 2015 is a machine that
eats nutritious foods and generates concrete and asphalt for the “usual
suspects,” without excluding infiltrations by the Mafia.
Communist Party of Lombardy, Expo 2015
The world of real estate is ambiguous, especially to the eyes of a

sociologist. From the moment we take on the task of understanding its role
in contemporary society, we realize that there is a lack of available
knowledge on the subject and that the little information that can be found
is decisively polarized in two extreme views. On one hand there are all the
studies, research and treatise that explain how the sector works and how is
articulated, and what are the necessary skills to enter it. On the other, there
is a fairly extensive body of “investigative journalism,” which takes
*
Translation from Italian by Mariana Mazzei Barutti. I thank Paola Lunghini for
the many discussions that inspired this essay. Yet the opinions expressed herein are
solely attributable to the author.
186 Chapter Twelve
interest in the field only at the onset of one of the scandals that
periodically affect it. Between these extremes there is almost nothing
useful to explain its role and importance in contemporary society and in
the transformation of urban space, in a way not clearly instrumental.
This fact is all the more paradoxical when one considers that most in
the so-called humanities (political science, geography, anthropology,
sociology, demography, etc.) agree that space transformation has always
been one of the practices with greater intensity of interactions between the
players of civil society. Such interactions concern a very wide spectrum of
daily life, as they include issues of citizenship and of non-negotiable
rights, blend issues of economic rationality and emotional arguments and
entail significant echoes in politics and in the economy of nations.
The reasons for such oversight are numerous and can be stated in two
ways: firstly, a deep-rooted conviction that the real estate sector represents
an underdeveloped branch of industrial capitalism (an impression deriving
from a poor understanding of the differences between the construction
industry and real estate industry); secondly, the relentless persistence of
the ideological dichotomy that divides use-value from exchange-value in a
Manichean fashion, consequently creating speculation and an implicit or
explicit negative bias towards the entire real estate sector.
Real estate players are personified as cold-blooded professionals or
greedy profiteers in society. Almost in direct reaction to this, the real
estate community does not miss an opportunity to present itself to the
public (often in not such a believable manner) as benevolent gentlemen
who seek the public interest.
2. “Pluralitas Non Est Ponenda Sine Necessitate”

Urban sociology shares a pronounced and prolonged lack of interest in the
process of urbanization with many other disciplines within the humanities
devoted to regional studies.
The only notable exception is the radical and lonely voice of David
Harvey (1989, 3–4), who draws our attention to the following:
All too frequently, however, the study of urbanization becomes separated

from that of social change and economic development, as if it can
somehow be regarded either as a side-show or as a passive side-product to
more important and fundamental social changes. The successive
revolutions in technology, space relations, social relations, consumer
habits, lifestyles, and the like that have so characterized capitalist history,
can, it is sometimes suggested, be understood without any deep enquiry
into the roots and nature of urban processes. True, this judgment is by and
Gentlemen, Professionals and Profiteers: The Case of Naples 187
large made tacitly, by virtue of sins of omission rather than commission.

But the anti-urban bias in studies of macro-economic and macro-social
change is rather too persistent for comfort.
Harvey (2012, 54) further develops his thoughts and concerns into a
belief that regards the forces that drive the process of urbanization as
primarily responsible for the ferocious crisis that grip the world
economies:
Conventional economics usually treat the investment in the built

environment and in urbanization in general as if they were insignificant
appendages of the most important business taking place in an abstract
entity called “national economy.” The sub-genre of urban economy is, then,
the arena where economists of second grade collide, while the big bosses
test their macroeconomic skills elsewhere. The latter, even when dealing
with urban processes, do so with the air of being convinced that the
reorganization of territorial, regional development and the construction of
the city are only negligible material effects of larger scale processes, not
affected by what they produce. Thus, if in the World Bank report of 2009
on the development, for the first time, the political geography is seriously
considered, their authors do not make the slightest hint that in urban and
regional development something could go catastrophically bad and start an
economic crisis. The purpose of the report, written by economists without
consulting geographers, historians, or urban sociologists, seemed to
explore the influence of geography on economic communities and elevate
space and place from mere organizational circumstances to focal points.
Regardless of whether or not one shares Harvey’s views,1 it remains

quite hard to imagine, especially if we narrow the field to the national
level, that it is possible to create a diverse group of researchers composed
of urban sociologists, geographers and historians (among a much longer
list of disciplinary specializations) capable of substantiating Harvey’s
theses or even only interested in taking them into account.
The reasons for such lack of interest can be explained in two ways. At
first, we may be more or less at ease in partaking on the thoughts of a
genuine Marxist such as Harvey and agree (or disagree) that in recent
years something in the urban and regional development may have gone so
catastrophically wrong to trigger a global recession. With respect to this
point, what immediately produces difficulties for the intellectuals
belonging to the disciplines concerning land is the inevitable confrontation
with the Marxist thesis and its established “all-time low popularity.”
1
For a review of Harvey’s ideas in the Italian literature, see Mela (2008 and 2011).
188 Chapter Twelve
It is well-known that Marxist theory has been accused and promptly

shunted, especially for the way in which it has turned out to exchange
ideology per substance and abstraction per empiricism, appealing to the
famous “determination in the last instance” that eventually shields the
theory itself from any burden of a rebuttal and improperly turns all
methodological issues into ideological ones. Nevertheless, while recognizing
such limitations, it is difficult not to consider these reasons insufficient in
their total banishing of Harvey’s hypothesis.
Why not consider finding, therefore, a consistent and convincing
motivation to refute or clarify these assumptions in order to engage in the
argument in a somewhat original way, rather than deflecting it with a
persistent preference for negating Marx’s views?2
This question brings us back to our starting point. It is in fact difficult
not to be led by Harvey to admit (sinning by omission if necessary) that
the process of urbanization really represents a “side effect and a secondary
product of fundamental importance to social change” (ibid). In this
respect, it is not very difficult to agree that it is enough to take note of the
development of concepts, trends and methodological tools that economic
sociology has developed (and embraced to a certain extent) in the last
twenty years in the creation of a field of study (and nearly a paradigm)
usually called “local development.”
This fertile field of study has made us used to represent and describe
the processes of urban and territorial transformation through effective
images and metaphors of socio-spatial organization aimed at production:
the industrial districts (Bagnasco 1988; Bagnasco and Trigilia 1984;
Trigilia 2006), the business clusters (Becattini 1979), the territorial
amalgam (Scott 2001), the urban networks (Perulli 2000) and the territorial
platforms (Bonomi 2004).
Having arrived at the height of its intellectual exercise, the studies of
local development demonstrate quite clearly how, at the source of a great
intensity of interpretation of the processes of local economic development,
2
Jacques Derrida (1993) alludes to the ghosts that haunted Marx in life as well as
to Marx himself as a spectrum of contemporary capitalist society. In his opinion,
Marx was a ghostbuster throughout his life as he was obsessed by capitalism’s
ghosts. The theme emerges well in a Marxist argument, which describes the reality
in which we live as spectral, in the sense that capitalist production is a world
populated by robots, where the dead (the goods) dominate the living (the humans).
However, he notes, if you let us take the heat to finally bury the ghost, it inevitably
ends up for being dominated by it. Stated differently, the more we believe we can
do away with the ghosts, the more we find to be their victims. According to Derrida,
Marx is a ghost that haunts us, particularly after the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
there is not an adequate understanding of the processes through which (and

above all the consequences of) post-industrial society’s new models of
spatial organization produce a distinctive urbanization and a coherent
system of spatial relations. Such a gap has led scholars to return to a
unidirectional model of spatial development in which urbanization is
modelled according to specific criteria of a production-oriented social
organization. This occurred without any concern for the fact that spatial
transformations, in turn, have proven themselves capable of influencing
the conditions and circumstances of economical development strategies to
the point of becoming not just a consequence of development, but its actual
goal. This is not a particularly original shift in perspective, since the history
of industrialization has always followed that of the urban market, but it
introduces a two-way reciprocal relationship of significant importance.
On the other hand, the growing interest in the subject, shown by studies
of local development in relation to local companies and by the processes of
dissemination of innovation and creation of collective goods for local
competitiveness (Crouch et al. 2001), has revived the image of the
entrepreneur as an enabler of economic development (Bagnasco 2006, 403).
Nevertheless, among a large body of study cases conducted according
to the local development methodology, we find it hard to find facts helping
us to understand the relationship between innovation, entrepreneurship,
and spatial transformations in a non-trivial manner.3 On one side, the
studies of good practices of local development, in a somewhat explicit
manner, attribute nearly Schumpeterian traits to entrepreneurs or to
innovative small businesses, often compelled by Faustian competitive
desires. On the other side, those studies reserved the same characteristics
exclusively to entrepreneurs and productive activities (goods and services)
capable of implementing development processes with locally redistributable
effects (employment, income, welfare, and environmental quality). It is a
vicious cycle where the actors of spatial transformation, their rationality,
their investment logistics, and the effects of their actions remain over-
shadowed. Could this be due to the fact that the entrepreneurs who invest
in built environments (or the real estate industry) are considered the
pariahs of the economic system (also by scholars of local development), as
Harvey suggests?
3
As an example of what is claimed here: it would be pointless to seek, among the
many studies dedicated to the formidable development of territorial logistics in the
last decades, one who studies the rationality, the interests, and the responsibilities
attributable to the entrepreneurs, the landlords, the real estate agents, and public
administrators in the uncontrolled proliferation of territorial logistics hubs, many of
which remain under-utilized, once implemented.
190 Chapter Twelve
3. What is left out of this explanatory picture?

If such issues are lacking in the sociological literature, a possible way of
bridging this gap may be found in the observation of some aspects through
which the real estate sector represents itself. We then realize that it has
long defined itself as the “industry” of real estate and refers to its own
members as the “community” of real estate.
For a sociologist “industry” and “community” are meaningful terms to
be handled with caution. Although we do not have enough space here to
further explore them, it is interesting to note that the term “industry”
reminds us of both a particular branch of economic activity and a
production method with its own specific traits (Cafagna 1994). For our
purposes it is interesting to note that this term can be useful in clarifying a
widespread and persistent misunderstanding, resulting from a scarce
comprehension of the differences between construction and real estate,
which leads many scholars to consider real estate as an underdeveloped
branch of industrial capitalism.
In turn, the term “community” invites us to try to understand the basis
for the belonging in this classification. Is it a group of certain skilled
professionals and/or the affiliation to a part of real estate’s industrial
chain? Is it a mechanism of co-optation of the affluent elite to which it
belongs? Is it a group of players (individuals or collective, public or
private) that are in some way directly affected, or pushed, according to the
management lexicon, by events in real estate? It should be noted that, in
classical sociology, the term “community” is employed to define a
particular type of social relationship at the base of a collectivity that
involves individuals as a whole (Bagnasco 1992).
Put in this way, it becomes necessary to understand the mechanisms
through which members of the real estate community exchange loyalty
obligations with respect to society. It is also necessary to know how they
diversify their status and role within the community, how they exchange
knowledge and resources, and which clearing systems and transaction
models are used. It will also be necessary to understand whether the use of
the term “community” refers instead, more appropriately, to an association
in which its inclusion is substantially based on identity of interests or
rationally motivated shared interests (permanent or temporary).
Such affirmations must be employed with caution, particularly by
sociologists who wish to work with urbanization. This is due to the fact
that the path of research appears inevitably marked by the feeling that
many important aspects necessary for understanding are not located within
the discipline. As the field of empirical knowledge is particularly lacking,
in this second part of the paper I will use a famous film dedicated to the
process of urbanization in Naples in the 1960s: Le mani sulla città [Hands
over the City], by Francesco Rosi. This film, which won the Golden Lion
at the Venice International Film Festival in 1963, uses a case of
construction speculation in that city to describe the processes of
occupation of power, and represents them as the very essence of politics.
This film, though dating back more than fifty years, when reconsidered
with proper care provides many opportunities to develop some of the
considerations mentioned above. It will be particularly interesting to re-
read the critics’ reactions to Rosi’s film. We shall delve briefly into this
last point at the conclusion of this chapter.
4. Fifty years ago

Nottola: “I know that the city is located there, and is growing in that
direction because the plan determined so. But it is precisely for this reason
that we must make it from over there to over here.”
Nottola’s cronies: “And do you think that it would be easy to change the
plan?”
Nottola: “There is no need to. The city grows there? This is an agricultural
land. How much does it cost today? 300, 500, 1,000 liras per square
metre… Tomorrow this land may be worth 60,000, 70,000 liras or more. It
all depends on us; the 5,000% profit... That [pointing towards the city] is
today’s gold. And what gives it to you? Trade? Industry? The industrial
future of the South? To invest your money in a factory! Unions, claims,
strikes, health insurance... such things can cause you a heart attack. Do
not worry. All gain and no risk. We just have to make sure that the city
brings here roads, sewers, water, gas, electricity, and telephone.”
Francesco Rosi, Le mani sulla città, 1963
The opening scene of Francesco Rosi’s famous film, Le mani sulla città
[Hand over the City] (1963) is worth a complete set of literature on urban
development. Edoardo Nottola (Fig. 12-1), a city builder and the owner of
the contracting company Bellavista (masterfully played by Rod Steiger),
eloquently explains to a group of his cronies how an urbanization
development project should be carried out. At the edge of an anonymous
suburb of Naples (a “squalid expanse,” as described by the mayor shortly
thereafter during the act of presenting the new building plan, funded by the
Ministry), Nottola performs a key action and simultaneously gives precise
development guidelines while choosing the players needed to implement
this vision.
192 Chapter Twelve
Fig. 12-1 Edoardo Nottola (from F. Rosi, Le mani sulla città, 1963)
To explain his intentions more clearly, Nottola grabs the cane of one of
his companions and draws an outline on the ground (Fig. 12-2): “What can
you pay it today? 300, 500, 1,000 liras per square metre? Tomorrow it may
be worth 60,000 or 70,000 liras, or more.”
With this action, Nottola performs an act typical of urban planning: to
change the intended use of the land and significantly increase its market
value with a simple gesture. In this regard, one could argue that this is not
a particularly original operation. The transformation of land from an
agricultural use to a residential one has always resulted in gains that some
urban players have appropriated by resorting to methods not necessarily
legal. Urban history is full of such incidents. Nevertheless, this observation
inevitably leads us to consider these practices and the players at the core of
the so-called “speculation”4 (land and building), thus assuming that these
operations should be assessed within a moral framework, and subsequently, a
judicial one. Despite the truth of such facts, the moral tension that
4
The term “speculation” lends itself to different interpretations. According to the
Italian Encyclopedia Treccani, it evolved from late-Latin speculatio to mean
“philosophical inquiry” and “theoretical activity.” In commercial meanings, its
interpretation ranges from “a commercial or financial transaction consisting of
purchasing to resell or selling to buy back, in order to earn a profit from the price
difference at different times of the market” to “activities designed to achieve a
personal financial gain or for purposes of political advantage, conducted without
scruples or respect for the interests of others.”
permeates our judgment leads us to hastily leave out a host of important

issues which seem crucial here for a more accurate understanding of the
social scheme.
Fig. 12-2 Edoardo Nottola draws an outline on the ground

(from F. Rosi, Le mani sulla città, 1963)
In the urban planning terminology, Nottola is performing a zoning act:

an operation which consists of dividing land into homogeneous parts,
assigning a specific intended use to each of them. This is a relatively
simple practice that is also justifiable by technical motivations.5 We
realize, however, that just past this threshold of acceptability, the
operations of land subdivision bring with them significant complexities.
In tracing the square, Nottola acts out a complex and ritualistic
performance. Complex because it can be separated into a number of
aspects: (a) It divides the space between “outside” and “inside;” (b) It
nominates the space, because, without a name (residential area, expansion
zone, or under completion in lieu of agricultural land) the land has neither
title, origin, or value; (c) It takes over the space after having fragmented it
into parts freely salable in the land market; (d) It represents the space
5
As an example, it seems comprehensible and of good sense to locate a residential
zone away from an industrial one and to plan public services according to
requirements of good vehicular access.
194 Chapter Twelve
through the creation of a new social order. Taken together, these steps
assign order and a hierarchy to the space and to the organization of the
city. Deriving from the school of human ecology, the zones are an
expression of the functional hierarchy of classes and of the social groups
in the environment.
But the city is not simply a representation of a mosaic of natural areas,
as postulated by scholars of the Chicago School. It is a spatial system
conceived as a malleable commodity, transformable by human action.
When regarded as a commodity, a problem of building a reference system
capable of encompassing the space’s representation in social practices in a
uniform, objective and abstract manner arises. David Harvey (1993, 310
and passim) noted that, despite the practices of mathematicians and
builders, despite the different conceptions of space (sacred and profane,
symbolic, personal or animist), and despite the plethora of utopian
programmes, the representation that has prevailed is that of private
ownership of the land, and its trade as a commodity.
We owe to Henri Lefebvre (1978) the realization of the conjunction
between social change and the politics of space. He aptly grasped the ways
in which an environment achieves characteristics of homogeneity and
abstraction: through its complete pulverization and fragmentation into parts
of sellable private property that may be traded freely in the urban market.
A dilemma therefore inevitably ensues, as the space may only be
conquered through some form of production, resulting in conflicts and
opposition movements being triggered. Lefebvre wrote:
This gives arguments to support an argument: the city and the urban reality
depend on the use value. The exchange value and the generalization of the
goods produced by the industrialization tend to destroy, by subordinating
the city and the urban reality, receptacles of the use value, the seeds of a
virtual dominance and re-evaluation of the use. In the urban system (...) is
engaged the action of these specific conflicts: between use value and
exchange value, including the mobilization of wealth (money, titles) and
unproductive investment in the city, including the accumulation of capital
and waste in the festivities, between extension of the dominated territory
and the need for strict organization of the territory around the city
hegemony.
The square tracing by Nottola has a ritualistic style that goes back to
foundation rites. Utilizing Lefebvre’s concepts, the production of space is
one of representation or, rather, the recognition of permanent principles
that produce mythologies of space and environment.
Tracing marks on the ground is an ancient practice that is packed with
meaning and implications. In describing the rituals of the founding of Rome,
Plutarch (Vita Romuli, 10, 1–2) describes a quarrel that broke out between
Romulus and Remus. Claiming to have been deceived by his brother when
they requested auspicia ex avibus to settle the dispute over who had to rule,
Remus ridiculed his brother’s intent in digging a ditch from which the new
city would be built. In order to demonstrate the futility of the act of marking
boundaries, he began to hop between the inside and the outside of the ditch’s
outline. Such gesture proved to be fatal as he was later killed by the hands of
his own brother, who in turn uttered the prophetic words: “So perish every
one that shall hereafter leap over my wall.” The act of crossing boundaries
challenges power, as power is established by boundary demarcation. The
outline is used to distinguish the distinct from indistinct, the city from the
countryside, public from private, and a friend from a foe. The groove is at once
the instrument and an opportunity to name that which remains yet unnamed.
According to a Latin historian, Marcus Terentius Varro, the term urbs
comes from urvus, or groove. If we regard this etymology as reliable, then
the digging of a ditch is the action required to define a space over which to
exert power. In the case of Rome, this space is the city that takes the name
of its founder, who traced its outline, staining himself with fratricide.6 Our
first possible postulation, therefore, may be the recognition of the system
of social relationship implicit in the production of space.
These are practices that coincide with the imposition of a hierarchy or a
system of relationships in an environment. Stated differently, the
production of space represents the establishment of an empire. It asserts
the possibility to exert power and kill, if necessary.
5. “All gain and no risk”:

The revenue/development dichotomy
After the ritual of appropriation of space is completed, Nottola has very
specific ideas about its further use. The Neapolitan builder explains very
clearly the difference between use-value and exchange-value. As previously
mentioned, a space can be interpreted in various ways; nevertheless, the
prevailing interpretation bears a dichotomy in which the space can be
considered a product of social and economic processes that, through its
own development, determine its production. This is the case of a space
transformed to accommodate industrial activities or public services. These
are spatial transformations driven by the process of development or of the
support of citizenship rights.
6
I am indebted to Luigi Mazza for the many suggestions and the inspiration
received on foundation rites.
196 Chapter Twelve
On the other hand, the space is considered a commodity, negotiable on

specific markets, and its appraisal is subject to special considerations
regarding location, accessibility, and potential for transformation. This is
the case of a space transformed to accommodate real estate transactions
(i.e., residential or subsidized housing). Unlike the previous case, in
general such transformations are not driven by an intent to develop or
support the rights of citizenship, but follow the logic of profit generated
without the production of additional value (such as jobs generated by an
industrial installation or the improvement of the quality of life for
residents), leading, as mentioned previously, to social exclusion.
Both options, as presented by Nottola, once again bring questions of
judgment to the fore. The term “speculation” reemerges, this time in an
antagonistic way with respect to the idea of “development.” Even in this
case, the resulting moral positions indicate a certain superficiality that
tends to polarize the positions in the field. By summing up these positions,
on the one hand, we find the development entrepreneur, a bearer of the
ethics of production and redistribution, on the other hand, the rentier (or
profiteer), intent in manipulating the conditions of the real estate market
for his own gains. This rigid schematic leads to the construction of a
binary logic based on dichotomies, such as development vs. income,
investment vs. speculation, free-trade vs. monopoly. This is a logic that
drives much of the political rhetoric about the processes of urban
development that appears regularly in news headlines and on television
talk shows. Such arguments, however, do not take us very far in
understanding the ways in which cities are developed and transformed.
It is precisely due to this need for a better understanding of such
mechanisms that the importance of Lefebvre’s (1972) contribution to the
analysis of built environment becomes apparent, particularly his
conception of real estate as a secondary circuit of capital. For Lefebvre,
the space is not limited to the built environment, which is a productive
means and an object of consumption. It is, fore and foremost, a subject of
political conflict, because it is a living space. It is “a space formed by
individuals and it has its own origin in their experiences” (Lefebvre 1974)
and a place where the conflict between the inevitable maturation of these
experiences “mark the lived space, and concludes by the affirmation of the
private against the public sphere in a relatively emphatic yet always
conflicting way.” For him, the socio-political contradictions are created
spatially and, consequently, such contradictions express conflicts of
interests and of socio-political power. Since the utility rights generally
determine the exchange value in real estate, Lefebvre fully understood and
elaborated on the awareness that these rights are not a product of the free
market, but are largely assigned by the government through the planning
of land use and mobility. The resulting conflicts “take place in space and
become contradictions of space,” and are, therefore, attributable to a
dispute concerning the inequalities and the uneven allocation of citizenship
rights.
From this belief, Lefebvre concludes:
The property estate (together with building development) ceases to be a

secondary circuit of the capital—for a long time an added and backlog
branch of industrial capitalism—and comes to the fore (...). It begins (...)
from the ground, to be torn from the traditional properties, and from
stability and transmission assets, with great difficulty and concessions to
the owners (in the form of rents); then extends to the whole space, to the
subsoil and to the volumes at the top of it. The whole space is to receive an
exchange value.
The idea of the existence of a secondary circuit of capital is based on a

combination of factors that include financial elements on one side (banks,
insurance companies and government investment programmes), and
investors, developers, property owners and all individuals who profit from
the land market, on the other. For Lefebvre, this trend would have had an
important effect: an increase in investments in the secondary circuit of
capital would generate a substantial shift from industrial development to
real estate investment, from city centres to the low-cost peripheral land
(Gottdiener 2000, 95).
Furthermore, the secondary circuit of capital (distinct from the one
theorized by Marx) implies that the real estate industry is a separate circuit
of capital. This idea can be clarified by an example. When talking about
economic activities and describing the way in which they involve the
spending of money by investors, the hiring of workers, the industrial
production of goods or services, and the sale of such goods or services in a
market for profit, which in turn can be used for further investments, we are
referring to the “primary circuit of capital.” Automotive manufacturing is a
good example of how this circuit works. Much of the profit created in
capitalist societies is still in this category.
For Lefebvre, alongside this primary circuit, there is a secondary
circuit of capital of fundamental importance for the urban sociological
analysis, which is conducted by real estate investments. This is the case of
an investor who buys a plot of land. It can be purchased or can be
converted to other uses. It can be sold in a market that specializes in land,
the real estate market, or further developed for profit. The cycle is
complete when the investor makes a profit and reinvests in other local
198 Chapter Twelve
projects. By supporting the idea that investments in real estate push the
growth policies of cities in very specific ways, Lefebvre suggests
(implicitly) that the real estate is not only a special case of the transformation
of space, a product of the primary circuit, but a reproduction process in which
social activities concern the interactions not only between individuals but
also between environments (Gottdiener and Hutchinson 2006, 70–1).
Lefebvre understood that the activities of real estate are a type of
investment that competes with other capital-allocation decisions by
investors. He theorized two aspects brilliantly: that the housing market is
an integral part of the broader capital markets and, secondly, that the real
estate sector, as opposed to industrial and commercial activities, does not
require production factors in a single structure.
Following Lefebvre’s reflections, we come to the core of a very
important but generally neglected aspect. Investments in real estate have
now ceased to be an additional underdeveloped branch of industrial
capitalism. They come to the fore and guide cities’ growth policies in very
specific ways. For this reason, it is wrong to assume that this sector is
exclusively a special case of space transformation, as if it were only a by-
product of the socio-economic logic governing the primary circuit of
capital, since real estate has now assumed the consistency of an
autonomous and separate reproduction process.
It does not make much sense, therefore, to settle the question of real
estate development by declaring it irrelevant to the prospects of urban
growth because of the chronic underdevelopment of the construction
sector when compared to the rampant technological innovations indulged
by the cities, or by stigmatizing it in an old-fashioned image of speculative
construction, as if the mechanisms of reproduction stood still as in the era
of the Sanremo stories recounted by Italo Calvino (1957).
6. “Us” Who?
In his monologue, Nottola refers to a joint action. In fact, the urban
transformation seems to require a collective actor sufficiently cohesive, a
“we” made in charge of arranging what is necessary to redirecting the
construction. “From there, we must move (the city) here,” he said. It is by
the manipulation of the decision-making system, primarily by targeting the
provision of public infrastructure, which Nottola was able to exploit, to
enable the members of the collective “us” to take advantage from
investments made with public money: “We just have to ensure that the city
brings the roads, the sewer system, the water, gas, electricity and telephone
here.” If the coalition of “us” proves to be capable of manipulating the
necessary conditions, the game would be simple, despite its total

ruthlessness, and free of complications: “No worries. All gain and no risk.”
But who form the collective “us”? Following this predominant binary
logic—characterized by dichotomies such as development vs. income,
investment vs. speculation, and free-trade vs. monopoly—one might argue
that, from a development perspective, the “us” should be the community
or, at least, a large group of recipients of the surplus generated by the
company. From revenue logic, however, the “us” would inevitably be a
small number of beneficiaries at the expense of a vast number of recipients
who, at best, would receive no benefit and, at worst, would see their rights
of citizenship worsen.7 The latter logic, if we limit ourselves to a
superficial analysis of Rosi’s film, seems to be the narrative thread of the
Neapolitan story described in Le mani sulla città (Fig. 12-3).
Must we then welcome the notion that the beneficiaries of the division
described by Nottola corresponds to the real estate community?
The first (and, to some extent, the only) author who has tried to give us
a detailed and unbiased answer to this quandary was Harvey Molotch
(1976). He started from the belief that urban development is not simply a
facet of local policy but, rather, the pivotal point around which local
governments are built. All the other issues, despite the passions they
inspire, are of secondary importance. The argument is that an elite
coalition—in later works a rentier class (Logan and Molotch 1987)—has a
precise and relevant vision of the future development of the city and the
power to implement it.
Molotch named that elite a growth machine and identified it as
something more complex than the alliance between the mayor, the
planning office, and the business community. The rentier class, who make
up the ruling coalition, is made up of those who, participating out of their
own will and, more specifically, with their own economic resources, have
the most at stake on the final decisions concerning land use. Particularly
prominent in this group are the owners and managers of large real estate
assets, institutional investors, lenders, and developers.
Alongside of the rentier class, Logan and Molotch place field
professionals (legal and financial advisors, real estate brokers and
designers) and other players who, despite not being personally involved in
the events of development, see their careers bound to the enterprise of
7
Rosi leads almost to the paradox of that point in the scene where the dull
opposition councillor, the communist De Vita, reproaches the proletarian
underclass population of the alley affected by the decree of eviction to make room
for the building of Nottola: “Do you understand that you are the ones who give
them the strength to do what they want?”
200 Chapter Twelve
urban growth strategies. The work of a growth machine, however, would

not be fully effective without the decisive role of government. Through the
creation of efficient transport and communication systems, the production of
public goods such as education, health, housing, culture, the proliferation of
public subsidies and transfers of tax and regulation of labour costs, it puts in
place a series of measures to help spread what Logan and Molotch (1987,
57–62) define a “modern good-day business climate.”
Although the type of good business pursued by public players can
differ greatly from place to place (i.e., investments in new technologies,
research and development, tourism, culture, etc.), for Logan and Molotch
“each of these rainbows will inevitably end up in the same pot of gold:
higher estate values, higher rents and significant increases in the wages of
better qualified professionals” (id., 58).
Fig. 12-3 The mayor of Naples presents the new urban development plan to the
authorities (from F. Rosi, Le mani sulla città, 1963)
The growth machine theory continues along the lines suggested by

Nottola but articulates the concept of the real estate community very
broadly (perhaps too broadly), transcending the ideas of “community” and
“elite” as defined by sociology and political science. The growth machine
is composed of a loosely organized chain of urban players who, while
pursuing different goals, converge intensely and with various interactions
on urban development.
With such characteristics, by including any player interested in the
processes of urban renewal, from large institutional investors to small
apartment owners, the growth machine hypothesis can be classified as one

of the community policies attending the urban politics. The processes of
urbanization would, therefore, prove to be much more pluralistic (in terms
of the players involved) and fragmented (in terms of interactions between
the players) than Logan and Molotch initially thought.
It must be added that globalization processes create a correlated effect
that favours the development of new international organizations capable of
planning, funding, and implementing major real estate development projects,
even in Italy. These are (relatively) new types of real estate companies,
capable of operating simultaneously in several nations. The emergence of
these global players shifts the decision-making focus from the local level to
the upper levels of government and calls into question the size of local,
regional, and national real estate communities, further complicating their
identification.
An ulterior consequence of the enlargement of the real estate market is
represented by the differences in national political systems: this leads to
considerable changes in the ties between the real estate industry and national
and local politicians, and between the modes of governance and the
formation of decision-making coalitions.
Described in this manner, the concept of the real estate community
turns out to be elusive. If the image of Nottola appears simultaneously
clear, yet crude and unreal, its subsequent evolution, which we only briefly
and partially illustrated, introduces us into a variety of social, political,
economic and geographic relationships that give the appearance of an
improbable community, at least in the scientific interpretation of the term.
Nevertheless, the insistence with which the world of real estate
presents itself as a community makes this idea too persistent to be
dismissed in this way. Is it, perhaps, simply a communicative community?
Finally, it is not difficult to realize that the press tends to represent the
developers—whatever their nature and their economic motivations may
be—as benevolent actors that play an important social role in the urban
economic growth.
In this literature, the meaning through which the operations of urban
transformation are communicated often resembles one of a production
value that benefits not only the entire post-industrial services chain but the
city as a whole. In this manner, real estate activities are presented, at least
symbolically, as public service.
Not surprisingly, in rhetoric and in the post-industrial representations
of public administrations, it is increasingly common to find the developers
among the urban benefactors, with a role as promoters not only of their
202 Chapter Twelve
own but also of public interests.8
7. “Money is like a horse: it must eat every day”–

the secondary circuit of capital at work
In a lively encounter with Maglione, the municipal right’s majority leader,
Nottola must respond to the possibility of a temporary halt to the
construction site at Vico Sant’Andrea, in order to mitigate an imminent
political scandal. But Nottola insists on the eviction process: “I must
continue with the construction work, for when the work stops, so do the
banks (...). Money isn’t a car that you keep parked in a garage; it’s a horse
that you must feed every day!”
Even if in a rudimentary manner, Nottola’s reasoning complies with
Lefebvre’s hypothesis of a secondary circuit of capital. Although stating it
differently, the Neapolitan manufacturer acknowledges the following
points: (i) the process of urbanization is part of a land and real estate
market that is always in flux; (ii) the market is not in the hands of an
individual builder, but is regulated by a complex set of supporting
institutions that guarantees the protection of property rights as well as
contract enforcement and compliance with property financing; (iii) the
resulting buildings are not a common commodity because they are supported
by financial capital put into circulation by specific tools and obligations
(which have become much more sophisticated since Nottola’s days). In
essence, Nottola refers to a financial dimension of currency that is based on
future expectations and efforts in order to make it yield the most.
Through a far more sophisticated reasoning process, more or less in the
same years, Lefebvre began to observe that, while the industrial capitalism
of the nineteenth century had created a specific urban form based on the
division of labour, with the advent of the twentieth century the industrial
capitalist society had been transcended by an urban society. According to
Lefebvre (1974), in the twentieth century urban life reached its maturity
(or at least started its maturing process). It was no longer industrialization
producing a subservient urbanization, but the exact opposite: an era of
8
So the mayor of Turin, Piero Fassino, concluded his brief speech (greeted with a
great applause) at the conference “Le professioni immobiliari tra storia, presente e
futuro” (Real Estate careers from present to future), held in Turin on 14 October
2011, on the sesquicentennial of the Unity of Italy: “Twenty years ago the city was
forced to face a fleet of more than ten million square metres of abandoned sites
(...). In this context the urban transformation has proved to be a dynamic element
of growth (...). Since the limited resources do not let us to carry out everything we
would like, we sell Turin to you.”
transition was initiated in which the capitalism of which Marx wrote in

Capital began to resemble an historical artifact. As mentioned previously,
it was the secondary circuit of capital (which concerns generation of
surplus not through production but through finance and speculation) that
gained dominance. For Lefebvre, the existence of a secondary circuit,
which is distinct from that theorized by Marx, suggests that the real estate
industry is a separate circuit, distinct from industrial capital, and confirms
that the real estate activities represent a type of investment that competes
with other capital allocations decided by institutional investors.
A few decades after Lefebvre’s insights, the neologism “real estate
financing” (in some ways an oxymoron) captures the concept well and
demonstrates the successful merger of the real estate and the equity
markets. Real estate assets, fixed by their very nature, can now be treated
with logic identical to that of the securities market and to be traded on the
secondary market.
It is significant to note that in Italy, the real estate crisis of the late
1980s has led to a profound reflection on the modes of real estate investing
and the problems it entails. In particular, the negative period showed a
reversal of the of real estate time-appreciation trend, focusing on the
periodic cash flows that can be generated by the property.
The switch from a patrimonial logic (based on the gains achievable
through “natural” appreciation of the “brick and mortar” property over
time) to a new logic of quick gains has led to a significant reconfiguration
of the criteria for property investment. In essence, this resulted in a major
change to the concept of “property value,” which is increasingly seen in
relation to its profitability rather than to the gains arising from the
property’s re-evaluation over time. The built space, therefore, becomes an
object of financial investment aiming at a recurring profit, which is
competitive with other forms of financial investment.9
9
Real estate funds are one of the tools most representative of this transition. It is a
sector that took off much later in Italy compared to other industrialized countries.
Real estate funds are a means of savings that consists of a “special fund that is
divided into shares of equal value unit, signed by a number of investors with the
goal of fully investing in properties and real estate companies through an
appropriate classification and geographic portfolio. These are based on a collective
mandate of a specialised intermediary: the SGR (Società di Gestione del
Risparmio), which assumes the role of the agent to the subscribers” (Breglia and
Catella 2000, 54). They assume particular concepts, such as the real estate portfolio
(a set of properties chosen according to a specific strategy based on synergies that
result from ideal factors-type, location, etc.), and activities, such as portfolio
management, which leads to the selection of a combination of properties capable of
204 Chapter Twelve
Following these considerations, and in light of the current global

recession, we return to the question of whether Harvey’s concerns on the
responsibilities (real or perceived) of real estate financial institutions
should still be considered as evidence of its ability to influence the fate of
not just local economies, but also the world’s. Harvey obviously has no
doubts about this, as he cites the 1973 crisis (due to a global collapse of
the housing market that led to the failure of several banks), the end of the
Japanese boom in the 1990s (due to the fall in land prices), the collapse of
South East Asia (due to excessive urban development in Thailand) and the
recent subprime mortgage crisis.
8. Conclusion: recurring criticisms, prejudices

and love for the city
It would be truly timely to address the urbanization processes from a
sociological perspective, thus avoiding the reduction of the issue to a
matter of acquiring the specific professional skills required to become part
of a community rich in opportunity. It is also often reduced to an issue that
pertains exclusively to investigative journalism, which often depicts the
same community as the antagonist of the “good civil society” (a sort of
Baba Jaga evil fairy in a contemporary tale that rarely has happy ending).
Harvey’s arguments, albeit not belonging to either of these two
categories, end up being riddled with dilemmas that always bedevil
Marxist theories. More specifically, we can certainly state that, at any
given time in history, it is possible to recognize the particular interplay
between capital and real estate development. Instead, we find it hard to
consider the history of urban development reduced to a caricature, as if it
were the history of how capitalism is able to achieve its goals, almost
without hindrance or resistance, or as if it were a decision-making process
limited to two players: appointed real estate and finance industry.
What we lack, in fact, are the arguments of the real estate community,
collected and collated in a research protocol that has the ambition to avoid
both clichés and ideological traps, as well as the superficial assumptions of
the communicative representations—very often close to the gossip—that the
community gives itself in its increasingly frequent public presentations.
Further research into the subject would, therefore, be needed. This,
nevertheless, would be a difficult task, owing to the high degree of
confidentiality by which the community protects its business and the
ensuring certain characteristics in terms of risk or potential for income, after being
gathered to form a portfolio.
strong roots of its biases. For a sociologist who wants to tackle this road,
solving the first point will require great patience. Paradoxically, the
solution of the second point appears to be even more complicated.
Prejudices die hard, as noticed Francesco Rosi himself. This was the
heavy judgment of the Catholic Film Centre on Mani sulla città (quoted by
Mancino and Zambetti 1998, 55):
If the movie had limited itself to taking a position and to vigorously

denounce and condemn the actions of those who use their civil and
political authority to implement huge business ventures for their own
benefit, we could certainly adhere to the view that favours social
commitment over a political one and warmly welcome a work that
seriously and courageously reminds politicians of their duties. But Rosi’s
film is biased and misleading, and the polemic against the real estate
speculation becomes a pretext for propaganda and even more bias, as it is
easily interpretable from the film’s often propagandistic tone, the way in
which the story is devised, and the way in which the characters and the
relationships between them have been proposed. Thumb down.
The Catholic Film Centre rebuked Rosi for giving voice to all the
characters, including speculators, equating those who suffer a dramatic
speculation with those who think against it without having to deal with the
“free enterprise.” But this is the originality of Rosi’s work: he moves
beyond biases and freely gives a voice to the protagonists, without
excluding anyone or placing a particular moral judgment in the building of
each character.
The film, therefore, suffered harsh criticism from the left, denouncing
Rosi’s choice of not ideologically manipulating the characters of the film.
Through such choice, the director has come to exalt Nottola as a story’s
hero and was accused of being secretly fascinated by this figure. In a scene
Rosi portrays Nottola as a ruler who, from the top of his headquarters,
gazes at the city below as a huge prey in the dark. Later he is also depicted
as a persuasive orator, capable of dominating the political leader, De Vita,
in turn pictured curled up against a white wall like a boxer against the
ropes and only capable of responding with vague legalistic arguments.
Finally, Nottola is presented as the boss of a political machine that “goes
to light electric candles to the Madonna in a Neapolitan Brooklyn-like
church” and a necessary force to the city (Mancino and Zambetti 1998,
65).10
10
One of Rosi’s collaborators declared to the Gazzetta del Popolo: for Rosi “men
as Nottola are a force and a necessity for a city, be it Naples or any other. They
deserve encouragement for what they create, what they put in motion, what they
206 Chapter Twelve
In this paper we have repeatedly made reference to the thought and

work of Harvey and Lefebvre. Before concluding, we must highlight the
big difference between them: the absence of political ideological
connotations in the French sociologist and the militant attitude of the
British geographer. For Harvey there is always a conspiracy threat by
globalized capital in any urban manifestation and, consequently, a
potential radical conflict. Lefebvre separates the theoretical thinking from
the ideological inclination. This does not mean that Lefebvre was less a
Marxist than Harvey. On the contrary, he paid equal attention to both
parties involved precisely because he was interested in understanding the
effects of the production of space.
One of Lefebvre’s most fascinating statements is contained in Le droit
à la ville (1968):
The city conserves the organic character of community that originates in

the village and translates itself into a corporate organization. Community
life (...) does not impede class struggles. On the contrary, the violent
contrasts between wealth and poverty and the conflicts between the
powerful and the oppressed do not prevent an attachment to the city or an
active contribution to its beauty. In an urban context, the faction, group,
and class struggles strengthen the sense of belonging. Political struggles
between “little people,” “fat people” and the aristocracy, all take place in
the city. These groups are rivals in their love for their city.
Lefebvre’s statement, with references to work and love, is anything but

sloppy. To consider the city as a piece of work and to recognize that people
with many different interests can be united by feelings of love, which,
though very different from each other, likely constitutes the most promising
starting point for analysing the complex relationships between use value and
exchange value and between development and revenue (Fig. 12-4).
stimulate and give rise to. It is the environment that channels their energies on the
wrong path. The situation as a whole, what is old and wrong, is what makes them
enemies of society, while they could be valuable elements” (Mancino and Zambetti
1998, 65).
Fig. 12-4 Love for the city. Turin, 2013

(photo by the author)
Considering the interactions that occur in the process of urbanization

invites us to view the whole issue in terms of “right to the opera,” regarded
as a place where the community can meet its needs and aspirations not
only for material goods, but also for creative activities such as imagination
and play, and as a place where each individual is free to pursue different
interests and particular notions of happiness, without the danger of an all-
powerful institution imposing its own concept of “collective happiness.”
Of course, finding a balance between these two extremes is uneasy.
208 Chapter Twelve
Such should be the starting point for the study of the processes of
urbanization from an urban sociological perspective. However, the neglect
with which Lefebvre’s thoughts have been treated for decades (especially
in Italy) leaves no illusions that many researchers will follow this path.
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APPENDIX
DESTINATION COMPETITIVENESS
AND EDUCATION SYSTEM:
OLD RESOURCES FOR NEW POLICIES
ANGELO PRESENZA, ANTONIO MINGUZZI

AND MARIA CONCETTA PERFETTO*
1. Introduction
Tourism destination competitiveness is a topic of great interest to
researchers owing to the increasing complexity that destinations must face
to achieve, maintain or improve important benefits (Scheyvens 2011).
Destination competitiveness has been explained as the ability of a
destination to maintain its market position and/or improve it through time
(d’Hauteserre 2000; Minguzzi and Presenza 2012). Since the late 1990s,
many studies have attempted to identify main elements of destination
competitiveness. Buhalis (2000) asserted that destination competitiveness
may be improved through product development, distribution channels,
promotion, and communication, and above all through policies of pricing.
In their model of destination competitiveness and sustainability, Ritchie
and Crouch (2003) singled out thirty-six attributes of destination
competitiveness, grouped into five main factors: supporting factors and
resources; core resources and attractors; destination management;
destination policy, planning, and development; qualifying and amplifying
determinants. Dwyer and Kim (2003) proposed an integrated model of
destination competitiveness, where the variables consist of “resources,”
“destination management,” “situational conditions,” and “demand.” All
*
This work is the result of a joint effort. In the writing phase A. Minguzzi wrote
Introduction and Conclusions, A. Presenza chapter 2 and chapter 3, and M.C.
Perfetto chapter 4.
Destination Competitiveness and Education System 211
models underline that the analysis of tourism competitiveness is a multi-

dimensional and complex topic involving multiple layers of investigation.
Nevertheless, it appears that most of them underestimate the centrality of
the “people” factor (Heath 2002; Gunn and Var 2002; Hall 2008).
Tourism management deals with these aspects and indicates how to
harness different resources (workforce, capital, finance, technology,
knowledge) to achieve a competitive advantage, also avoiding negative
impacts on the social and environmental context (Pearce 1989). As clearly
explained by Page (2011), the profitability of tourism organizations is
increasingly being linked to the ability to innovate and adapt to change and
crises; manage, recruit, and retain high-quality human resources; develop
competitive business ventures; react to public policy and influence its
formulation and implementation; think creatively and globally; understand
how tourism trends affect one’s day-to-day business operations.
General agreement exists that knowledge is “perhaps the driver of
innovation, productivity, and competitiveness in tourism” (Shaw and
Williams 2009, 333). Because tourism is a labour-intensive industry,
human resources are central factors in achieving or maintaining
competitiveness. Unqualified staff impact unfavourably on the level of
labour productivity and quality of service, and lead to general inefficiencies.
Thus, organizations must ensure that their employees are capable of
providing top quality service to increasingly discerning customers in a
global market. One integral aspect of ensuring that employees have the
right knowledge, skills, and abilities to provide top service is by providing
effective training. As maintained by Zagonari (2009, 4) a “professional
and well-educated workforce is essential to the provision of quality service
and enhancing overall service delivery in a global market,” particularly in
the face of changing skill requirements and rapid technological advancement.
Other problems for organizations are related to the availability of good quality
personnel to deliver, operate, and manage the tourist product (Amoah and
Baum 1997) as well as for competitive advantage (Zagonari 2009). Indeed,
destination (and tourism company) competitiveness is closely linked to the
level of knowledge and skills of people working in the specific destination.
The quality of tourism’s workforce is inevitably influenced by the
training and education system, even if training, as opposed to education,
has traditionally dominated the tourism industry in which vocationally-
oriented courses have played a crucial role in providing the necessary craft
skills for many years (Cooper and Shepherd 1997; Gillespie and Baum
2000). The challenges facing tourism educators are further exacerbated by
the observation that much of the tourism industry comprises small
212 Appendix
operating units in different geographical locations (Sigala and Baum 2003)

with a dependency on semiskilled or unskilled labour supply (Baum 2006).
A notable distinction between education and training emanates from
Zais’ work on curriculum, in which he defines training as “a technical
model directed toward specific behavioural changes,” whereas “education
is directed toward expanding one’s awareness of human environment and
how to cope with this environment” (Zais 1976, 317). It follows that in the
absence of appropriate and high knowledge of touristic issues, it is difficult
for a destination to have a skilled human capital, a friendly openness to
tourists, the right interaction between hosts and guests. University education
is a crucial support because “very often, new knowledge is transferred via
university and vocational teaching, and it will be future generations of staff
who carry out practical innovations based on what they learned in the
classroom” (Hjalager 2003, 468). In addition, Zagonari (2009, 4) affirms
that a “professional and well-educated workforce is essential to the
provision of quality service and enhancing overall service delivery in a
global market,” particularly in the face of changing skill requirements and
rapid technological advancement. In fact, the transfer of knowledge from
educational settings to the tourism industry can foster innovation and
enable different managerial approaches, “transforming the tourism
students of today into the leaders of tomorrow by providing them with a
system of values from a constructive, competence-based perspective”
(Iglesias Xamaní et al. 2013, 184).
The importance of Human Resource Development, as a priority area,
has also been recognized by The United Nations World Tourism
Organization (UNWTO), for which the potential for achieving customer
satisfaction and also improving the competitiveness of tourism businesses
and regions has more chances if specific tourism (higher) education is
guaranteed (Fayos Solà 1997).
Tourism is a relatively young field of study among academics in most
advanced developed countries, having emerged in the late 1960s. Despite
this gap, it is possible to assist at a remarkable growth in tourism
education. It follows that to analyse the status quo and to highlight the
implications of a greater spread of university studies on tourism represents
a challenge that cannot be postponed for scholars of destination
competitiveness.
Starting from this assumption, through the analysis of a set of
parameters, this chapter aims at demonstrating that countries offering a
higher tourism academic education are able to have better tourism
performance. In particular, we want to discuss the role that universities
may play in providing injections of intellectual capital through tourism and
hospitality academic courses into the community of reference. The study

focuses on the twenty-eight member countries of the European Union and
for each one it analyses a certified university according to the standards of
TedQual, a programme of the UNWTO, whose main objective is to measure
and improve the quality of tourism education, training and research
programmes.
2. Education system in the tourism field

Tourism education can be described as one of the main subsectors of the
multifaceted tourism phenomenon, whose manifestation could impact
directly or indirectly on the overall tourism sector. Indeed, both as an
option for students and as a field of research, it is relatively new. Zagonari
(2009) defines professional education attained at schools as the place
where students acquire well-defined skills transferable to the workplace.
This is distinguished from education attained at universities, because the
purpose is to prepare students to “learn in order to be flexible enough to
manage the changing skill requirements and the rapid technological
advances” in the tourism industry (Zagonari 2009, 2). According to Sharpley
(2011), the study of tourism suffers from a lack of legitimization and
credibility both “internally” (within the academic community) and
“externally” (in the media and even the general public). The author
suggests refocusing the study of tourism (in terms of content and process)
through a better education of expert, skilled, creative, critical, and
reflective graduates, who now have a passive approach. Jamal and
Robinson (2009) look for a more intercultural approach and relationship
between research communities and policy-makers. Also, Walmsley and
Thomas (2009) consider it urgent to rethink and adapt education in the
tourism field.
In the 1970s some scholars debated the identification of a body of
knowledge essential for university courses in tourism. Burkart and Medlik
(1974) were the first to indicate the contents, identifying ten core subjects,
such as statistics of tourism, marketing and tourism planning. Airey and
Nightingale (1981), in a study on careers in tourism, added the motivations
of tourism, highlighting the importance of the psychological dimension
and the need to identify the different profiles of tourists. Holloway (1995)
argues these contents to a definition of seven key points, whose novelty is
the tourism industry, politics, and tourism management. The following
table shows the key contents in tourism education proposed by the three
approaches mentioned (Tab. 1).
214 Appendix
The core or body of knowledge is disclosed in a document of the

British National Liaison Group for Higher Education in Tourism (NLG),
getting the complete approval of the academic world (Holloway 1999).
Dale and Robinson (2001) propose that three areas should emerge in
tourism education. Their model suggests that educational programmes
should offer:
– generic degrees, allowing an expansive understanding of tourism

skills;
– functional degrees, centred on specific areas of tourism, such as
marketing, information, and planning systems;
– competency-based degrees, focusing on the development of a
specific product or market.
These three programmes claim to provide students with a body of

knowledge and skills enabling them to work effectively in the tourism
sector.
Table 1 Analysis of the key contents of tourism education

Source: Airey and Johnson 1999
Burkan & Medlik (1974) Airey & Nightingale (1981) Holloway (1995)
Historical evolution What is tourism? Meaning and nature
Anatomy of tourism Historical evolution of of tourism
Tourism statistics tourism Structure of the
Transport Determinants and industry
Accommodation motivations Tourism dimensions
Travels and agencies Statistical measures and Measurement
Tourism marketing dimensions problems
Planning and Importance of tourism Relevance and
development Satellite sectors tourism impact
Organization and finance Marketing Tourism marketing
Future of tourism Planning and development Planning and
Organization management of
Finance tourism
Policy and
management of
tourism
To satisfy the needs of the tourism industry, the BEST (Business

Enterprises for Sustainable Travel) has established a team of educators and
tourism industry professionals to develop a series of teaching modules,
based on the importance of the principles of sustainable tourism and on

specific management techniques. These modules are used to identify,
understand, and address current and future issues of sustainability, even if
their action could fall short of the action operation and their actors
(Jurowski 2002). The modules of sustainable tourism have been proposed
in the United Kingdom, and Flohr (2001) argues that “the tourism
education should [...] include sustainable central units not just in
specifically designed tourism courses, but in all the courses offered.”
The prevalence of business versus non-business elements seems to
justify the arguments in defence of tourism as a field of study (Tribe
1997). The need for a curriculum is also indicated by Koh (1994): “in
order to identify professionalism in tourism, it is necessary to pass the
diversity of curricula for the professional needs of standardization.” Koh
interviewed twenty-one experts (eighteen from the various sectors of
tourism and three educators) in an attempt to define a curriculum “with”
the tourism industry rather than “for” the tourism industry.
The curriculum identified is based on four pillars: general education,
business education, tourism education, and experiential education. Koh
defines the result of this study as a win-strategy for all parties involved.
Schools and universities can train professionals more congruent with the
needs and expectations of the work market, industry can easily meet the
human resources research, and students, at the same time, can verify the
different job opportunities available in a dynamic tourism industry.
Tribe (2002) defines four principles on which the curriculum should be
based: professional action, professional reflection, liberal reflection, and
liberal action. These principles allow the training of students as
“professional philosophers,” able to think and understand the services
requested and to develop a conscious and responsible tourism industry.
Inui, Wheeler and Lankford (2006) examine two approaches for
educating future tourism professionals: professional and philosophical, in
which the professional approach depletes students and does not give them
a chance to respond to stakeholders in a developing tourism company.
Tourism education, from experience of technical training schools in
Europe, has been dominated by a focus on specific professional skills.
Busby (2003) noted that internships and apprenticeships in the sector—as
well as the study subjects closely joined to the specific needs of the sector,
such as marketing, finance, management, and human resources—improve
the development of students and their skills. As a result of stage and
sector-specific training, the schools have developed a strong connection
with tourism. The students have benefitted, because they are very
216 Appendix
employable with the management of knowledge, experience, and their

interpersonal skills.
Many researchers suggest tourism educators develop courses specifically
to meet the needs of students and professionals (e.g., Dale and Robinson
2001, and Morgan 2004). This is a trend that involves the creation of a
“packaged certificate” (Illich 1971), which the industry seems to need, and
which is delivered to the students to work in the field after graduation.
Croy and Hall (2003) describe a successful example of collaboration
between a university and a rural area (Omaru, New Zealand) to develop
knowledge of tourism in the students and the community. Students have
conducted a destination analysis, as the basic activity for a tourism degree,
providing them with “the skills, the abilities, the fundamental
understanding and the appreciation of the environment required by the
tourism sector.”
Other tourism programmes incorporate practical work experiences,
such as internships, work experiences, and sandwich courses, which
require periods of full-time work alternated with periods of full-time study.
Whether the development of skills and experience in the field are
successful or not, these programmes raise questions about the role of
education in tourism.
Morgan (2004) suggests moving the focus from a rigorous to a liberal
approach in education, in order to solve this problem. Paradoxically,
tourism education may need to rediscover human values in order to carry
out its operational aims for the creation of successful managers. However,
this implies perception of the aim of education is just to meet the
employment needs of the industry, and not having the more effective
purpose desired by a university education. In fact, a university education
should qualify individuals as employees but also as tourism professionals.
Illich (1971) asserts that society and schools confuse teaching with
learning. As for the tourism field, education seems to promise that our students
learn the knowledge. A degree in tourism means a competence to work, and
those who can talk about tourism have a large body of knowledge. Rojek
(1997) argues that education has not explored in depth the epistemological
view of tourism. Ryan (1995) notes that educators should cease saying that
tourism courses are a necessary precursor to work in the sector.
The role of schools is to improve employment. Litteljohn and Watson
(2004) argue that providing students with competence means educating
them for “attitudes and aspirations to drive their career trajectories and
industry vision.” Similarly, Illich (1971) asserted that “the insistence on
skills could be a disaster” and “equal emphasis should be placed on other
types of learning.” This does not mean that tourism education should focus
on academic subjects to the detriment of internships or field experience; it

is certainly more than a simple issue of respect for the academic education.
Tribe (2002) argues that “you would think that the purpose of the
professional curriculum is obviously to equip graduates to work in the
chosen career. Besides generating consumer satisfaction, employment, and
wealth, these industries leave their imprint on the world in other ways,
forging a distinctive industrial landscape and causing a profound change in
social models and economic relations.”
Morgan (2004) also suggests going beyond professional education. He
maintains that it is necessary to establish tourism programmes at the
graduate level to allow students to think critically about the future of the
industry, as well as their education for skills and knowledge. Students
must develop self-awareness and motivation, imagination, and creativity.
Researchers and tourism educators must discover what Apple (1990)
called the “taken for granted perspectives” and must investigate what is
common sense in the development of tourism.
In North America and Europe, students are academically prepared to be
happy just in the company of other product consumers of the education
machine (Illich 1971), and this restricts their perspective. Students see higher
education as an investment for a future career and want their profit back.
Degrees and certificates offer an economic value to the graduates, giving
them the power to define and answer society expectations (Illich 1971).
It is necessary to ask tourism educators if occupation is the most
important end product of tourism education. Giving meaning to occupation
is a reproduction of the dominant ideology of contemporary society, and
this reproduction asserts that “institutions should support growth as an
alternative to dependence” (Illich 1971). Educational institutions should
serve a society that does not yet exist. That is, we need to educate students
who can create and manage the future. Educators should guide students “to
go beyond their ‘native’ predispositions” (Bruner 1996), and the
curriculum should be “a collection of planned meanings, a set of values”
(Illich 1971), rather than skills.
3. Research design
In the first stage we examined the UNWTO TedQual list of the certified
universities to extract the European ones (our field of research) from the
database, concerning fifty-nine universities around the world (in 2013). In the
following table there is a list of the twenty-six European universities (Tab. 2).
It is interesting to note that Europe is the area with the higher number of
certified universities, followed by America (20), Asia (10), and Africa (1).
218 Appendix
Table 2 European universities with the UNWTO TedQual certification

Source: UNWTO TedQual Certified. Higher Tourism Education Programmes, 2013
Country City University Curricula

Diploma in tourism and
hospitality management
Master in international
Austria Vienna Modul tourism management
Master in business
administration and
in tourism management
Brussels Business Diploma in international
Belgium Brussels
Institute hospitality management
Diploma in business
administration (with
Croatia Zagreb University of Zagreb
focus on tourism
management)
Diploma in tourism Master
in hospitality management
La La Rochelle Master in event
France
Rochelle Business School management
Master in tourism
management
International
travel management
Germany Bonn University of Applied
Diploma in international
Sciences Bad Hone
tourism management
Institute of Hotel and Diploma in culinary arts
Greece Athens Tourism Studies “Le Diploma in hotel
Monde” management
MIB School of Master in tourism and
Trieste
Management leisure
Termoli University of Molise
Diploma in tourism
Italy science
Rimini University of Bologna Diploma in economics of
markets and tourism
systems
School of Business Diploma in tourism and
Latvia Riga
Administration Turiba hospitality management
Instituto Politecnico de Diploma in tourism and

Coimbra
Coimbra hospitality management
Viana do Instituto Politecnico de Diploma in tourism and
Castelo Viana do Castelo hospitality management
Portugal hospitality management
Diploma in event
Instituto Politécnico de
Leira management
Leiria
Diploma in tourism
marketing
Diploma in catering
Slovenia Lubiana University of Ljubliana
Master in hospitality
management
Universidad Antonio PhD in tourism
Madrid
de Nebrija management
Spain
Valencia Universitat de Valencia
Diploma in tourism
management
Breda University of Diploma in international
Netherlands Breda
Professional Education hotel management
Diploma in international
leisure management
Leeds Metropolitan Master in responsible
Leeds
United University tourism management
Kingdom Bournemouth Diploma and Master in
Poole
University tourism management
In the second stage, we conducted our research through two parallel

analyses, one focused on information related to education in tourism, the
other to evaluate the national level of tourism competitiveness of each
European country. The final goal was to compare the level of intellectual
capital regarding tourism of each country with the relative level of
competitiveness.
For the first analysis, the variables taken into account to analyse
education in tourism were derived from two previous papers (Severt et al.
2009; Kwangmin et al. 2011) and from the ranking of the best tourism and
hospitality Masters, elaborated by Eduniversal, a global ranking and rating
agency specialized in higher education, which publishes its results on a
website (www.best-masters.com). Starting from the information extrapolated
220 Appendix
from these sources, we elaborated the index of the quality of education in

tourism.
For the second analysis, considering the period 1995–2011, the
variables taken into account to analyse the national level of tourism
competitiveness were the following: changes in inbound tourism over the
years; direct contribution to GDP; the variation with respect to direct,
indirect, and induced employment.
4. Findings
4.1 Review of the tourism education development in Europe

In the paper of Kwangmin et al. (2011), the purpose was to analyse the top
tourism journals in order to calculate the authors and the universities, and,
therefore, the countries, with the highest number of publications (Tab. 3).
The assertion of Kwangmin and colleagues was that the quality and
quantity of academic research significantly contributes to the university’s
reputation as well as to better dissemination of intellectual capital in the
local community.
Table 3 European Hospitality and Tourism Research Ranking

by University (2000–2009)
Source: Kwangmin et al. 2011
Total Research on Research on

University
score Hospitality Tourism
7 University of Surrey 140.88 134.88 6.00
17 Universitat de les Illes Balears 23.13 2.80 20.33
20 Oxford Brookes University 21.25 13.83 7.42
27 ULP Gran Canaria 17.50 7.00 10.50
33 University of Stirling 14.35 0.33 14.02
39 Eastern Mediterranean Univ. 13.17 10.50 2.67
40 Manchester Metropolitan Univ. 12.83 7.83 5,00
43 University of Alicante 12.00 2.00 10,00
45 Sheffield Hallam University 11.17 1.00 10.17
50 University of Nottingham 10.36 - 10.36
54 University of Valencia 10.17 1.33 8.83
56 Bournemouth University 10.08 2.00 8.08
57 University of Stratchclyde 10.00 6.67 3.33
67 Lincoln University 8.33 - 8,33
68 University of Brighton 8.20 1,20 7.00
70 Leeds Metropolitan Univ. 8.00 3.50 4.50

70 University of Sunderland 8.00 - 8.00
76 University of Malaga 7.33 2.00 5.33
76 Erasmus University 7.17 - 7.17
81 Queen Margaret University 7.00 4.00 3.00
82 University of Westminster 6.83 - 6.83
86 Vienna University 6.33 - 6.33
87 France’s IMHI 6.25 6.25 -
87 Northumbria University 6.25 1.25 5.00
90 Glasgow Caledonian Univ. 6.17 2.00 4.17
94 University of Wales Institute 6.00 2.00 4.00
94 Buckinghamshire Chilterns 6.00 - 6.00
94 London Metropolitan Univ. 6.00 0.50 5.50
98 University of Exeter 5.0 - 5.00
The following table lists the thirty countries that have most contributed
to research in the field of hospitality and tourism, and the nations
belonging to the European Union have been highlighted (Tab. 4). The
United States has been the dominant nation, producing a considerable
amount of research in the years 2000–2009. The first European Country is
the United Kingdom, followed by Spain. A general imbalance between the
two areas emerges, with a prevalence of tourism research.
Table 4 Hospitality and Tourism Research Ranking

by Country (2000–2009)
Source: Kwangmin et al. 2011
Research on Research on
Country Total score
Hospitality Tourism
1 United States 1115.77 639.2 476.57
2 United Kingdom 329.85 87.78 242.07
3 Australia 273.03 54.50 218.53
4 Hong Kong 175.63 88.28 87.35
5 Spain 134.42 22.67 111.76
6 Taiwan 106.25 33.92 72.33
7 Canada 94.15 13.08 81.07
8 South Korea 55.99 82.57 26.58
9 New Zealand 80.23 8.50 71.73
10 Turkey 64.75 21.67 43.08
11 Israel 54.26 10.83 43.42
12 Norway 27.75 10.50 17.25
222 Appendix
13 Netherlands 25.08 2.50 22.58

14 Singapore 23.75 4.25 19.50
15 China 23.03 5.94 17.08
16 Austria 19.43 2.75 16.68
17 France 17.53 12.70 4.83
18 Greece 16.25 4.17 12.08
19 Switzerland 14.15 5.58 8.57
20 Denmark 13.33 1.50 11.83
21 Sweden 12.90 3.00 9.90
22 Germany 12.86 2.93 9.92
23 Italy 11.26 1.75 9.51
24 South Africa 10.34 1.00 9.34
25 Portugal 7.67 3.00 4.67
26 Japan 7.50 1.50 6.00
27 Finland 7.00 1.00 6.00
28 Thailand 6.83 1.08 5.75
29 Slovenia 5.50 1.00 4.50
30 Brazil 4.92 0.67 4.25
The article of Denver et al. (2009) provides an analysis of scholarly

contributions to eleven hospitality and tourism referred journals for the
years 2002–2006. It presents the top one hundred programmes as ranked
by instances of publications across eleven journals. The following table
(Tab. 5) shows the European universities that have provided the greatest
number of articles in the top tourism journals as elaborated by Denver et
al. (2009).
Table 5 World Ranking of the Top 100 Programmes

by Research Instances (2002–2006)
Source: Denver et al. (2009)
Ranking Institution Instances Authors Articles

5 University of Surrey 79 37 48
19 Eastern Mediterranean Univ. 30 16 16
23 Manchester Metropolitan Univ. 27 10 22
32 Sheffield Hallam University 21 15 18
35 University of Nottingham 20 11 10
37 Universidad of Las Palmas 20 9 10
43 Univ. de les Illes Balears 18 14 8
44 University of Strathclyde 18 11 15
49 Oxford Brookes University 17 7 18
51 Glasgow Caledonian Univ. 16 13 10

52 University of Alicante 16 10 10
58 University of Brighton 14 11 10
62 Lincoln University 14 8 8
62 University of Valencia 14 8 8
65 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology 14 4 3
66 Bournemouth University 13 9 11
71 University of Stirling 13 4 11
72 Queen Margaret Univ. College 12 8 10
83 Ecole Hotelière de Lausanne 9 8 5
87 Leeds Metropolitan Univ. 9 5 7
The third source of information has been the ranking provided by

Eduniversal, which delivers a specific rank regarding Masters in Tourism
and Hospitality Management.
Its evaluations and rankings, in addition to the existing classification
tools, are based on three main criteria: the reputation of the programme,
the salary of the first job, and student satisfaction. The European Masters,
as rated in academic year 2013–2014, are shown in the following table
with their positioning, university, and nation (Tab. 6).
Table 6 Ranking European Master

Source: www.best-master.com
ESSEC International
France 1 MBA in Hospitality Management
Business School
Erasmus University Professional Master in Hospitality
Netherlands 2
Rotterdam Management
Copenhagen Business MSc in Social Science in Service
Denmark 3
School Management
LUISS, Rome
Italy 4 Five Stars in Hotel Management
Business School
University of
Czech Rep. 5 Master in Tourist Trade
Economics, Prague
Management et marketing des
Toulouse
France 7 secteurs voyage, hôtellerie et
Business School
tourisme
EADA Business
Master in Tourism and Hospitality
Spain 10 School,
Management
Barcelona
MIB School of
Italy 11 International Master in Tourism
Management, Trieste
224 Appendix
Università Bocconi, Master universitario Economia

Italy 13
Milan del turismo
Warsaw School of
Poland 16 Master in Tourism and Recreation
Economics
Institut Paul Bocuse,
Master Management International
IAE, Lyon –
France 17 de l’Hôtellerie et de la
Université Jean
Restauration
Moulin Lyon 3
University of Master of Science in Tourism and
Sweden 19
Gothenburg Hospitality Management
Univ. Complutense, Máster Universitario en Dirección
Spain
20 Madrid y Gestión de Empresas Hoteleras
United University of MSc International Hospitality and
21
Kingdom Strathclyde Tourism Management
ESCP Europe Master in Hospitality and Tourism
Spain 23
Madrid Campus Management
MBA spécialisé en Management
France 25 MBA ESG
du Tourisme et de l’Hôtellerie
Lille, SKEMA MSc Strategic Event Management
France 26
Business School and Tourism Management
Master Analysis and Management
Università
Italy 28 of the Tourist Industry and
La Sapienza, Rome
Resources
Faculty of Economics,
European Master in Tourism
Slovenia 29 University of
Management
Ljubljana
IEDE Business School, Máster Universitario en Dirección
Spain 34
Universidad Europea y Gestión Hotelera Internacional
United The University of
35 Tourism and Travel Marketing
Kingdom Nottingham
Business School, Pós-Graduação em Gestão do
Portugal 36
University of Porto Turismo e Hotelaria
United Coventry University,
38 MSc Event Management
Kingdom Depart. of Geography
United School of Hospitality MSc in International Hospitality
41
Kingdom Management, Oxford and Tourism Management
INSEEC Business MSc Hospitality Management and
France 42
School, Paris Global Tourism
Master in International Tourism
Lithuania 43 Vilnius University
Management
United Edinburgh Napier MSc International Tourism
46
Kingdom Business School Management
United Sheffield Hallam MSc Intern. Hospitality and
48
Kingdom University Tourism Management
Poznan Univ. of
Poland 50 Master in Hotel Management
Economics
Sweden 51 Umeå University Master in Tourism
Corvinus University,
Hungary 52 MA in Tourism Management
Budapest
IPAG Business School Master of Science International
United
53 Edinburgh Napier Marketing with Tourism and
Kingdom
Univ. Business School Events (double degree)
ISCTE Business
Master in Hospitality and Tourism
Portugal 55 School, University
Management
Institute of Lisbon
United Manchester MSc International Tourism
56
Kingdom Metropolitan Univ. Management
United Cardiff
58 MSc Tourism Management
Kingdom Metropolitan Univ.
Master Promozione e
Italy 65 Università di Torino organizzazione turistico-culturale
del territorio
United
68 University of Exeter MRes Tourism
Kingdom
University of Surrey
United MSc International Hotel
69 School of
Kingdom Management
Management
University of
European Master in Tourism
Denmark 72 Southern Denmark,
Management
School of Business
United Cardiff Metropolitan
74 MSc Hospitality Management
Kingdom University
West University of
Timisoara, Faculty of Tourism and Services
Romania 77
Economics and Management and Development
Business Administr.
FH München
Germany 78 Master Tourism Management
University
University of Surrey,
United
81 School of MSc Tourism Management
Kingdom
Management
Ireland 83 Univ. of Limerick MA in International Tourism
Manchester
United
84 Metropolitan MSc Hospitality Management
Kingdom
University
Northumbria Univ.
United MSc Business with Hospitality
94 Newcastle Business
Kingdom and Tourism Management
School
226 Appendix
United
95 Cardiff University MSc Hospitality Management
Kingdom
Fundesem Business Master en Dirección y Gestión
Spain 96
School, Alicante Hotelera (MDGH)
United MSc Tourism and Hospitality
99 Plymouth University
Kingdom Management
The Masters ranked in the previous table are now grouped by country
in the following table (Tab. 7). It emerges that the country with the highest
number of top tourism Masters is the United Kingdom. It is followed by
France, Italy and Spain.
Table 7 Number of Top Tourism Masters by country
Source: www.best-master.com
Rank Country Masters Universities
1 United Kingdom 16 13
2 France 7 7
Italy 5 5
3
Spain 5 5
Denmark 2 2
4 Sweden 2 2
Poland 2 2
Portugal 2 2
Hungary 1 1
Netherlands 1 1
Czech Republic 1 1
Slovenia 1 1
5
Romania 1 1
Ireland 1 1
Lithuania 1 1
Germany 1 1
4.2 Tourism competitiveness ranking by country

In order to study the impact of tourism in different European countries, we
took into account the period 1995–2011. We analysed several sources to
evaluate all data for inbound tourism, the direct and total contribution that
tourism gives to the national GDP and total direct employment in the
tourism sector. For each variable the fluctuation through the years was
calculated (but not all data have been reported here). In the following table
there is the tourism ranking of nations as set out by the Travel and Tourism
Competitiveness Index (TTCI) for the years 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011 and
2013 (Tab. 8) (Blanke and Chiesa 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013). In order to
present concise but comprehensive tourism trends in the European context,
the table shows the data of the TTCI, prepared by the World Economic
Forum and found in the “2013 Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report”
(TTCR) (Blanke and Chiesa 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013).
Table 8 Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index

Source: Blanke and Chiesa 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013
Country 2007 2008 2009 2011 2013

Austria 2 2 2 4 3
Belgium 21 27 22 23 18
Bulgaria 54 43 50 48 50
Cyprus 20 24 21 24 29
Croatia 38 34 34 34 35
Denmark 11 13 14 16 21
Estonia 28 26 27 25 30
Finland 16 12 15 17 17
France 12 10 4 3 7
Germany 3 3 3 2 2
Greece 24 22 24 29 32
Ireland 27 21 18 21 19
Italy 33 28 28 27 26
Latvia 53 45 48 51 48
Lithuania 51 47 49 55 49
Luxembourg 9 20 23 15 23
Malta 26 25 29 26 24
Netherlands 19 18 13 14 13
Poland 63 56 58 49 42
Portugal 22 15 17 18 20
UK 10 6 11 7 5
Czech Rep. 35 30 26 31 31
Romania 76 69 66 63 68
Slovakia 37 38 46 54 54
Slovenia 44 36 35 33 36
Spain 15 5 6 8 4
Sweden 17 8 7 5 9
Hungary 49 33 38 38 39
228 Appendix
4.3 Tourism competitiveness ranking by country

In this section we analysed all scores for education, grouping universities
by country. We assigned a score to each university mixing the results of
the previous analysis. The universities with the UNWTO certification have
been awarded a score of two. The following table shows the classes and
the relative score (Tab. 9).
Table 9 Classification and placement score of universities
Classification Scores
1–10 2.0
11–20 1.8
21–30 1.5
31–40 1.1
41–50 0.9
51–60 0.7
61–70 0.5
71–80 0.3
81–90 0.2
91–100 0.1
In order to obtain the index of “quality tourism education” (IQEdu) for

each country, scores obtained by the single universities have been summed
up. It emerges that the United Kingdom ranks first, followed by Spain and
Italy (Tab. 10).
Table 10 Classification and placement score of universities
Country IQEdu
United Kingdom 103.9
Spain 34.7
Italy 15.9
France 10.0
Portugal 7.3
Netherlands 7.2
Cyprus 3.8
Slovenia 2.9
Germany 2.8
Austria 2.3
Belgium 2.2
Croatia 2.0
Greece 2.0
Latvia 2.0
Poland 2.0
Sweden 1.5
Denmark 1.4
Czech Republic 1.3
Lithuania 1.0
Hungary 0.6
Romania 0.5
Ireland 0.3
Bulgaria 0.2
Estonia 0.0
Finland 0.0
Luxembourg 0.0
Malta 0.0
Slovakia 0.0
The collected data were then aggregated in order to group all European
countries in homogeneous categories according to the Index of Quality of
Tourism Education (IQEdu) (Tab. 11).
230 Appendix
Table 11 Groups of EU nations divided by IQEdu

and number of universities
Group A
Country IQEdu Universities

United Kingdom 34.7 25
Spain 15.9 11
Italy 10.0 7
France 7.3 7
Portugal 7.2 5
Group B

Netherlands 3.8 3
Cyprus 2.9 1
Slovenia 2.8 1
Germany 2.3 2
Austria 2.2 2
Belgium 2.0 1
Croatia 2.0 1
Greece 2.0 1
Latvia 2.0 1
Group C

Poland 1.5 2
Sweden 1.4 2
Denmark 1.3 2
Czech Rep. 1.0 1
Lithuania 0.6 1
Hungary 0.5 1
Romania 0.3 1
Ireland 0.2 1
Group D

Bulgaria 0 0
Estonia 0 0
Finland 0 0
Luxembourg 0 0
Malta 0 0
Slovakia 0 0
Group D collects all countries with an IQEdu score of zero. Comparing

the changes of tourism GDP and of international arrivals in these
countries, it is clear there is a good propensity for tourism but a loss of
positions in TTCI classification. In fact, just two countries have improved
some positions in this ranking in 2013 compared to 2007 (Malta two
positions and Bulgaria four positions). If the gap between indirect and
induced employment and direct employment is observed, in the last five
years, large differences nowhere near the optimum gap can be seen. The
single negative gap is one of Malta (-9.38). From this it can be deduced
that these countries will convey even in destination competitiveness.
In group C are those nations with an IQEdu from 0.20 to 1.5. The
eleven universities present are in the “Best Master 2013/2014” classification.
This indicates a quality of “young” education. Only two states, Sweden
and Denmark, are in the “Hospitality and Tourism Research Rankings by
Country (2000–2009).” The international tourist arrivals, the tourism GDP
and employment improved on average by 150%. The placement of the
eight countries in this group of the TTCI improved in 2013 compared to
2007. The only state that does not reflect the general trend is Denmark. In
fact, the tourism trend is fluctuating and employment, both direct and total,
showed a negative variation in 2011 compared to 1995. In seven countries
out of eight, where in recent years the focus has been on tourism education
quality, there are improvements in all variants considered.
Group B includes nine countries with an IQEdu ranging from 2 to 3.8;
the thirteen universities were examined in all rankings. Within this group
there are countries with a tourism tradition (Austria, Germany, Belgium,
Netherlands, Greece and Cyprus), where arrivals and contributions are
steadily increasing. While the other three countries (Latvia, Croatia and
Slovenia) are destinations in the development phase, in which there has
been an exponential increase from 1995 to 2011. Looking at the standings
TTCI, almost all countries have recovered positions except Austria, which
232 Appendix
has fallen by a single step compared to Greece and Cyprus. These last two
countries are the anomaly of this group. In fact, though having a good
IQEdu, they have lost position in the ranking of 2013 compared to 2007.
They have also suffered a decline of the employment (in terms of direct
and total numbers).
In group A are five countries with an IQEdu ranging from 7.2 to 34.7
and 70% in University studies. Their places in the ranking TTCI 2013
improved compared to 2007. International arrivals, contribution, and
employment from 1995 to 2011 have improved constantly in three
countries (Italy, France, and the United Kingdom) and exponentially in
Spain and Portugal. The optimum gap is twenty and this level is found in
all countries except in Spain.
Table 12 Presentation of results
Group Country IQEdu Δ TTCI Gap 2007–13

United Kingdom 34.7 5↑ 20.66
Spain 15.9 6↑ 35.69
A Italy 10.0 7↑ 20.63
France 7.3 5↑ 19.05
Portugal 7.2 2↑ 24.05
Netherlands 3.8 6↑ -25.80
Cyprus 2.9 9↓ 32.42
Slovenia 2.8 8↑ 39.22
Germany 2.3 1↑ 27.06
B Austria 2.2 1↓ 27.28
Belgium 2.0 3↑ 19.92
Croatia 2.0 3↑ 15.44
Greece 2.0 8↓ 13.97
Latvia 2.0 5↑ 27.55
Poland 1.5 21 ↑ 20.88
Sweden 1.4 8↑ 37.89
Denmark 1.3 10 ↓ 25.66
Czech Republic 1.0 4↑ 04.77
C
Lithuania 0.6 2↑ 23.06
Hungary 0.5 10 ↑ -11.29
Romania 0.3 8↑ 22.20
Ireland 0.2 8↑ 51.25
Bulgaria 0.0 4↑ 47.05

Estonia 0.0 2↓ 47.74
Finland 0.0 1↓ 34.66
D
Luxembourg 0.0 14 ↓ 16.07
Malta 0.0 2↑ -09.38
Slovakia 0.0 17 ↓ 16.90
The analysis reveals that countries offering a quality tourism education

are able to achieve an optimal gap between indirect and induced
employment and direct employment as well as good results in terms of
arrivals, profitability, and competitiveness of the tourist destination. The
most significant results are collected in the following table (Tab. 12).
5. Conclusions
The role of education, already set out in previous studies (Fayos Solá
1997), emerges as growing in importance in a territory that hopes to
increase its own touristic attraction. This rising consciousness can greatly
influence both strategic and operative aspects in the approaches to
destination management. Moreover, a more detailed consideration of the
role of education makes the conditions of competitiveness among different
touristic destinations still more complex (Zagonari 2009).
If education is inserted into this approach, it is possible to highlight
both the growing importance of intangible resources as determining factors
within the processes of competitiveness, and the bonds that influence or
favour the development of the system, in particular, issues regarding the
role of education, which is not always integrated with the players and the
dynamics of the territory to which it refers. However, it is always a critical
factor for the territory’s economic and competitive development.
Regarding tourism competitiveness, the operational implications deduced
from our analysis should be split into two parts. The first is related to the
tourism destination system and the second to the businesses growing up
around it.
About the first, it is of considerable importance to remember to link the
University to skills specific for the management and planning of the
destination on which it stands. Closing this gap between tourism
destination management and the education system is not yet an important
issue of debate, mainly because of the different historical and
administrative backgrounds separating the two systems, and it is difficult
to anticipate how these aspects can be coordinated within regional tourism
legislations in a short time.
234 Appendix
As for companies, operational development could have different

dynamics. According to both the classic strategic view of optimization
limited by a company’s objectives in terms of the competitive structure of
the market in which it operates (Porter 1980) and the resource-based view
(Grant 1991), the role of education in tourism systems could determine a
growing “dematerialization” of the various factors of competitiveness.
The role of education for hospitality industry competitiveness is mainly
related to the function according to the size of the industry. Small tourism
industries often approach such a problem more from a domestic point of
view than from the reinforcing of competitiveness of the industry. This
implies that a company does not always consider the value that the
formation of employees exerts on its present and future competitiveness.
This obviously depends on the business model and the structure of the
internal value chain, with different dynamic-balances being involved over
time.
To sum up, it seems useful to put forward the debate on the relationship
between the tourist education system and the competitiveness of the
destination centremost in theoretical as well as operative considerations. As
regards competitiveness of both the destination and the industries, it
appears necessary to follow the work of analysis on their relationship with
the education system, and at the same time approach the administrative
systems governed by them.
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CONTRIBUTORS
Giandomenico Amendola was Professor of Urban Sociology at the

University of Florence until 2011. He also taught at Polytechnic and the
University of Bari and in other universities in Italy and in other countries,
including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was President of
the Italian Association of Sociology (2001–2004). Among his published
works: Uomini e case: i presupposti sociologici della progettazione
architettonica, Bari 1985; La città postmoderna: magie e paure della
metropoli contemporanea, Roma and Bari 1997; Culture & Neighbourhoods:
Perspectives and Keywords, Council of Europe Publishing 1998; Scenari
della città prossima ventura, Roma and Bari 2000; “Fear of Crime and
Quality of Urban Life: Not an Obvious Relationship” in Urban
Civilization From Yesterday to the Next Day, edited by D. Diamantini and
G. Martinotti, Napoli 2009, 305–17; Il brusio delle città: le architetture
raccontano, Napoli 2013; Emozioni urbane. Odori di città, Napoli 2015;
Le retoriche della città: tra politica, marketing e diritti, Bari 2016.
Sophie Body-Gendrot is Emeritus Professor at the Sorbonne University,

Paris, where she taught Political Science and American Studies and was
co-director of the Urban Studies Centre for the English-speaking countries.
She was also a researcher at the National Research Council (CNRS) and
was President of the European Society of Criminology. Her interdisciplinary
research focuses on the nature of urban violence, tensions and conflicts
and modes of regulation in a cross-national perspective. Her books
include: Les villes face à l’insécurité, Paris 1998; The Social Control of
Cities, Oxford 2000; Les villes: la fin de la violence?, Paris 2001; La
société américaine après le 11 septembre, Paris 2002; Violence in Europe,
Berlin 2008; A City of One’s Own, London 2009; and Globalization, Fear
and Insecurity: the Challenges for Cities North and South, London and
New York 2012.
Nicolò Costa is Associated Professor of Sociology of Tourism and Local

Development at Tor Vergata University, Rome. Previously he taught at the
University of Milano Bicocca (2001–2005). He was also Director of the
Observatory on Cultural and Religious Tourism and a consultant of the
Region Latium, the Municipality of Milan and other public administrations.
240 Contributors
His books include: I professionisti dello sviluppo turistico locale, Milano

2005; La città ospitale, Milano 2008; Verso l’ospitalità made in Italy,
Roma 2013; and Turismo e terrorismo jihadista, Soveria Mannelli 2016.
Among his essays: “Sociological theories of tourism and regulation
theory”, with G. Martinotti, in Cities and Visitors. Regulation People,
Markets and City Space, edited by L.M. Hoffman, S.S. Fainstein and D.R.
Judd, Oxford 2003, 53–71; “Local tourist system as Made in Italy districts
and the new international middle class of creative city users”, in Urban
Civilization from Yesterday to the Next Day, edited by D. Diamantini and
G. Martinotti, Napoli 2009, 371–93; “Digital media in archaeological
areas. Virtual Reality, authenticity and hyper-tourist gaze” (with M.
Melotti), in Sociology Mind, 2 (1), 2012, 53–61.
Alan Fyall is Orange County Endowed Professor of Tourism Marketing

and Graduate Programs Director at the Rosen College of Hospitality
Management, University of Central Florida. He is the author of over one
hundred and fifty articles, book chapters and conference papers as well as
eighteen books and is co-author of Tourism Principles & Practice,
Pearson, Harlow, 1993 (5th ed. 2013), a leading textbook on the subject.
He is also co-editor of Elsevier’s Journal of Destination Marketing &
Management. His current research interests lie in destination marketing
and management and the interrelationships between public health,
wellbeing and tourism. He is a former Member of the Bournemouth
Tourism Management Board and Board of Solent Synergy Limited, and
has conducted numerous consulting and applied research projects for
clients in the UK, European Union, Africa, the Caribbean and South-East
Asia.
Emanuele Giordano is Lecturer of Geography and urban planning at the

University Paul Valéry Montpellier 3. His main research activity focuses
on the evolution of lighting policies. He also carries out researches into the
touristification of the urban night and the evolution of the night-time
economy in the Mediterranean region. Among his essays: “Expérience
visuelle et performance de la mise en lumière du patrimoine : aller au-delà
de la séduction” (with D. Crozat), in Annales de géographie, 2017, (714),
195–215; “Outdoor lighting design as a tool for tourist development: the
case of Valladolid,” in European Planning Studies, 2017, 1–20; “Light
festivals, policy mobilities and urban tourism” (with Ong, Chin-Ee), in
Tourism Geographies, 2017, 1–18.
Mobilities and Hospitable Cities 241
Heather Hartwell is Professor at Bournemouth University, UK. She is a

registered nutritionist and a member of the Nutrition Society. Her research
is within the academic discipline of public health nutrition. She is editor of
the journal Perspectives in Public Health and chief external examiner for
the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health. She is currently leading a
pan-European project which aims at promoting vegetable consumption
amongst adolescence and elderly in Denmark, France, Italy and the United
Kingdom. She is a member of the scientific board of the Institute Paul
Bocuse, France. Among her essays (with A. Fyall, A. Hemingway, and
others): “Wellness, tourism and small business development in a UK
coastal resort: Public engagement in practice,” in Tourism Management,
60, 2017, 466–77, and “Progress in tourism and destination wellbeing
research,” in Current Issues in Tourism, 2016, 1–63.
Ann Hemingway is a Professor of Public Health and Wellbeing at

Bournemouth University, UK. She is a registered nurse and currently
serves as the public health leader for research and enterprise in
Bournemouth University’s Centre for Practice Development and the
Centre for Wellbeing and Quality of Life. Her research focuses on public
health and inequalities in health. Among her publications: “Hospitality and
tourism themes engaging with a healthy tourism offer: strategies to
improve place perceptions” (with S. Curtin), Worldwide Hospitality and
Tourism Themes, 2017, and “Exploring well-being as a tourism product
resource” (with others), in Tourism Management, 55, 2016, 94–105.
Ezio Marra is Professor of Urban Sociology at the University of Milano

Bicocca, where he was director of the degree programme in Tourism
Sciences and Local Community and is director of LIST – International
Laboratory of Sciences of Tourism. He was a member of the council of the
doctorate in Urban Studies of this University and its international network,
including London School of Economics, Science Po and Humboldt
Universität and he is member of the council of the international doctorate
in Sustainable Human Development of the University of Milano Bicocca.
He was Visiting Scholar at the University of Essex, UK, and at the
International Consortium for Political and Social Research, Ann Arbor,
Michigan. His research concerns electoral behaviour, leisure activities in
urban areas, urban marketing, urban tourism and policies, and governance
issues in metropolitan areas. His published works include: Componenti
culturali della qualità urbana, Milano, 1989; “Il triangolo postindustriale:
dal fordismo al turismo” in La metropoli contemporanea, edited by G.
Martinotti and S. Forbici, Milano 2012. He is the editor (with E. Ruspini)
242 Contributors
of Altri turismi. Viaggi, esperienze, emozioni, Milano 2010, and Altri

turismi crescono. Turismi outdoor e turismi urbani, Milano 2011; and
(with M. De Caro) of Cultura, territorio e turismo, Milano 2012. Among
his essays: “Migration, Tourism and Peace: Lampedusa as a Social
Laboratory” (with M. Melotti and E. Ruspini), in Anatolia – An
International Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Research,” special issue
on Culture and Cultures in Tourism: New Trends, Products and Interactions,
2017.
Marxiano Melotti is director of the master programme Museums,

Heritage and Society of Niccolò Cusano University, Rome, where he
teaches Urban Sociology, Sociology of Tourism and Sociology of Culture.
He works on cultural and archaeological heritage and the use of the past in
modern and postmodern societies. His interests concern the relationships
between heritage and the migratory flows; theming and spreading of a new
global heritage; living history, edutainment and tourism. He was Visiting
Scholar and Visiting Professor in various European and American
Universities, including Tampere and UCLA, and lecturer of Archaeological
Tourism and Sociology of Territory and Urban Culture at the University of
Milano Bicocca. As Secretary General of the SUM Foundation, he
collaborated with G. Martinotti in designing the SUM European Doctoral
School in Social and Human Sciences with École des Hautes Études en
Sciences Sociales, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Central European
University and Humboldt Universität. Among his publications: The Plastic
Venuses. Archaeological Tourism and Post-Modern Society, Newcastle
2011; “Gladiator for a day. Tourism, archaeology and themed parks in
Rome”, in Time and Temporality in Theme Parks, Hannover 2016; “The
Carnival of Fears: the 2016 Violence in Cologne”, in Embodiment and
Cultural Differences, Newcastle 2016; “Bodies and Corpses on the
Mediterranean Beaches” in The Challenge of Cultural Difference, Newcastle
2017.
Fiammetta Mignella Calvosa is Professor of Sociology of Environment

and Territory at LUMSA University, Rome. She directed several research
projects for universities and public administrations about governance and
local public services regulation and a research project on Security and
everyday life of commuters and tourists in Rome (2007–2009). She also
investigated sustainable development and urban mobility and analysed the
State administration and bureaucracy. Among her publications: Città e
mutamento sociale. Nuove identità della popolazione romana, Milano
2001; “Social and Demographic Trend in Rome: Population, Migration
and Social Structure” and “Foreign Population and Integration: Theoretical

Models and Empirical Results” (with O. Casacchia and E. Sonnino), in
Rome and New York City. Comparative Urban Problems at the End of the
20th Century, Roma 2006; La periferia perfetta. Immigrati, istituzioni e
relazioni etniche nell’area metropolitana romana (with R. De Angelis),
Milano 2006; and “La mobilità sostenibile,” in La metropoli
contemporanea, edited by G. Martinotti and S. Forbici, Milano 2012.
Antonio Minguzzi is Associate Professor of Destination Management and

Director of Tourism Research Centre at the University of Molise. His
interests include tourism destination competitiveness and tourism cultural
heritage. He is a member of editorial boards of Italian and international
academic journals and attends at the Education Council of United Nation
World Tourism Organization. His recent articles include: “The role of
natural environmental sustainability and the effect on tourist satisfaction in
emergent micro-tourism destinations: the case of southern Italy” (with
others), in Sustainability, Social Responsibility and Innovations in Tourism
and Hospitality, edited by H.G. Parsa and V. Navapareddy, London 2014;
and “Destination Building. A strategic approach to the sustainable
development of a tourism destination” (with A. Presenza), in Advances in
Tourism Studies, Milano 2014.
Armando Montanari is Associate Professor of Tourism and Human

Mobility at “La Sapienza” University, Rome. He was President of the
commission on Global Change and Human Mobility of the International
Geographical Union. Previously he was scientific secretary of the Vienna
Centre and scientific coordinator of the international comparative projects
Costs of Urban Growth and the Turin International Project; a member of
the board of the research on “Built-form Environment and Land Use” of
the European project Innovation and Urban Development; a member of the
Board of the European Science Foundation research programme on
Regional and Urban Restructuring in Europe; head of the Italian team of
the European project on Spatial deconcentration of economic land-use and
quality of life in European Metropolitan Areas. Among his main
publications: Turismo urbano tra identità locale e cultura globale, Milano
2008, and Ecoturismo: principi, metodi e pratiche, Milano 2009.
Jordi Nofre, PhD in Human Geography, is a Postdoctoral Research

Fellow at the Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Sciences at the New
University of Lisbon, funded by the Portugal’s Foundation for Science &
Technology. His research activities concern two main areas: nightlife and
244 Contributors
urban transformations in South European cities and social geographies of

youth in Euro-Mediterranean countries. He is currently coordinating
“Lxnights,” an informal scientific network on nightlife aiming at widening
and spreading knowledge, know-how practices, exchanging research
experiences between the scholar community and stakeholders in order to
foster an innovative, inclusive and smart governance of the urban night in
South European cities. He has also founded the Observatory of Nightlife in
Lisbon. Among his essays: “The Erasmus Corner: place-making of a
sanitised nightlife spot in the Bairro Alto” (with others) in Leisure Studies,
2016, 1–15, and “Exploring Nightlife and Urban Change in Bairro Alto,
Lisbon” (with others), in City & Community, 2017.
Maria Concetta Perfetto is Ph.D. in Accounting, Management & Finance.

Her main research area of interest is the management of cultural heritage
with a focus on analysis of sustainable organization and promotion of public
projects about industrial heritage, as well as public-private partnerships in
this field. She is also interested in the effects that the management of
cultural heritage exerts on tourism management and development. She has
published widely in this area. Currently, she works as researcher and
project manager in tourism development public body of Molise Region.
She is pursuing the strategic tourist development plan for East Molise
Tourist District.
Fiammetta Pilozzi is a researcher at Dante Alighieri University, Reggio

Calabria, where she teaches Sociology of Cultural and Communication
Processes. She is also a lecturer of Non-Profit Cultures and Services and
Migration Sociology at LUMSA University, Rome. Among her publications:
“Soundscape e smellscape. Identità e regole per le dimensioni valoriali e
sensoriali del paesaggio,” in La qualità delle regole nella società
contemporanea, edited by D. Galli and M. Cappelletti, Rome 2014;
Relazioni segnaletiche. Spazi, funzioni e rappresentazioni nei sistemi di
wayfinding urbano, Milano 2013; and “L’alfabetizzazione ecologica per la
costruzione di una nuova relazione fra uomo e ambiente” (with F.
Mignella Calvosa), in Costruire sostenibilità: crisi ambientale e
bioarchitettura, edited by W. Mitterer and G. Manella, Milano 2013.
Fortunata Piselli was Professor of Urban Sociology and Sociology of

Local Community at the University of Calabria, the University of Trento
and the University Federico II of Naples. Her research interests include
migration and labour market, underdevelopment, socio-political
transformation of semi-peripheral countries, network analysis methods and
urban policies. She is author of Parentela ed emigrazione, Torino 1981,
and Reti. L’analisi di network nelle scienze sociali, Roma 2001, and co-
author of Il capitale sociale. Istruzioni per l’uso, Bologna 2001; Comuni
nuovi, Bologna 2002; Patti sociali per lo sviluppo, Roma 2008; Città
metropolitane e politiche urbane, Firenze 2009; and Governare città. Beni
collettivi e politiche metropolitane, Roma 2012. Among her essays:
“Communities, Places and Social Networks” in Urban Civilization from
Yesterday to the Next Day, edited by D. Diamantini and G. Martinotti,
Napoli 2009, 179–96.
Angelo Presenza is Assistant Professor of Management at the Tourism

Research Centre of the University of Molise. His main research areas are
destination governance and management, event management, gastronomy
and food, innovation and entrepreneurship. Among his recent articles:
“Entrepreneurial strategies in leveraging food as a tourist resource: a
cross-regional analysis in Italy” (with G. Del Chiappa), in Journal of
Heritage Tourism, 2013; “Stakeholder e-involvement and participatory
tourism planning: analysis of an Italian case study” (with others), in
International Journal of Knowledge-Based Development, 2014; “The
Cittaslow certification and its effects on sustainable tourism governance”
(with T. Abbate and M. Perano), in Enlightening Tourism. A Pathmaking
Journal, 2015.
Emanuele Tataranni works at Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e

Vulcanologia in Bologna. His main research areas are related to geology
and geography: geoinformatics, cartography and GIS, with a focus on
geological mapping, mapping about natural disasters and mapping for
urban planning. He is also specialized in research design, project
management, collection and analysis of both geological and social data in
support of the development of a web-based GIS platform.

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Mobilities and

Ezio Marra and Marxiano Melotti

Edited by Ezio Marra and Marxiano Melotti

This book first published 2018

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Copyright © 2018 by Ezio Marra, Marxiano Melotti and contributors

ISBN (10): 1-5275-0533-2

Part One: Guido Martinotti’s Legacy

Chapter One ................................................................................................. 4

Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 20

Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 38

Part Two: Around the World

Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 58

Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 66

Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 79

Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 101

Part Three: Some Italian Cases

Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 142

Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 158

Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 170

Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 185

Appendix ................................................................................................. 210

Contributors ............................................................................................. 239

This collection presents a number of selected papers presented at the

best-known instance of this process is the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas,

GUIDO MARTINOTTI’S LEGACY

THE METROPOLIS AND BEYOND

(Quality of Life in the Information Society) and URBEUR (European Urban

2. The story of the metropolis

of life; on the contrary, in most developed countries the inhabitants of rural

demographic balance of the metropolitan areas was always positive. The

3. Metropoli: The master work

interaction of technologies and social configurations that makes the future

The metropolitan businessmen are strongly international and are

In updating and adjusting his paradigm, he increasingly focused on the

5. A wide research horizon

scholar, he would probably not have produced his best-known work,

studies as “civicness.”2 In particular, the school system and university

Costa, N. and Martinotti, G. 2001. “Il turismo nell’autonomia didattica

Marra, E. 1980. “ADRL [Data Archive of Region Liguria] and Project

—. 1979a “Filosofia e schema del Bilancio Sociale di Area,” Città Classe,

valori, metri e strumenti nello studio dell’impatto ambientale, edited

the Late-20th Century City, edited by R. A. Beaurgard and S. Body-

Melis, A. 1999. “Città e metropoli: un confronto statistico,” in La

CITY-USERS AND THE HOSPITABLE CITY

2. Main topics of Martinotti’s research related to tourism

1989). While appreciating and supporting our work, Martinotti politely

Selwyn. Thus, when in 2005 I wrote the introduction to the Italian

(1993), defining Milan, the Lombard capital, as a second-generation

“It is therefore necessary to describe the mobility of business people,

Unfortunately, his hope was in vain, partly because the municipal

2.2 Local community and hospitable city between urban

corporate infatuations in “selling” the city and new techniques for

3. University tourism education:

To reconcile political values and educational planning, he proposed the

3.2 Consortium Nettuno

sociologists of the Mediterranean Association of Sociology of Tourism

a distance, but also help to reconfigure face-to-face meetings and generate

3.3 The three-year degree course in Tourism

bridges between the disciplines, enabling the students to understand the

3.4 Teaching of sociology, city marketing and city-users

From 1993, Martinotti had me lead a seminar on “City marketing and