No. 4 (2017)

Tourism is a complex phenomenon, because it concerns territories, people and activities involved during travel, as well as the services necessary to arrive and stay in the visited place. Often the motivation that pushes travelers to go beyond their usual environment is not only the scenic beauty of the territories, but the expectation of finding efficient and comfortable services. There are many tourist destinations that, although not being able to express a scenic beauty, ensure that “functional beauty” that can become complementary or substitute of scenic beauty. The achievement of functional beauty requires an innovative planning system, able to exploit the existing infrastructures and, at the same time, enhance them where necessary. This is why it is important to analyze the tourist flows differently than the traditional “counts” of arrivals and presences. Observing the origin-destination of the arrivals, we are able to identify the nodal points, or the territorial center of gravity with greater tourist attraction. This type of analysis shows that, in Italy, the transport policy should be reinforced to support tourism. Our country does not have a problem of infrastructural quantity, but of quality of functioning as we should take into account the existing physical distance, as much as the time needed to reach the different destinations. Big data, for example google maps, support us in this kind of information by changing geographical boundaries: since what is distant can suddenly become close (and vice versa). In fact, the use of territorial partitions, already applied in other field of research (for example the industrial districts and the local labor systems from which they derive), are not suitable for the purposes of tourism planning. The tourist district is a different concept and, as such, it must be interpreted by substituting space for the territory, time for distance, vocation (tourism) for productive specialization. Finally, it is important to enhance the municipality as the minimum territorial entity, able for identifying the network of (economic, cultural, etc.) activities that is generated by the physical movement of the people.

Transportation is one of the main topics in the wide-ranging theme of event sustainability. The aim of this paper is to contribute towards the evaluation of the sustainable transportation policies implemented by the events’ organizers, in order to establish an objective methodology for a cross-comparison, useful to policy makers and hosting community. Using a sample of periodical Italian hallmark events, a non-hierarchical model-based clustering is performed and examined to determine whether there is or not a difference in the distribution of a selection of auxiliary variables among the clusters. The results show that neither the visitors’ nor the inhabitants’ number in the host city is associated with the clustering membership, while the theme of the event appears to be associated with the estimated partition.

Rome is the Italian city with the highest number of vehicles per 1000 inhabitants. Despite this datum cyclists is the category of tourists that more than others can potentially visit the city better. The article, after introducing the “cyclotourism product”, describes the Italian policies on sustainable tourism and the great potential of Rome which is crossed by two routes of the European cycle route network. The article describes two symbolics projects that can contribute to creating a more sustainable city: the GRAB, the Grande Raccordo Anulare delle Biciclette and the “City of Bicycles”. The GRAB is a route of 45 km, partly already existing, for which the City of Rome is preparing the relative design. “The City of Bicycles” is a totally new proposal that involves the redevelopment of an ancient military fort and the creation in that building of a car-free place dedicated to offering goods and services for all cyclists (cyclists tourist, sports cyclists, urban commuter, young cyclists).

This article analyzes the advantages of a multilevel administrative governance, even if, in Italy, the lack of a decentralized fiscal policy and the possibility to apply the principles “no taxation without representation” has produced, in many cases, an inefficient use of financial resources. Furthermore in the Italian Public Administration, the culture of evaluation in measuring its performance, do not appear so strong. The introduction of the “fabbisogni e costi standard” metodology, is a good instruments to do it, in particular to evaluate the efficiency of public expenditure. Perhaps its application requires an appropriate statistical information at the municipal level that not always exists.