Raffaele Di Marcello
Mobilità dolce e turismo sostenibile. Il ruolo della bicicletta nelle aree protette
Abstract: Soft Mobility and Sustainable Tourism. The Role of the Bicycle in Protected Areas
In recent years cycling tourism has also developed in Italy. It is a sustainable tourism in the sense of the defi nition of World Tourism Organization (WTO), which states that it should make optimal use of environmental resources that constitute a key element in tourism development, maintaining essential ecological processes and helping to conserve natural heritage and biodiversity; respect the socio-cultural authenticity of host communities, conserve their built and living cultural heritage and traditional values, and contribute to inter-cultural understanding and tolerance; ensure viable, long-term economic operations, providing socio-economic benefi ts to all stakeholders that are fairly distributed, including stable employment and income-earning opportunities and social services to host communities, and contributing to poverty alleviation. The use of the bicycle for the practice Tourism, both for the characteristics of the medium (of itself non-polluting) that for the use made of it within the various types of tourism linked to it (active tourism, sports tourism, itinerant tourism, etc..), takes characters equal to the sustainability of tourism on foot, significantly higher than other forms of tourism, ensuring full compliance with the principles established by the WTO. A number of projects to increase the use of bicycles in protected areas, both nationally and regionally; these projects are intended to decrease, especially in areas and environmentally sensitive landscapes, the negative impacts of the tourist experience, while maximizing the benefi cial effects for the region and for the communities visited, maintaining at the same time, the possibility of moving within of the territory, in order to promote the knowledge and visibility.
Keywords: soft mobility, sustainable tourism, bicycling tourism, tourism, protected areas.
GEOTEMA_49_13_di-Marcello
