Link to Session Platform

Chairs(s):

Antonio Paolo Russo, Rovira i Virgili University (URV)

; Salvador Anton Clave, Rovira i Virgili University (URV)

Description:

This special double session centres on current perspectives on evolutionary economic geographies and tourism in different socio-spatial and cultural contexts. The two sessions are co-sponsored by the International Geographical Union (IGU) Commission on Tourism, Leisure and Global Change and the Recreation, Tourism and Sport Specialty Group of the AAG. Session 1 is being organized under the EU Horizon2020 project SMARTDEST - Cities as mobility hubs: tackling social exclusion through ‘smart’ citizen engagement while Session 2 is part of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities-funded project ADAPTOUR: The Adaptability of Complex Tourist Destinations in the Present Era of Social, Economic and Environmental Transformations: Innovative Paths Towards Destination Resilience (both projects are led by the GRATET Research Group).


These two sessions contextualise the evolution of tourism destinations within the broader interpretation provided by evolutionary economic geography (EEG). They increase the understanding of how destinations anticipate, prepare for, respond to or recover from unexpected situations, mid- and long-term transitions, crises, and triggers of change creating continually transformed environments including reactive and proactive capacities that generate a continuous trade-off between stability and flexibility. As such, adaptability is a key process from an evolutionary perspective involving all destination stakeholders, underpinned by societal change. Such analysis requires conceptual and empirically complex, non-linear and non-deterministic models. This is most pertinent in the context of the economic lock-in that many destinations are facing, due to either internal processes of specialisation or external dynamics of social, economic and environmental transformation. Papers in these two sessions will explore the adaptability and resilience of destinations from an evolutionary economic geographies (or related) perspective in different geographical contexts focusing on diverse drivers of transformation such as labour precariousness and social exclusion, legitimation of tourism development, COVID-19 induced dynamics of change, cognitive capital in tourism, sustainable transitions and urban touristscape transformations.

Non-Presenting Participants Agenda