Land use and Landscape changes. A methodological proposal for the creation of sustainable cultural tourism itineraries

The debate on the role of itineraries as instruments of territorial valorisation is now ‘mature’ (Trono and Oliva 2013; Candela et al. 2005). More and more ‘territories’ are organizing activities to design and create new itineraries, convinced that they can act as a driving force for local development. By linking places, atmospheres or assets, they provide the keys, for understanding the ‘places’, and their evolution, to a growing number of ‘new tourists’. It becomes, however, a priority to carry out an evaluation of the territorialization processes that characterize the areas that they ‘touch’ (in particular land use); this is in order to determine their impact on the state of health of the territory being ‘crossed’. Current technological evolution has allowed us to go beyond the classical statistical analyses based on the calculation of indicators, integrating them with geospatial analyses capable of including what is mentioned above. Here, we propose the illustration of a case study conducted on this subject, which is presented as a working model. In 2013–2014, the research team carried out a diachronic (visual and overlay) GIS analysis. Our aim was to represent the changes taking place in the territory to the east of Verona, quantify them and evaluate the feasibility of the proposal for an itinerary in the conceptual stage, partly in the light of urban development planning. The case study has the value of substantiating the need to reflect on the often absent relationship between environmental and territorial research, and the development strategy related to it.