Living well and welcoming tourism go hand in hand

Federica Maino, you supported the administration of Selva di Val Gardena in the development of the municipal development plan. How did you go about your work?

The province of Bolzano asks each municipality to draw up a long-term development plan which extends to about ten to twenty years. These plans promote the sustainable and coordinated development of an area. It is a new urban planning tool that is no longer drawn up only by municipal administration technicians and experts but one that aims to integrate a wider audience. Associations, various organizations and the population itself are  all involved. In Selva di Val Gardena, my job as a researcher was to define the design of the participatory process, that is to say to organize, plan and define the various stages and then support the administration in conducting them and in outlining the future of the municipality.

The first stage of this process was to consult the citizens by means of a questionnaire aimed at people over 16 years of age. We investigated four different topics: the socio-economic housing system, tourism, transport and mobility, as well as the environment and landscape.

For those who spend their vacations there, Selva di Val Gardena is an idyllic place. What do the people who live there think?

Both groups are on the same page and have a high degree of satisfaction. The population really appreciates the beauty of the landscape too. We asked the residents what comes to mind when they think of the landscape of Selva and the most frequent answers were beautiful, clean, unique, mountains, nature, green, woods and meadows.

In this positive picture, however, words such as traffic and noise also stood out, revealing the disadvantages of living in a place heavily impacted by tourism.

What do the residents think of the region’s tourism?

87% of the people interviewed recognize that tourism has a positive effect on the economic development of the country and that, in addition to bringing wealth and prosperity, Selva di Val Gardena has also avoided the depopulation that many small mountain villages have to face.

Despite this very high level of satisfaction, less positive evaluations have also been recorded in terms of an increase in the cost of living, the lack of residential housing for the local community, traffic and noise pollution, and living in a crowded area, where quiet periods are increasingly rare because both the summer and winter tourist seasons are getting longer.

Other critical aspects for the population were the impact on the environment and landscape: too high an influx of people has an impact on delicate ecosystems such as mountain ones. The socio-economic disparities that tourism causes are also being observed, because there are those who benefit greatly from it and those who benefit less.

Finally, the fact that it the town strongly geared towards tourism has dominated the country’s development in recent years, leaving less room for other productive activities such as handicrafts: a traditional activity that has gradually taken a back seat. The same thing has happened with agriculture and livestock farming.

In the questionnaire you also asked residents for ideas for the future. What would the population like to explore?

Well, some challenging issues emerged that are relevant on both a local and global scale. People are concerned about the health of ecosystems and the loss of biodiversity.

Other answers emphasized the importance of ecological connectivity; this is also an important issue for a small mountain village to consider.

The importance of managing natural resources such as air, water and soil in a sustainable way was emphasized; some people also mentioned new technologies such as agrivoltaics.

Many of these topics were mentioned in the free-response questions that we had included in the questionnaire. I was impressed that so many people took the time to fill out this part as well, given that the questionnaire was already quite demanding. I think there was a real desire to express personal opinion on some topics – to be heard on these matters. A colleague and I were available to people who preferred to respond to the survey over the phone rather than online, and we received many calls, especially from older people.

You’ve been following several other local development projects. In Seren del Grappa, in Veneto, and in Tre Ville, in Trentino, tourism was one of the sectors focused on. How did Selva di Val Gardena, fare in comparison?

Each area is different and each should always be observed in entirety to guide future choices. Our approach is always to start from the “role” of the area, in terms of the people who live there, while also focusing sustainability. There are no recipes, but in each project the common denominator was to consider the territory in an ecosystemic way, taking into account all its resources. Orienting development in a single direction, such as tourism, makes the territory more fragile and less able to withstand critical situations, as we saw during the pandemic. So, to make a territory more resilient, it’s important to aim for a balanced, holistic development that doesn’t exclude particular sectors, but enables them to coexist. Obviously, it’s normal, indeed desirable, that there is a “role”, a prevailing direction, but giving space to other sectors doesn’t take anything away, rather it enriches a place. The more diversified a territory is, the more one sector can feed the others. Think of crafts, agriculture and livestock: handmade objects, well-kept landscapes and local food and wine products enhance and strengthen tourism. And vice versa.

This applies not only to Selva di Val Gardena, but also to mountain locations where tourism is absent. In Seren del Grappa, for example, we worked on the basis of its agricultural role. In Tre Ville, the community wanted to create a small tourist destination in harmony with the local community while still being respectful of the landscape, and we worked to promote a type of tourism that could attract new target groups of people interested in living original and authentic experiences. It makes no sense to take something away from the resident in order to give it to the tourist. Living well and welcoming tourism go hand in hand.