Tour-scapes or how to convert mature tourism destinations to complex sustainable landscapes: the strategy of the "second coast"

Tour-scapes or how to convert mature tourism destinations to complex sustainable landscapes: the strategy of the “second coast” Maria Goula, dr architect, MLA, UPC Vice Dean on Landscape, Director Master's Landscape Architecture Department of Urban Design and Regional Planning, DUOT, School of Architecture of Barcelona, ETSAB, Polytechnic University of Catalonia, UPC, 08028, Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] Ioanna Spanou, architect, MLA PhD candidate at Department of Urban Design and Regional Planning, DUOT, School of Architecture of Barcelona, ETSAB, Polytechnic University of Catalonia, UPC, 08028, Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] Patricia Perez Rumpler, Landscape Architect, MLA PhD candidate at the Institute of Landscape Architecture, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna and ETSAB, Polytechnic University of Catalonia, UPC, 08028, Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] Explores innovation potential of landscape design to mature tourism destinations in the Mediterranean Searches for design protocols of developing a sustainable tourist imagery based on the identity and natural potential of these landscapes the development of a holistic tourist project that involves landscape not as a background but as a tourist product in itself. Assesses approaches that relate the existing coastal developments to its agricultural “hinterland”, denominated as “second coast”. A review of the research results developed within the frame of Master’s in Landscape Architecture, Univ. Politècnica de Catalunya in the territories of Costa Brava, Catalonia, Spain and Languedoc_Roussillon, France . Landscape is bound into the market place and is available only at a a price: the price of a package tour, an entryfee, etc..... James Corner, Recovering Landscapes, 1997 Tourism and landscape: a relation of dependence and contradiction There is no tourist development without a landscape; it also seems that landscapes, especially those called cultural landscapes, need tourism as an economic activity to be sustained. Tourism, as an economic as well as a leisure activity, belongs to the abstract space of globalization, where one looses orientation, distances do no exist and one’s relation to places is none. On the other hand, landscape is a locality per excellence, conceptually related to local identity and culture. Mature tourist destinations on the coast affront a moment of decline, however, they still are one of the most relevant destinations world wise. Massive tourism developed as a substitute of landscapes that were considered neither productive nor valuable. Tourist activity worked with the paradigm of tabula rasa, seeing the coast line as a two dimensional space, ignoring its complexity and heterogeneity; Massive tourism developed in the coast of the Mediterranean, especially in Spain, was building-oriented without special emphasis on free and green space, that means without design criteria for the outdoors environment of the residential proposal, using most of the time imported models which we could call precarious interpretations of a picturesque exuberance alien to climate, soil and local species’ potentials. Tourism in the Mediterranean needed a fictitious, artificial imagery for the surrounding spaces of architecture since Mediterranean landscape values where either generic or nor recognised as such. la precariedad de la realización Baix Empordà What “second coast” means and how it is represented The “second coast” is a spatial strategy for improvement a site specific potential for change it is physical; it is not a metaphor it can mean the recovery of resistant traces, or “hidden” natures and processes it can be a design of a landscape pattern that adds environmental value to the site and multiplies some of the conditions of the dynamic frontier of the coastline Second coast Strategies The revelation of the hydrological axes as a unique opportunity of interconnection between the first coast line and the interior landscape. The second line as a landscape of production: the seek for excellence in the configuration of a new paradigm: product control through a more sustainable agricultural model, introducing aspects of water purification and sustainable energy. Second coast Strategies The re-evaluation of the hinterland through the multiplication of the possible encounters with the water element along the visit in the interior landscapes: ¨the multiple coasts¨. The second line experienced through the exemplification of an extended concept of patrimony: An exceptional alternative could lie on the premises of a possible reconceptualization of patrimony: Apart from the traditional patrimonial poles, almost all represented by architectural indices of the past, there is a wide range of natural or cultural patrimonial traces, nowadays covered or put aside by the extensive agricultural activity.