Patricia Phumpiu (p)

Economic development of a geographical area for governmental planners is usually associated with infrastructure. Development with the aid of tourism is not an exception and building infrastructure emphasizes architecture and urban design. The economic view of planners, however, can be at odds with development goals and the needs from users. The challenge is how to consider the user needs to adapt to the new infrastructure supporting their present culture, way of living culture. Planners can end up wasting time and resources designing infrastructure that will become sub-optimal for the needs of the community and the supply of services as opportunities for the visitors.
Designated urban tourist areas are not much explored in the literature when sharing an environmental resource as part of their urban domain. The lacking knowledge on the relationship of the built environment with the natural environment adds to the shortage of knowledge on the users and their cultural daily life. Nowadays, culture has a place in tourism, but when urban nature are embedded into urban areas, there is a weak linkage with nature; nature is underestimated within the urban context. There is a need to link culture with natural environment resources, especially when urban nature is embedded into the built environment. Development plans address this link but they do not address the users cultural characteristics resulting from the interaction between nature and built environment.
This paper provides a methodological approach to examine and understand users at nature - built environments based on qualitative analysis, and use this methodology for designing action plans in urban development projects. This study is applied for cases in the Amazon, for tourism development projects where the concept and environment is linked to sustainable management of people and resources.

Martin Zsarnoczky (p)

Taking into account recent trends, the process of urbanisation is predicted to continue in the future. Although  urbanisation, sub-urbanisation, counterurbanisation and re-urbanisation create a continuous cycle, the cohesion policies of the European Union seem to have a balancing effect in the development level of different areas. Thanks to many successful EU-funded projects, a slow but stabile improvement is taking place in the under-developed regions of the EU, further  supported by the results of technological development. Thanks to targeted programmes, the industries started to acquire new spaces out of urban areas, largely supported by EU funds. In parallel with this phenomenon, the role of the tertiary sector is constantly growing in large cities and  central regional areas. For the rural population, these processes mean that the job opportunities formerly available mostly in large cities are being re-located to regional centres, resulting in better accessibility for the rural population. Fortunately, today’s ICT solutions also enable the wide accessibility of distance work opportunities. The transformation of our lifestyles also result in the transition of our use of space. In the EU, urban areas are ideal for creating tourism spaces; however, the under-developed areas of rural regions cannot live up to the expectations. One of the unique characteristics of tourism is the special use of space. In rural areas, the use of tourism spaces is unique and significantly different from urban areas.

João Romão (p), Peter Nijkmap, Karima Kourtit (p), Bart Neuts

In the context of fierce global competition for attracting high skilled labor or financial resources for a sustainable development of modern urban economies, the analysis of the determinants of the attractiveness of contemporary cities is of critical importance for urban management. It is noteworthy that urban tourism is one of the major segments of contemporary tourism dynamics, with a significant contribution to the strong development and raising importance of this sector within the global economy.
This double process of urban magnetism, related to the growth of resident population and tourism demand, seems to have clear links with the creative dynamics and the livability conditions in each urban settlement, which can be broadly summarized under the heading of the “smart city”.
The present paper presents an innovative structural analysis of the determinants of urban attractiveness, based on a large and diverse set of indicators for 40 global cities, taking into consideration their impacts on population growth and tourism demand and focusing, in particular, on the role of creative activities and the perspective of creative agents. Keeping in mind that this process can potentially lead to the emergence of some conflicts between the expectations and interests of guests and visitors, our results offer several relevant implications for urban and tourism management.
Among other conclusions, our analysis suggests that, although the aspects related to livability seem to have similar importance for both groups, residents appear to be more motivated by innovation dynamics (research and development activities) and urban environment, while visitors are more sensitive to the aspects related to cultural interaction and accessibility.