Abstract
An editorial series, which takes its name from the international network of schools
of architecture Designing Heritage Tourism Landscapes, is being launched together
with the book Architecture, Tourism and Marginal Areas. Research and Design Pro-
posals. The network, founded in 2015, brings together sixteen schools’ which share
educational and research programmes aimed at studying the relationship between
heritage, enhancement and tourist use of places.
The expression heritage tourism? defines that particular sector of cultural tourism
not yet safeguarded or subject to protection regimes –
merged by the capacity of
expressing a relationship with a valuable past.
Like many other forms fragmenting and diversifying the touristic phenomenon,
also heritage tourism can be interpreted in a two ways: first, as a powerful driving
force for development in territorial regeneration processes but secondly, at the
same time, putting at risk the true sense of places. Such form of tourism aims to
determine the economical reactivation of territories that have lost ancient func-
tions, of cities or part of cities in decline and of those marginal areas which are the
subject of this book, but conversely it can cause alterations to the uses of buildings
and to the original nature of public spaces, physical modifications not less evident
than those introduced by other productive activities, transformations of appar-
ently hyper-protected places into empty theatrical backdrops. It is exactly on this
two-sided character of touristic phenomenon and on the associations heritage/
tourism, safeguarding/accessibility, conservation/fruition, that the DHTL series
focuses its attention, presenting theoretical researches and design experimentations.