Project description
The future of urban tourism spaces and the inclusion of age-friendly mobilities
Tourism cities will face multiple challenges in the coming years: urbanisation, population ageing, and the ongoing pressure of tourism mobility on sustainability and inclusion. The growing presence of older adults in tourist and resident communities pushes urban agendas to accommodate people of different ages and mobility needs, especially in tourism spaces. The EU-funded ENTOURAGE project aims to understand and address the negative effects of tourism extremes – overtourism and undertourism – by pursuing an ‘age-friendly tourism’. To promote an integrated approach to urban challenges, the project uses the Age-Friendly City framework, which argues that focusing on the societal needs of older people will enhance the quality of cities for everyone.
Objective
By 2050, two-thirds of the population will live in cities, with people over 65 as the fastest growing cohort. In the EU, their share is projected to increase from 17.5% in 2010 to 29.5% in 2060. At the same time, intense movements of people, vehicles, capital and information challenge the sustainability and social inclusion in cities as they are. Such developments rapidly alter the requirements of currently dominant mobility systems, to cater for the needs of all people visiting or residing in the city. Recent urban transformations are producing new mobility clashes and encounters, which are felt by some groups more than others. Tourist cities are places where such clashes may be most intense and manifold, as they act as visitor hub and home to diverse resident and working populations. Population ageing requires a new understanding of the experiences of urban tourism spaces, at a time when the instability of mainstream city tourism has come to surface.
ENTOURAGE unites mobilities, ageing and tourism studies to understand and tackle the negative effects of ‘overtourism’, and instead proposes an ‘age-friendly tourism’. It initiates a data-driven, participatory study with the aim to examine urban mobility transformations in European tourist cities and their effects on the social inclusion of older visitors and residents. The project takes place in the framework of the Age-friendly City, which argues that a focus on the societal needs of older people improves the quality of cities for all. Its interdisciplinary interface promises an innovative combination of qualitative and mobile methods, to capture the age-inclusiveness of urban tourist spaces. It mobilises the knowledge, skills and networks of expert institutions in tourism, urban ageing and smart urban analytics to propose an original combination of resident and visitor perspectives, creating new knowledge about their negotiations of urban quality and conflict.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
43003 Tarragona
Spain