Rural Slow Routes as Connectors of Local Communities for the Promotion of Place Identity

Maria Elena Menconi, Rosaria Abbate, Giulia Ceccarelli, Anna Grassi and David Grohmann ()
Additional contact information
Maria Elena Menconi: Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences, University of Perugia, 06100 Perugia, Italy
Rosaria Abbate: Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences, University of Perugia, 06100 Perugia, Italy
Giulia Ceccarelli: Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences, University of Perugia, 06100 Perugia, Italy
Anna Grassi: Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences, University of Perugia, 06100 Perugia, Italy
David Grohmann: Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences, University of Perugia, 06100 Perugia, Italy

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 4, 1-19

Abstract: European, national, and regional policies have promoted slow routes in recent decades. This paper aims to define a multi-scale method to use these routes to promote the identities of rural places. The method develops (i) a GIS-based network analysis to define the boundaries of the service area of the route and then (ii) a participatory strategy to promote its rural identity. Furthermore, this paper studies the quality criteria for slow European routes (iii) to define quality criteria specifically for rural slow routes and to connect the case study to the broader European network. The results show that the European certification standard of EuroVelo is a valid document to evaluate the quality of slow routes in rural contexts. The case study is a slow route along the Trasimeno lake (Italy), 61 km long, called the Trasimeno ring. The service area of the route has a surface of 325 km 2 and is defined as the surface that can be reached with detours from the route not exceeding 5 km along rural roads with low traffic (max 2000 v/d) and gentle slopes (maximum gradient of 15% and a cumulative elevation change for every kilometer of the road lower than 50 m). The participatory process was developed for one municipality (15.35% of the service area) with 326 km of rural streets and 35 activities linked to agriculture. In total, 80% of the rural stakeholders participated in building an online collaborative map to promote the area. The results show that rural stakeholders evaluate collaborative maps as an effective strategy for encouraging tourists and inhabitants to discover, use and respect rural place identities.

Keywords: rural landscape; green infrastructures; greenways; cycle routes; EuroVelo; European certification quality standards; service area analysis; network analysis; slow tourism; collaborative maps (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/4/3344/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/4/3344/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:4:p:3344-:d:1065510

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().