Floating strategies for Adriatic-Ionian tourism development: the Observatory of Mediterranean Basin as platform for joining academic research and private actors

Tourism often acquires a negative meaning, due to the numerous bad practices spread worldwide. Tourism is in fact commonly rated as one of the main causes of land exploitation, landscape consumption and local identity loss. This is also the case of Adriatic-Ionian region where the coastline is seriously damaged by touristic structures built in the last 50 years. Still, tourism is a fundamental surviving resource for a territory and its community and touristic development is seen as a tool for territorial promotion. Starting from the Balkan regions our interest will be extended to all the cities that face the Adriatic-Ionian sea. In this framework, the Observatory of the Mediterranean Basin (OMB) intends to highlight some topics that Balkan regions and Adriatic-Ionian cities have in common, considering all the aspects related to the issue of land and water. The paper explores new strategies based on the water element and water- landscapes in order to promote and foster sustainable tourism in the Adriatic-Ionian region. The main goal is to bring together the interests and objectives of different actors. OMB’s role, as department of applied research unit, is to study and monitor the territory, elaborate common strategies and involve private actors. Following this strategy, university becomes a place for thinking, where academic expertise is combined with the economic needs of contemporary society. The promoted strategies need to meet features such as flexibility, impermanence, mobility and sustainability. All these concepts are embedded in the idea of ephemeral landscape. The meaning of ephemeral landscape is related to the idea of recovering landscapes through a new model of hybrid systems on the sea: floating platforms – inhabited by different activities, following the territorial features and responding to local needs - are designed to be “activating hotspots” along the Adriatic-Ionian coast.