Intermodality Between Infrastructure and Slow Mobility Routes: Railway Stations and Rest Areas as Nodes to Support a Strategy for Sustainable Tourism in UNESCO Landscapes

This research presents new strategies for sustainable mobility that aims at enhancing the role of slow networks (ancient and minor roads/paths) which enable to access to a wide range of places and heritage widespread over the landscape, by improving intermodality from the nodes of major infrastructural networks (i.e. service areas on motorways, railway stations). The research is based on a geographical and multiscalar approach to the landscape, which considers its main components (rivers, valleys, mountains) as fundamental structures for the reading, interpretation and design of places. Within this framework, the research shows some insights on the routes network which crosses the territories spotted by UNESCO sites (WHL, MaB, GG, CCN), with the aim to reduce the phenomenon of overtourism which affects the main UNESCO sites and, at the same time, promote the enhancement of the less frequented places which are localized in the surrounding landscapes. The research has been developed in different Italian regions, and it found some sustainable key-design principles that are scalable and replicable in other territorial contexts. The research is strongly structured through a mapping process that produces different forms of representation such as sketches, conceptual schemes, and maps that envision territorial development strategies.