Tourism Development and Landscape Conservation: Finding the Balance
A special issue of Land (ISSN 2073-445X). This special issue belongs to the section "Land Socio-Economic and Political Issues".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2026 | Viewed by 771
Editors
Interests: tourism; heritage; cultural heritage; unesco; historic cities
Interests: sustainability; urban planning; rural turism; ecotourism; agritourism; regional geography; ecology; landscape analysis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Tourism development has become a major driver of change in landscapes worldwide, reshaping both natural and cultural environments of outstanding value through new uses, infrastructures, and narratives. While tourism is frequently presented as a tool for economic diversification and territorial revitalization, its impacts on landscape structure, identity, and heritage values remain unevenly addressed in academic research and policy practice. In many contexts, tourism-driven transformations are analysed from an economic perspective, in others from management perspectives, or through conservation-oriented approaches.
This Special Issue seeks to foreground the complex and often contested relationship between tourism development and landscape conservation, understanding landscapes as socially constructed, dynamic systems co-produced by environmental processes and cultural practices. We are particularly interested in contributions that explore how tourism influences landscape change, how conservation frameworks condition tourism practices, and how local communities, visitors, and institutions negotiate these interactions across different spatial and temporal scales.
We welcome empirical, conceptual, and methodological contributions that address, among others, the following themes:
- Tourism-driven landscape transformations in natural and cultural settings;
- The impact of tourism on the urban cultural landscape;
- Heritage management, place identity, and landscape representation in tourism development;
- Governance, planning instruments, and policy frameworks mediating tourism–landscape relations;
- Tourism, landscape perception, and the construction of destination images;
- Conflicts, trade-offs, and synergies between conservation objectives and tourism uses;
- Risks of fossilization or touristification;
- Community participation, power relations, and social inequalities in landscape management;
- Multi-scalar dynamics, from local landscapes to global tourism networks.
Contributions drawing from tourism studies, geography, landscape studies, heritage studies, environmental planning, and related human–environment fields are particularly encouraged. The Special Issue aims to promote interdisciplinary dialogue and critical perspectives that advance a more nuanced understanding of how tourism development and landscape conservation can be jointly addressed.
Researchers interested in contributing are invited to submit original research articles or reviews that reflect these themes and offer insights applicable across diverse regional contexts.
We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.
Dr. José David Albarrán Periáñez
Dr. Cristina Lupu
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- tourism–landscape interactions
- landscape conservation
- cultural and natural heritage
- governance and planning
- landscape transformation
- tourism development
- processes of heritage and tourism valorization
- challenges and opportunities
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