Abstract
Together with Venice, Dubrovnik represent the emblematic city losing all its functions due to overtourism, including the outstanding universal value which placed them on the UNESCO list. Reports on the UNESCO/ICOMOS Reactive Monitoring Mission to the Old City of Dubrovnik evolves around the central issue of the excessive tourist growth and the need to manage it. Venice management plan was drafted in the prepandemic times, while Dubrovnik’s during the pandemic with the implementation period in post-pandemic era. The restoration of the living city, protected in 1979 with its outstanding universal value, is closely linked with the ideas of degrowth scenario. The standard overtourism diagnosis of the historic centre affected on exodus of the local population, increased costs of living, gentrification, strong dependency of the local economy on the one sector, frequent traffic congestions, increased quantities of waste and endangering public green areas. According to the previous research, increasing development pressure in Dubrovnik has led to disappearance of green zones which are important for mitigating the consequence of climate change. COVID-19 pandemic caused dramatic decline in the number of visitors as a consequence of reduced number of flights and shipping lines as well as imposed social distancing measures, consequently affecting life quality in the historic centre and causing complete collapse of the local economic system. The COVID-19 crisis represents an opportunity to create a completely new development vision of the City focused on degrowth scenario. Could transitioning toward urban degrowth be the adequate response to pandemic aftermath? Could new urban development strategy foster the resilience to the consequences of climate change? The aim of this paper is to look at the current theoretical outline of degrowth in urbanism and local economic development and to explore the possibilities and limitation in the specific institutional outline. The results of this research will offer an insight on how specific European cities, which have undergone similar transformation from overtourism to undertourism, could start to re-invent themselves to become more sustainable and more resilient. References: D'Alisa, G., Demaria, F., & Kallis, G. (Eds.). (2014). Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era (1st ed.). Routledge. Ferreira, A., & von Schönfeld, K. (2020). Interlacing planning and degrowth scholarship: A manifesto for an interdisciplinary alliance. DISP, 56(1), 53-64. Fletcher, R., Murray Mas, I., Blanco-Romero, A., & Blázquez-Salom, M. (2019). Tourism and degrowth: an emerging agenda for research and praxis. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 27(12), 1745-1763. Panayiotopoulos, A and Pisano, C (2019). Overtourism dystopias and socialist utopias: Towards an urban armature for Dubrovnik. Tourism Planning and Development, 16 (4). 393-410. Victor, P. A. (2012). Growth, degrowth and climate change: A scenario analysis. Ecological economics, 84, 206-212.
