Planners in the face of mining cultural heritage: tourist development at L'Argentiera, Italy

Contemporary planners are often confronted with the issue of recovering settlements which rose as a necessary complement of former productive activities and nowadays have lost their original functions. In particular, mining entrepreneurship throughout Europe has produced during the last century remarkable effects on the built and natural environment, by inducing typical changes in local landscape patterns. A correct interpretation of the latter today may reveal a strategic endowment of local societies, since mining heritage may constitute a factor of comparative advantage for a contemporary tourism destination. In this paper, the authors illustrate the proposal of Integrated Master Plan of L’Argentiera, a former mining settlement in north-western Sardinia, Italy. They describe the opportunities of this proposal, by referring to the tourist flows most likely attracted in a destination recovered according to mining heritage tourism led policies and planning, and to monetary beneficial impacts induced on regional development, in terms of extra revenues and employment directly and indirectly generated.