On March 7, 2024, Alessandro Scandiffio, professor at Politecnico di Milano, held the seminar: “A network of slow routes ‘in between’ Italian UNESCO sites”. The conference is part of the series of seminars “Design-Future” which take place in the Milan Building and are open to all XJTU students.

The lecture aimed to show how slow tourism routes that cross fragile landscapes in Italy can support territorial development strategies in inner areas of the country. The research has been applied to the territories “in between” UNESCO sites to reduce the phenomenon of over-tourism which affects the main sites and, at the same time, promote the enhancement of the surrounding landscapes characterised by high-value cultural and natural heritage, which are less frequented by tourists and inhabitants. The research has been applied in different regions of Italy (Apulia-Basilicata 2019, Piedmont 2021, Sicily 2023, ongoing Lombardy and Central Italy) by involving local actors and stakeholders, trying to test a large-scale strategy that can be scalable and replicable in different territorial contexts, and, at the same time, related to the spatial configuration and specificity of each fragile territory. The research is strongly structured through a mapping process that produces different forms of representation such as sketches, conceptual schemes, and maps. The lecture also shows other related topics: the parametric definition of slow tourism routes according to seasonal conditions of the landscape, visible by satellite imagery, and the measuring of the spatial quality of the slow routes.