Abstract ID: 3.11173 | Not reviewed | Requested as: Talk | TBA | TBA

The scientific world, tourism stakeholders, media and the third sector seem to be increasingly interested in the problem of ageing, obsolescence and the decline of tourist facilities in the mountains. This problem is accelerated by global issues, including global warming, which accentuates the fragility of tourist resorts and ski lifts. However, the process of overgrowth of tourist infrastructure refers to a broader issue, namely the temporalities and life cycles of tourist architecture and infrastructure. Indeed, while tourist practices evolve in line with societal and economic changes, the physical transformations that occour in the landscape are hardely reversible. The massification of winter tourism, which has affected most Alpine countries since the 1960s, has left a heavy legacy, which has taken the form of the construction of thousands of ski lifts and hundreds of ski resorts on mountain peaks. After an introduction of the debate at the alpine scale, our presentation focuses on the case study of Lombardy Region in the Italian Alps, characterized by small-medium size ski resorts located at relative low altitude which experience problems of underutilization, disuse and financial loss. Given the physical legacy of the problem and the need of envisioning long-term territorial strategies for reimagining the future of these destinations, we argue that spatial planning could play a pivotal role in ensuring sustainable territorial development. This issue opens a broader investigation into the role of spatial planning in facing the challenges posed by tourism decline, analyzing the existing tools in Lombardy. It also invites reflection on the scale through which these challenges are tackled and where gaps occur within current frameworks. Alongside formal planning instruments, attention is given to the governance mechanisms for managing declining ski resorts, including how stakeholder involvement, financial support, and legal frameworks can either enable or constrain adaptive responses. Equally important is the consideration of informal practices, for activating alternative pathways where institutional responses may fall short. The contribute, through the Lombard case, provides a critical examination on the current role of spatial planning in addressing the problem of decline in high mountains, highlighting the main bottlenecks and opportunities for their effective integration.