Sense of a place: liveability and tourism quality in territories

Abstract

The paper will approach the relation rural-urban because over the next decade urban agglomerations will benefit from current economic and demographic trends whereas many remote rural areas face increasing difficulties and needs to better capitalize their territorial potential which is visible in the tourism development. At the same time more remote rural areas with low population density and a difficult economic development are facing an increasing dichotomy between rural and urban areas. This is the fragility of the limits between the rural tourism and the urban tourism which comes with its dangers over the authentic rural. Our questions are: How the rural areas may benefit from an increased interaction with the urban areas close by and/or from an increasingly diversified tourism base? How they also face the challenges of not losing their rural characteristics and identity versus urban tourism development?