Apennines in Transitions: Between Tourism Monoculture, Depopulation and Emerging Community-Based Practices

The paper examines, through the lens of degrowth, the tensions reshaping tourism in the Apennines, a mountain system marked by uneven trajectories. Tourist flows are increasingly concentrated in a few infrastructure-intensive hubs, mainly oriented toward winter sports and market-driven development, while vast out-of-the-loop areas remain largely invisible, affected by demographic decline, ageing, and the erosion of local functions. Tourist colonisation and abandonment are thus interpreted as interrelated outcomes of the same growth-oriented paradigm, further exacerbated by climate change and socio-demographic fragilities. Against this background, the paper explores the emergence of a “third way” based on slow, relational, and community-based tourism practices, understood as territorially embedded experiments that challenge growth-dependent models. It pursues three main objectives: to map the morphological, socio-demographic, and functional discontinuities shaping the Apennine ridge; to analyse the coexistence of extractive tourism models and place-based alternatives; and to examine, through a case study in the Monti Picentini, the transformative potential of these practices. The findings show that territorial micro-innovations can emerge even in fragile southern Apennine contexts, but they contribute to regeneration only when supported by sustained institutional commitment, avoiding forms of involuntary or recessionary degrowth.