EURECA: Exploring Urban touRist Environment Through Child-Based Activities

The touristification is affecting specific urban contexts on an international scale, highlighting how economic interests drive decision-making dynamics regarding public space. Specific stakeholders - such as children - are often excluded from decision-making processes aimed at enhancing public spaces. Starting from previous research, the article presents some results that emerged from the implementation of a replicable hybrid methodology aimed at including child-inhabitants in the analysis of urban contexts under tourist pressure. This is a first step to activate a territorial process capable of placing under-represented stakeholders at the center, reinterpreting the co-city model, to co-evaluate – in an evolutionary approach - shared strategies for mitigating over-tourism, aiming at the transition towards sustainable tourism’s development. This was possible by involving the children-inhabitants co-exploring an exemplary place - Capri Island - through the school collaboration - as an institution capable of accelerating urban and social regeneration. Therefore, starting from an action-research participatory approach, the kids’ involvement has required an in-depth study of ethical issues that limit their inclusion in the research, orienting for slower research that collects qualitative data, building a process of continuous exchange between adult and child researcher, in a logic of mutual learning. This approach is implemented by recognizing the children’s skills, by developing a three-day creative workshop called “EURECA” as an enabling context aimed at stimulating them in co-exploring the socio-urban context, using photography, drawing, collaborative mapping and situational interviews, to intercept issues of children’s interest, focusing on the reclaimed public space, to collectively develop a non-touristic children-based imaginary.