Tourism Transformation, Spatial Justice and Inner Peripheries

Abstract

Climate change is profoundly reshaping tourism geographies, particularly in mountain regions and inner peripheral areas where historically dominant, climate-sensitive development models are becoming increasingly unstable. While a growing body of literature addresses tourism adaptation through the lenses of sustainability and resilience, less attention has been paid to the role of infrastructure in mediating uneven adaptation processes and their spatial justice implications. This contribution advances a critical, spatially grounded perspective on tourism transformation by conceptualizing infrastructure as a socio-spatial territorial mediator that selectively organizes accessibility, visibility, and investability across territories. Drawing on theories of spatial justice, uneven geographical development, and mobilities, the paper links tourism adaptation to processes of territorial selectivity and peripheralization. Mountain and inner peripheral regions – focusing on the Italian context–are approached as analytical laboratories in which the spatial effects of climate change and adaptation strategies become particularly visible. Historically, selective infrastructural investments oriented toward mass and seasonal tourism have generated strong path dependencies, locking territories into development trajectories increasingly misaligned with evolving climatic and socio-economic conditions. More recent adaptation strategies emphasize slow tourism, soft mobility, and low-impact infrastructures, often framed as inclusive and sustainable alternatives. The paper critically interrogates these narratives, arguing that “soft” infrastructures may function as new spatial filters, producing selective accessibility and symbolic valorization without necessarily redistributing essential services or long-term economic opportunities. To capture this tension, the paper introduces the concept of selective resilience as an analytical category that contributes to ongoing debates on uneven adaptation and spatial justice in tourism geographies. Rather than offering prescriptive solutions, the paper provides analytical tools to interpret how climate change, infrastructure, and tourism intersect in shaping future geographies of accessibility, marginality, and resilience in inner peripheral regions.