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The purpose of this paper is to understand the effects of mass tourism on urban communities in the historic centre of Venice, Italy. Through a survey in Cannaregio district, it explores the correlation between tourism pressures and the depopulation phenomenon and its mechanisms, the agents involved and the effects of depopulation on local life.

Semi-structured interviews with local residents, international experts and municipality officers, together with an analysis of literature on the topic allowed the collection of original qualitative data.

Venice is a popular tourist destination which risks being overwhelmed by its own success. Aside from environmental and structural issues, the city is experiencing socio-economic changes, such as the depopulation of its historic centre. The paper suggests that both direct and indirect relationships exist between tourism pressures and depopulation in Venice. The findings point to a need to develop strategies and manage tourism efficiently, and to promote diversification of local business in the interests of reducing tourism-induced demographic changes and improving local residents’ quality of life.

The outcomes of this study will be useful for local residents and heritage managers in understanding the mechanisms behind tourism mismanagement and the phenomenon of depopulation. Such heightened understanding will be useful in encouraging future cooperation between stakeholders and highlighting the key role that local residents play.

The study analyses tourism pressures and depopulation using qualitative data, focussing not only on the people-related aspect with its loss of intangible practices, but also on the property-related aspects of tourism and their effects on the local real estate market.

This article analyses the household dynamics in Colonsay during the severe depopulation of 1841–1891. The nineteenth century dynamics are then related to the twentieth century community as it now exists. The Colonsay history of crisis is compared to European examples as impetus towards any theory and model of community decline and future.

The lesser-known tourist destinations thanks to new technologies are experiencing a period of growth and development. Sharing economy has given new opportunities to smaller places, in particular the villages that are living a difficult period due to depopulation. The revival of small villages has been supported by the spread of good practices which, with the help of the Internet and the sharing economy, has led to a greater social, economic and tourist growth. The opportunities to emerge on the international market have increased thanks to the introduction of web and social networks. Information and communications technologies (ICTs) help overcome accessibility and isolation problems in some places. Sharing resources and increasingly democratic communication channels have been the basis for the creation of a new economy based on authenticity, unique experiences and consequently a slow tourism linked to rural villages. The aim of this research is to show how the sharing economy is important for the development of little villages; technologies in particular help the less-known destinations to grow up economically and socially. This research analyzes the concept of authenticity, very important for the experiential tourism and the sustainability considered the key for a good development of places. Then it considered the idea of technologies related to the development of little villages, with some example of good practice from Italy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the experiences of the USA and other nations with developed veterinary infrastructure and identify the critical factors that led the evolution of the US foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) response strategy.

A thorough literature review was conducted, including official reports of US FMD outbreaks and peer-reviewed articles on outbreaks in previously FMD-free countries. Textual analysis was conducted on past and current publicly available US FMD response plans, identifying the use of the term “vaccination” or “emergency vaccination” indicating the potential use of these strategies.

The USA has shifted from a strategy of exclusively stamping-out to a response strategy that would consider emergency vaccination, including vaccinate to slaughter and vaccinate to live, in any FMD outbreak. The factors that led to this shift in policy include economic factors, the emergence of new vaccine technologies, the changed landscape of the US livestock industry, and the experiences of other typically FMD-free countries.

An outbreak in the USA is likely to rapidly outpace the current capacity for stamping-out. Experience from other FMD outbreaks, and lack of publicly available literature from the USA, indicates that it is critically important that further consideration, sufficient attention, and stakeholder deliberation need to occur to ensure vaccination strategies (to live and to slaughter) are implementable in an outbreak.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of build back better (BBB) in contexts affected by depopulation and shrinking economies discussing how and if its principles are able to drive the recovery pattern toward a sustainability re-development path.

BBB principles’ usefulness in driving toward a sustainable post-disaster recovery has been tested in L’Aquila’s area (Italy) – severely affected by an earthquake in 2009 – through interviews and analyses of reconstruction plans and policies.

Although most of the BBB principles can be recognized within the intentions of plans and policies, the recovery process highlights a major fallacy in addressing the pre-disaster socio-economic stresses inducing to shrinkage and depopulation development lock-ins.

Although most of the principles can be recognized in the intentions of plans and policies, the recovery process highlights a main fallacy of the “BBB paradigm”: the need of addressing pre-disaster socio-economic stresses while recovering from the shocks was not explicitly nor implicitly addressed.

Shrinkage as a process of territorial transformation has been little explored in relation to natural hazards and post-disaster contexts. Indeed, while from one side BBB concept and principles drive toward a potential mitigation of the main risks while re-building, it results challenging to overcome the built environment re-building priorities to question whether, what and how to re-build while investing in socio-economic recovery. Reverting, or accepting, shrinkage could indeed implies to not build back part of the urban fabric, while investing in skills and capacity building, which, in turn, would be difficult to justify through the reconstruction budget. The tension between re-building (better, the built environment) and re-development (skills and networks, at the expense of re-building) is critical when BBB faces disasters happening in shrinking territories.

A recent analysis of wages has shown that within the productive structure of the French economy a two‐fold process of factor substitution is under way, namely the substition of capital for labour and of non‐manual for manual workers. By the logic of neo‐classical distribution theory, the relative price of manual labour should be increasing as its marginal productivity rises. But computations which we have carried out for the French economy between 1949 and 1973 yield the opposite result: the relative price of labour has fallen steadily over the period. The aim of this article is to attempt to explain how much of this decreasing trend is attributable to changes in the structure of the active population and how much is due to changes in the structure of the prices of labour. For this purpose, and following the work of Phelps Brown and Sheila Hopkins, we have calculated an index reflecting the relationship between the index of manual workers' wage rates and the index of national income per head of the occupied population. This relationship represents what is usually referred to as the “wage‐income ratio”. (WIR), with the difference that, in this case, it is limited to wage rates in the private sector. Changes in the index of the WIR can be regarded as reflecting changes in the relative index of a unit of labour if it is accepted that the index of income per head of the occupied population itself can be interpreted as an index of the price of productive factors. This hypothesis is accepted by Phelps Brown and S. Hopkins: “the wage‐income ratio gives us the rate of exchange of a unit of wage‐earners' work, not against quantities of produce but against quantities of other factors”.

This chapter delineates the conditions, challenges and opportunities for the sustainability of small entrepreneurial firms involved in local food tourism. It raises awareness on how these businesses can enhance their competitiveness in this market. It puts forward an analytical framework that is based on the economic, social, environmental and cultural sustainability of small local food tourism entrepreneurs in Swedish, Italian and Spanish contexts. This research implies that the financial sustainability of these small enterprises is contributing to local economic growth and employment in their country. From the social sustainability aspect these tourism businesses are intrinsically linked to local communities. Their responsible practices are meant to safeguard the environmental sustainability as well as the preservation of their local culture and heritage. At the same time, they enable them to add value to their destination’s cultural sustainability.

As computerised manufacture merges into computer integrated manufacture, with expert computer systems controlling other expert systems, where do human beings come in? Are they gaining or losing? Are they drifting into a catch‐22 situation? Maybe the time will come when they are merely spectators. The mushrooming progress of technology is reflected on, who is gaining and who is losing are questioned and suggested plan of action to keep progress – at least technological progress – on the rails is presented.

Smart village may be a new, and for that matter a rather fancy, concept, yet the thrust of problems and challenges that it speaks to is by no means trivial or new. Hence the imperative inherent in the smart village concept and debate is to diagnose the status quo, propose viable ways of addressing problems and challenges, build consensus about the need to take action, and to actually follow the suit at micro-, mezzo-, and macro-levels. The concept of smart village made its inroad into the policymaking and academic debates nearly simultaneously, thus suggesting that a window of opportunity exists to undertake concerted action in view of revitalizing rural areas, and so villages, across the European Union. This chapter offers an insight into the conceptual and empirical caveats and opportunities the concept and, indeed, approach termed ‘smart villages’ brings about. To this end, the genealogy and the relevance of the concept and the approach are discussed. Against this background, the content of the entire volume is elaborated. A few final remarks follow.