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The significance of smart mobility practices in shaping cities from a smart perspective has grown in recent years, influencing policies and the choices made by inhabitants. This transformation has led to the emergence of novel services and strategies, creating a new, vibrant and highly personalised urban environment that caters to the needs and preferences of both local residents and visitors. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the influence of smart mobility practices on tourism flows in cities, considering the moderating effect of airport activities on this relationship.

Using a generalised method of moments estimation and focusing on 20 Italian cities over an eight-year period, the authors highlight the current relationship between smart mobility practices and tourism flows. Moreover, the authors demonstrate that the yearly advancement of airports positively moderates this relationship.

The findings indicate a significant relationship between smart mobility practices in modern cities and tourism inflows because they influence the development of tourism services and emerging trends such as smart tourism and smart destinations. Furthermore, airport activities as a proxy for city openness play a crucial role in this link. The study shows that airports have an incremental impact on tourism and on the relationship between tourism and sustainable practices.

The limitations of this quantitative approach include the focus on a single country, the challenge of measuring the development of smart mobility practices due to a lack of standardised variables and the need for future research to expand the sample to different countries in relation to tourism inflows.

This study has practical implications for policymakers and governance in their task of effectively coordinating internal smart mobility practices and managing incoming tourism flows.

This study has social implications, highlighting the need for policymakers and governance to address the societal impacts of smart mobility practices and tourism inflows, ensuring inclusive and sustainable outcomes for local communities.

This study contributes to the existing literature as one of the first attempts to examine the interplay between smart mobility practices in smart cities and tourism flows. Furthermore, it emphasises the role of airports in this relationship, highlighting how the interaction between these variables benefits both stakeholders.

As historic cities evolve, change in their urban form can be expected. Yet, uncontrolled change of land plots, which represent a significant element of urban form, leads to uncontrolled change in buildings' configurations and typologies threatening accordingly the urban character of heritage contexts. Mechanisms controlling plot subdivision, however, can play an effective role in guiding developments and in controlling urban change in heritage settings. The present study seeks to assist decision-makers in their attempt to control urban change in heritage areas through a plot-based approach.

This paper is divided into three sections: the first focuses on plot subdivision as a key aspect of urban form; the second illustrates the case of the heritage village of New Gourna in Luxor and the third includes discussion and implications of adopting a plot-based morphological approach to control morphological transformation in heritage contexts. For the morphological analysis of New Gourna, the study relied on comparative cartographic analysis of original drawings of the village versus the situation in 2022. The morphological analysis focuses mainly on qualitative and quantitative aspects of plot configurations and building patterns.

Findings support the urgency of establishing a plot-based strategy to maintain urban character of heritage contexts in Egypt and call for a plot-based morphological approach to control change and inform new development attempts.

The present research provides an assessment of the morphological transformation of the heritage village of New Gourna. In addition, it proposes a plot-based approach for heritage contexts under transformation.