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The purpose of this paper is to examine the need to go beyond the “monumentalist” vision in restoration of built heritage and embrace principles of sustainability in this architectural practice.

Case studies as conceptual reference. Architectural typology.

The environmental crisis that is currently recognized as one of the most important problems that contemporary society must address urgently is a situation that still has not permeated enough in the practice of monumental restoration, which is still carried out using unlimited resources.

In that sense, the close relationship between the built and the natural environment as an essential ingredient of the vernacular is analysed.

Much of the sustainable principles, that have been put forward as an example to be followed, are elements that have hundreds of years in the constructive tradition.

In this context, vernacular architecture has much to contribute in the field of conservation by the enormous accumulated knowledge that its shapes, materials and social use represent.

This experience must be retrieved, but not as an aseptic laboratory experiment, but through its updated application and active implementation to improve the quality of life for inhabitants and contribute to the preservation of our cultural and natural environments.

There is an open discussion in the geographic information community about the use of digital libraries or search engines for the discovery of resources. Some researchers suggest that search engines are a feasible alternative for searching geographic web services based on anecdotal evidence. The purpose of this study is to measure the performance of Bing (formerly Microsoft Live Search), Google and Yahoo! in searching standardised XML documents that describe, identify and locate geographic web services.

The study performed an automated evaluation of three search engines using their application programming interfaces. The queries asked for XML documents describing geographic web services, and documents containing links to those documents. Relevant XML documents linked from the documents found in the search results were also included in the evaluation.

The study reveals that the discovery of geographic web services in search engines does not require the use of advanced search operators. Data collected suggest that a resource‐oriented search should combine simple queries to search engines with the exploration of the pages linked from the search results. Finally the study identifies Yahoo! as the best performer.

This is the first study that measures and compares the performance of major search engines in the discovery of geographic web services. Previous studies were focused on demonstrating the technical feasibility of the approach. The paper also reveals that some technical advances in search engines could harm resource‐oriented queries.

The main purpose of this paper is to contribute to the ongoing literature on the pertinence of TALC (tourism area life cycle) to model and analyse mature destinations, using quantitative data and alternative functional forms. With this purpose, this work analyses the recent data on tourist demand in Tenerife (Canary Islands), which is supposed to be playing the role of “refuge” with respect to other competing resorts, when the latter ones present political instability after the so-called Arab Springs, particularly the Middle East and North Africa.

To analyse the data, and to explore potential epiphenomenon, nonlinear competing regression analysis were performed (logistic, Gaussian and logarithmic), taking into account some insights from tourism life cycle theories.

Some suggestions are presented for political management of these destinations that are still working under a moratorium on tourist infrastructure.

Once the TALC is accepted – even under discussion – in the scholarly fore, certain incentives arise to identify, interpret and communicate signals of maturity. Public funds and specific policies (moratoria) can then be solicited to political instances. Further empirical research, complementary quantitative approaches, along with new data that confronts the evolution of demand in Tenerife with paulatine reactivation of competing destinations, will be strongly required to overcome the limitations of this first attempt and to properly determine the effectiveness of rejuvenation policies. Besides, additional quantitative data should be considered to explore the potential explanatory factors beyond the time series analysis into models that are more theoretical.

The results suggest that the diagnosis of maturity was at least premature in the first place, poorly based on data analysis and fast in promoting specific policies whose effectiveness is under discussion even after decades.