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Presentation: 'Tourism and Urban Diversity in the UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Sassi di Matera and Amsterdam'

Anna Jonkmans, Laxmi Haigh, Yannick Aliet

"This presentation explores the concept of diversity as a defining characteristic of cities and suggests that urban spaces tend to undergo cycles of growth and diversification. The research draws on the work of Jane Jacobs, which is expanded into a fully reproducible framework to study urban diversity. As part of our present conference contribution, we discuss our method for quantifying urban diversity and present a case study of the historic quarter Sassi in Matera, Italy, to illustrate how cities naturally evolve through cycles of growth and diversification. Particular interest is given to the role of tourism as part of this process, and a comparison is made with Amsterdam.

The research findings show that, since the 1980s, Sassi has become more diverse, in part due to tourism-related activities. However, the rapid expansion of the hotel industry has led to concerns about the loss of diversity in the case of further expansion. We use diversity maps to forecast the potential impact of further hotel expansion on urban diversity, highlighting the delicate balance between growth and diversity in cities. The case of Sassi is compared with a similar analysis in Amsterdam. The contribution relates to the topic “Blueprint for messy cities” because planners and politicians converged to evacuate Sassi in the 1950s, believing it was too much of a 'mess'. Our approach is designed to reveal the qualities that this 'mess' comes with."

What is urban diversity? In this presentation, Diana Della Pietra (MOST Architecture) talks about diversity as "the coexistence of different urban types such as restaurants, houses, churches, museums and so on" and concludes with this definition: “Diversity is the probability that any two different things meet”. This definition makes it a mathematical concept, and enables to actually measure urban diversity. Diana shares about the Diversity Index Method which consists of the following steps:

  1.  Defining urban diversity
  2.  Collecting data
  3. Performing the analysis: Classification, Granularity & Diversity Index
  4. Visualisation of the results
  5. Validation of the results
  6. Employing the empirical results

This methodology makes it possible to make predictions for urban policies. The researchers suggest a more localized approach to urban planning. 

Presentation 'Tourism and Urban Diversity in the UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Sassi di Matera and Amsterdam' by Diana Della Pietra (AMS Institute Scientific Conference - Reinventing the City, April 23, 2024)

Presentation by Diana Della Pietra

AMS Institute, Scientific conference 'Reinventing the City - Blueprints for messy cities? Navigating the interplay of order and complexity'
The Old & New City (Diversity & Inclusion) - 23 April 2024

 

Read more

Baciu, D. C., & Pietra, D. D. (2021, May 17). Cycles of Diversification in Urban Environments: Evidence from Sassi, UNESCO World Heritage Site, Italy. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/f43xh

Baciu, D.C., Mi, D., Birchall, C. et al. Mapping diversity: from ecology and human geography to urbanism and culture. SN Soc Sci 2, 136 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-022-00399-4

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Icon image: Presentation 'Tourism and Urban Diversity in the UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Sassi di Matera and Amsterdam' by Diana Della Pietra (AMS Institute Scientific Conference - Reinventing the City, April 23, 2024)

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