ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the role of mass tourism coastal destinations as spaces where both social innovation and competitiveness are fostered. It seeks to highlight the effects of residential mobility associated with tourism fl ows on the competitiveness of destinations, to analyse the role of policy intervention on the development/redevelopment of such destinations and to illustrate some of the responses that they generate when faced with the challenges of global change. The implicit hypothesis of the chapter assumes that the increasing multiplication of leisure and lifestyle-related mobility has spurred the development of a new form of complex urban structure – mass coastal destinations. I will also focus on the emergence of new demographic and economic processes that have led to the development of new social, territorial and environmental challenges and confl icts. In this context, mass coastal destinations acquire new functionalities, generate new opportunities for the regions where they are located and face new risks derived from the dynamics of global change. From this point of view then, mass coastal destinations are the geographical product of one of the most unique cultural phenomena of our consumer society.
