A tourist project in a vulnerable neighborhood of Naples. Scope, limits and possibilities for the territory

Abstract

This article aims to address the territorial impact of the renovation project of the Catacombs in the Rione della Sanità neighborhood of Naples, carried out through cooperative management, with serious social problems. The project is analyzed as a model of tourism-based local development on the grounds of different existing theoretical conceptions, positing a taxonomy that is then applied to describe the birth and evolution of the project. By means of this characterization, economic changes and local participation are addressed. To approach the case, official documentation, calls for tender, and project bids were used. Additionally, media publications from 2018 and 2019 extracted from 32 pages of the Google search engine with keywords were surveyed. In 2019 and February 2022, 15 key informant interviews were conducted. The conclusions show that the model is inspired by a tradition of non-governmental organizations that operates with public and private financing but developed by these actors, thus achieving significant impact in economic terms and in the revitalization of the neighborhood, but with even greater presence of external actors and limited participation.