Village Terraneo Plan
Presentation
To be small is better. For territorial extension, for number of inhabitants, but not for landscape quality neither for tourist vocation. This is the slogan of the project Village Terraneo, whose purpose is to sustain the development of the small places of the South of Europe, also less famous and out of the more select tourist circuits, that in a different way, but equally effective in comparison to the great cities that swarm with sites and monuments, they contribute to make defined the identity of the Mediterranean and they answer to the increasing request of the visitors to access territories and alternative runs and to discover places that live of a light all of them, characterized by an imprint that makes them only to the world.
Village Terraneo is an European project that aims to promote the sustainable tourism and it involves seventeen Communes of the regions of the Mediterranean among which France, Spain, Italy and Portugal. The guide corporate body is the region PACA (Provenza, Alps and Blue Coast) that has entrusted Ecole of Avignon in Provenza to assume the role of leader both for the France that for the whole project.
Among the phases that articulate objectives and times of realization of Village Terraneo: from 2003 to 2004 the four corporate bodies leaders of the respective Countries, Sos of the Rey Catolico for Spain, Serpa for Portugal, Ecole of Avignon for France and Barberino Val d’Elsa for Italy, proposed to interweave a tourist net constituted by small Communes with the purpose to valorize resources and local patrimony as well as to favor the tourist development that is respectful of the economic and social equilibrium of the interested territory.
Through the activation of exchanges of experiences in the sector of the sustainable tourism and in that of the rural tourism of quality, of mutual verifications and periodical meetings, the seventeen Communes will have the opportunity to know each other, to individualize common elements and to carry diligence and activity in an only direction: the elaboration of the Paper of Quality, having the function to attribute identity of elevated tourist thickness to the run corporate body and for whose attainment will be necessary to possess determined requisites (es. furnishing urban, cultural activities, care of the environment).
The attainment of the Paper of Quality, that hocks the signatories on the orientations of management, of exploitation and of development of the project, complete this first phase.
As for the second phase that will continue up to 2006, the Village Terraneo net will be busy in the activity of distribution and promotion of its own contents near the tourist operators and the public subjects in operation of maintenance to the initiatives that will characterize it.
It will proceed besides to the creation of an observatory that will allow to appraise the environmental, cultural, economic and social impact of the anticipated activities in the picture of application of the Paper of Quality.
Finally, the third phase (over 2006) proposes to harvest the fruits of the second phase and in which the project will aspire to autonomously work through the joined management of the Communes that stick to the initiative.
The share of the Commune of Barberino Val d’Elsa to the project Village Terraneo is indicative not only of the ambitions and potentiality developed by the administration, but of the elevated tourist qualities possessed by the corporate body and already shown in the prestigious acquisition of the Orange Flag, important recognition on national scale conferred by the Italian Touring Club. Within the Village Terraneo, the Commune of Barberino Val d’Elsa develops the role of coordinator for Italy.
