Environment and urban tourism: an emergent system in rhetorical place identity definitions

Within the systemic framework of Environmental Psychology (Bechtel and Churchman, 2002) and following Urry (2002) and Pearce’s approaches (2005), the aim of this research is to investigate within the context of urban tourism which world views emerge from a Discourse Analysis (Edwards, Potter, 1993). of the speech of native and nonnative Sardinian residents. It addresses the issue of how social-physical diversity might be preserved (the problem of tourism sustainability, Di Castri, Balaji, 2002). In this regard, forty in-depth narrative interviews of inhabitants with short- and long-term residential experience in Cagliari (Italy) were conducted and examined (Discourse Analysis). It was found that the native and non-native’s rhetorical devices expressed similar representations of urban places, but in diverse relationship to social and place identity. Their environmental transitions were based on the tourist gaze, or the functional view and heritage pride. This displays some basic central dimensions of sustainable tourism