Driving Functions For Urban Sustainability: The Double-edged Nature Of Urban Tourism

Our concept of urban sustainability is changing along with our evolving modern society. It is relatedto a number of factors that have an impact on our current understanding of the concept of an urbansystem. Referring to a systemic approach to understanding the urban system, we can consider urbansustainability as the opposite of urban entropy, which represents both the “dark side of the urban system”and the negative component of each urban subsystem. Within these subsystems, we can identifysome driving functions that play an important role in urban sustainability. Nevertheless, when thesefunctions exceed the threshold of urban load, urban entropy increases exponentially. Starting with thevery recent changes in urban entropy (as well as urban sustainability) and by assuming that the negativecomponents of the urban system are connected to urban risks, two types of urban entropies can bedefined: endogenous and exogenous. The first relates to internal conditions of urban subsystems whichunplanned urban management can generate. The second one relates to external causes: natural andanthropic. Within this framework, tourism can be considered as one of the urban functions affecting theorganizational process of an urban system. Tourism depends on internal factors and grows by generatingexogenous flows. In many cases, tourism plays a fundamental role in an urban economy and it actsas a strategic factor for urban competitiveness. When tourism exceeds urban capacity, it causes urbanmalfunctions. In this sense, tourism is one of the most sensitive urban functions regarding the processof entropy. Using the systemic approach as a theoretical reference, this paper states that tourism can actas a driving function able to shift the urban system towards sustainable condition if it is integrated intothe process of town planning.