Tourism can put real pressure on cities — crowding, displacement, tension between residents and visitors. At the same time, more and more people believe tourism could actually be a force for good: for liveability, for the environment, for a fairer distribution of who benefits. The tricky part is turning that belief into something concrete.
That’s what REGENLIFE is for. It’s a European network that brings researchers, living labs and practice partners together to close the gap between regenerative tourism theory and what actually happens on the ground. It connects two networks that were already doing good work separately — the ATLAS Special Interest Group Urban Tourism and the ENoLL Working Group on Regenerative Tourism & Placemaking — into one shared platform.
The focus is on metropolitan regions, where tourism pressure, innovation and quality-of-life questions all collide, and on the relationship between cities and the areas around them. Through living lab methods, the network creates space for people to develop, test and refine regenerative tourism approaches together, rather than in isolation.
Over the coming year, the network is working on three things: building a shared, comparative understanding of what regenerative tourism actually looks like across European metropolitan regions; getting research, policy and practice talking to each other through regular meetings and workshops; and using all of that to shape a strong joint proposal for European funding.
The partners in this first phase are Qxote Living Lab (Portugal), ROSA Lab / Dédale (France), TU Berlin and the University of Westminster — alongside the wider ATLAS and ENoLL networks.