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The issue of climate change is an integral part of urban and spatial development. Due to increasing urbanization and development within rural and natural landscapes, we are faced with various spatial demands and conflicts. However, sustainable urban and spatial regulations can improve the mitigation of climate change effects and promote adaptation. In order to obtain needed analytical framework to identify urban and building rules that promote mitigation and adaptation for the selected case study “the educational and sports-recreational complex” within the Spatial plan of the Nature Park Zlatibor , document analyses and literature research within the planning framework for the Spatial plan in Serbia have been performed to distinguish the mitigation and adaptation background. By addressing the urban and building rules in the context of climate change, this case study presents the planned adaptation and mitigation measures that were promoted through the spatial organization of multiple parcels, different urban land parameters, green and open spaces, the position on the parcel, maximum number of floors, energy efficiency standards, etc. Outlined urban and building rules focus on specific measures, such as energy efficiency, preserving water resources, heating and green areas, and use of natural materials in the visual appearance of buildings. Thus, it should be assumed that spatial planning represents an important tool for building development, nature preservation, and implementing the adaptation to climate change. As a signatory of all relevant international frameworks that promote the issue of climate change, it can be expected that in the forthcoming planning practice in Serbia the adaptation measures will be binding in a way that addresses specific problems and building development. Editors: Johannes M. Luetz, Desalegn Ayal

One of the interesting advantages collaborative governance arrangements offer is a way to deal with complex problems, such as environmental issues. This short case exemplifies such an arrangement: The Partnership for Regional Sustainability is a collaboration between Ramat Hanadiv Memorial Gardens and Nature Park and five local authorities, located in close proximity to one another. This case led to a number of insights on the importance of creating regional identity, responsibility and trust among the stakeholders. It also shed light on the benefits and challenges of building collaborative arrangements.

Since the Neolithic, nature has been positioned second to human needs and wishes. While in early periods with simple technologies, human impacts remained relatively modest, technological progress and steadily growing material desires have gradually enhanced our encroachment and led us to marginalize nature. It has become a servant of man rather than a normal part of our lives: and we have largely become estranged from it. Landscape and nature protection are an attempt to take humans back closer to nature. This chapter illustrates this change through the example of a regional nature park in western Switzerland. The Swiss park strategy aims primarily at preserving nature, but in a densely inhabited country, parks often enter into conflict with human activities. It is therefore not astonishing that most protected areas are situated in mountain areas where such conflicts are rarer than in lowland regions. The case study focuses on an alpine region where the economic situation is generally more difficult than on the highly urbanized Swiss plateau, but where the regional potential is being valorised with public support. Nature parks reveal themselves as increasingly popular with people of all generations, for recreation as well as education, and they also prove to be economically viable.

With this chapter we finalize the presentation of the results of the online survey by analyzing the influencing factors on cross-border tourism to protected areas in Poland and Germany. The correlation and regression analyses are based on both revealed and stated preference data on visits to protected areas in the home and neighboring countries in order to test the explanatory power of various influencing factors on the revealed and stated visitation behavior to protected areas in the Polish-German border region. Regarding the stated protected area choices, Poland’s Wolin National Park and Germany’s Island of Usedom Nature Park turned out to be the preferred destinations. All-in-all, respondents’ preferences for hypothetical day and weekend trips are very similar. Once again, Polish respondents have a higher tendency to visit protected areas in Germany than vice versa. As expected, the distance between residents’ homes and protected areas has an influence on the number of hypothetical visits, but the level of awareness of protected areas emerged as a much stronger influencing factor. Images and prejudices play more important roles for stated than revealed preferences. Despite these findings, any suggestion as to the direction of causality remains speculative.

In January 2006, Evo Morales took over the affairs of state as the first indigenous president of Bolivia. His position enables him to define a norm anew and thus question not only the existing set of rules of discourse but also the traditional structure of society. Based on these observations and following Foucault’s (Die Ordnung des Diskurses: Inauguralvorlesung am College de France, 2. Dezember 1970 (W. Seitter, Trans.). In: Foucault M, Die Ordnung des Diskurses (10, aumented edition with an essay by Ralf Konersmann). Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main, Deutschland, pp. 7–49, 2007) discourse analysis, this contribution looks at how Morales’ ethnic-cultural background is expressed in his discourse and what effect this has on the discursive construction of intercultural togetherness. For this purpose, 1273 speeches, interviews, and press conferences which Morales gave between 2006 and 2016 were triangulated with data from ethnological field research and critical literature on the subject. Morales’ early speeches as well as manifestations thereof in core legal documents showed that the president is portrayed as a representative of the indigenous peoples who are thereby rhetorically lifted out of marginalization. More recent utterances, though, which address protest movements against a legally controversial highway construction through a nature park and indigenous territory as well as a potentially unconstitutional re-election of Morales as president characterize him as both a leading figure and an impediment to the implementation of interculturality and a more substantial societal change.

This article is an uncanny journey to the Bubble. It provides an autoethnographic exploration of a novel form of tourism—glamping—and takes the reader into an adventure to a see-through plastic Bubble located in a nature park in France. Moreover, it unfolds a specific form of glamping, namely sleep-centric glamping, as part of a wider sleep tourism market in which experiences are sought for by way of sleeping in extraordinary places or spaces. By taking the sleeping body as its focus, the article explores how sleeping in an extraordinary place is bodily experienced. Furthermore, it sheds light to the ways the design of this particular tourist experience is a complex array, including both humans and nature, and which inevitably enables and constrains the connection between the human body and the nature’s body. The multidisciplinary approach inherent in the article allows the authors to unfold a meaningful but indeed challenging research topic: sleep.

The Natural Regional Park of Costa d’Otranto, Santa Maria di Leuca, Bosco di Tricase, is a unique case in the Apulia region because the entire park is stretched along the coast. Along its 57 km there are many natural and historical values. In these areas the increased tourist settlements have recently created serious problems in the landscape, such as the fragmentation of continuity in the protection of the park, the reduction of ecological functions and the loss of landscape identity. The park now has a great opportunity because the territorial plan is currently being prepared: this can enable the positive integration between different planning policies, not only with the protection of natural and cultural values and the environment but also by playing a key role in achieving new sustainable economic development for the entire territory.