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Winter sports and mountaineering resorts have been instrumental in the revival of the mountain image, the opening-up of which to tourism had increased its popularity. Urban development has been summoned to produce functional accommodation and leisure sports facilities, not much to highlight the scenery and symbolism valorising the identity, the renown and the attraction of the mountain and its civilisation. The fordist and mimetic model of production of the 380 French resorts has produced from 1960 onwards series of contempory new towns, like suburbs created ex nihilo which have since spread out at high altitude in urbanised clumps. Today, these high-altitude island lumps are aging and need requalifying. One of the major stakes of sustainable planning in mountain regions is the improving of these resorts favouring the restructuring of existing buildings and their integration in the environment. How to adapt the urban landscapes of the ski resorts to their mountain environment? Which stakes poses their temporal and space anchoring?

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This paper addresses the future of French mountain resorts. They face two major trends: on the one hand, changes in tourist habits with much shorter stays, a greater availability of leisure time and, generally speaking, shifts in customer expectations; and, on the other, changes in housing and residential conditions with the extension of peri-urbanization around French cities. These processes contribute to making real-estate management a critical factor in the competitiveness of mountain resorts. Historically, State policy for resort development was based on close ties between skiing equipment and site lodging, but today, tourism development shows clear signs of malfunctioning. Mid-altitude resorts are directly impacted by the development of shorter stays at lesser distances, in conjunction with new residential phenomena. High-altitude resorts are confronted with a steady drop in the number of paying beds. All these real-estate phenomena raise questions concerning the resorts' adaptability and highlight the importance of real-estate management tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]