At the heart of the MED4REGEN methodology lie five interconnected challenges.
These overarching themes, also called challenges, steer the work of the programme’s participants. This will enable them to design new ways to tell the story of their territories, manage places, and build thriving local ecosystems. The path towards regenerative tourism actively enhances local life, strengthens cultural networks, and fosters balance between visitors and residents.
Five Challenges, One Common Goal
- Overtourism and Visitor Pressure – Beyond regulating flows, this challenge invites destinations to rethink travel motivations, foster responsible behaviours, and make visitors aware of their impact.
- Dominant Tourism Narratives – How can the cultural sites shift from static, top-down stories to co-created, living narratives that reflect community voices and diverse identities?
- Natural and Scientific Heritage – How can destinations expand the notion of heritage to include ecosystems, biodiversity, and knowledge, encouraging cultural sites to become agents of ecological awareness?
- Urban Cultural Centres – Reinforcing the role of museums and cultural institutions as drivers of social inclusion and ecological transition within city environments is the main driver of this challenge.
- Peri-Urban and Outlying Cultural Centres – In this challenge, partners and their associated cultural site are invited to reimagine their cultural spaces as places for territorial experimentation, local education, and culture-nature-agriculture alliances, aiming to revitalize peripheral cultural venues to counter rural exodus and foster inclusion
Each Project Partner (PP), working with its Associated Partner (AP), was invited to select at least two of these themes. This ensures that the local analyses and pilot actions are both focused and multidimensional.
As the combination of challenges varies across territories —reflecting distinct contexts, histories, and ambitions— they form a diversified but coherent network of experimentation.
Local Choices, Shared Ambitions
Each Project Partner (PP), working with its Associated Partner (AP), was invited to select at least two of these themes. This ensures that the local analyses and pilot actions are both focused and multidimensional.
As the combination of challenges varies across territories —reflecting distinct contexts, histories, and ambitions— they form a diversified but coherent network of experimentation.
Across the eight participating territories, common priorities have emerged.
Many partners—such as the Open Tourisme Lab (France, with AP Pont du Gard) and IUAV University (Italy, Mestre with AP M9 Museum)—chose to explore the renewal of tourism narratives, seeing storytelling as a lever to reconnect heritage with everyday life.
Others, like Promálaga (Spain) and Split-Dalmatia County (Croatia), are addressing the spatial divide between central and peripheral cultural areas, activating neighbourhoods and small towns as new hubs for creativity.
Meanwhile, the MAO in Ljubljana (Slovenia) and the Veneto Region (Italy) are combining natural and scientific heritage with cultural regeneration, demonstrating how museums and itineraries can promote ecological literacy. The University of Sarajevo is using its work on the emerging Ars Aevi Museum to test how collective memory and new urban narratives can support reconciliation and inclusion.
From Local Insight to Transnational Action
These converging choices reveal a shared awareness across the Mediterranean: regenerative tourism begins by changing how we tell stories, inhabit places, and connect communities. The five challenges offer a compass for this transition, guiding partners as they analyse local ecosystems, identify levers for change, and design collaborative pilot actions.
The next step for MED4REGEN is to turn these findings into the Hyperlocal Design Framework—a practical, participatory methodology that will help cultural and tourism actors move from analysis to action. Together, these five challenges are not just research themes—they are the foundations of a collective movement to regenerate Mediterranean tourism from the ground up.
