This study investigates the influence of urban tourists’ behaviour on the environmental performance of a destination, particularly in terms of carbon emissions. Tourist-related emissions are shaped by their choices and behaviours, impacting the overall carbon footprint of the locations they visit. To assess this impact, we introduce a methodology for quantifying greenhouse gas emissions linked to tourists’ energy consumption. This approach considers key tourism components—activities, accommodation, and transportation—analysing their roles in emissions across a trip’s temporal and spatial dimensions. By integrating tourists’ spatiotemporal behaviour with emissions data, our framework offers insights that can support local climate-responsive urban and tourism policies. We empirically apply the proposed model to the destination of Donostia/San Sebastián (Spain), where the primary travel sequences of visitors are analysed. We utilise cartographic techniques to map the environmental footprints of different tourist profiles, such as cultural and nature tourists. The findings indicate that visitors primarily motivated by nature and outdoor recreation constitute the segment with the highest greenhouse gas emissions (with a minimum footprint of 30.69 kg CO₂-equivalent per trip), followed by cultural tourists, and finally, other categories of visitors. The results highlight the practical applications of the proposed model for sustainable tourism management, providing valuable guidance for urban planners and policymakers in mitigating the environmental impacts of tourism.

Placemaking is generally considered as a multi-layer and multi-aspect approach in urban studies focused on public open spaces, such as streets, parks, town squares or quays. These places are the core of local community identity. In research and practice, placemaking is more related to concrete open spaces and their urban design. This means that they have been planned without regard to urban relationships and urban planning connections. However, these elements cannot be omitted even though they are less prominent and exploited within placemaking. Therefore, the main topic of this chapter is to explore the possibilities of the placemaking approach in the urban planning process, which is a process to embrace creative and flexible strategies to design and manage public open spaces, with the ultimate aim to contribute to the development of both urban environments and local communities. From this perspective, placemaking-driven urban planning is close to community planning as a wider concept. In addition, urban planning is becoming more complex in the present-day digital age, which embraces digitalization as a tool to enhance the whole process. The practical aim of this chapter is to examine this complex relation by utilizing the eleven key principles of successful placemaking, which are critical for its in situ implementation, and to determine which part of these principles need to be adjusted to this perspective of the urban planning process in the digital age. The principles that properly address this aim are used as criteria to examine five case studies – the master plans and other planning strategies of five secondary cities from four Southern European countries: Bari in Italy, Chania and Trikala in Greece, Estepona in Spain and Smederevo in Serbia. All of the case cities share the Southern European experience of having traditionally lively and vibrant public open spaces, which is important for placemaking. Furthermore, the common scale of the cities versus different national regulatory frameworks enables the main purpose of this multi-case study – to identify the scope and local variations of the (potential) applicability of placemaking within the urban planning process. Also to be questioned is how their master plans as key planning documents support public open spaces and their importance for local communities. This challenge requires a comparative analysis, where both the selected cities and their main master plans will be compared according to selected principles of successful placemaking. The findings of this comparison are inputs for three sets of recommendations related to: (1) how to complement the current knowledge in the placemaking approach in the future to develop more integrated urban planning methods; (2) how to improve local urban planning to be more responsive to the local community, making them more liveable and distinctive places; and (3) how to apply digital tools, in the context of their current roles and perspectives, in order to facilitate the implementation of placemaking principles within the urban planning process.

RCR arquitectes comparten sistemas de representación con otras oficinas de igual entidad. La homogenización que la digitalización tiende a imponer nos conduce a localizar un importante repertorio de representaciones gráficas similares a lo largo y ancho de Occidente. Toda la normativa que condiciona el conjunto de los proyectos que salen de los despachos también acentúa esta lectura uniforme. En cualquier caso es posible localizar alteraciones específicas de cada despacho que nos presentan realidades diferentes y enriquecedoras para el panorama gráfico arquitectónico. Probablemente en estas anomalías es donde se revela el espíritu más singular que anida en cada oficina, también en la de Rafael, Carme y Ramón.No existe una gran literatura que ayude a descifrar la importancia, capital, que tienen sus dibujos en el conjunto de su trayectoria. Indudablemente, sus aguadas configuran el torrente necesario del que se nutren sus obras. Es una técnica que ha caracterizado su identidad como estudio a lo largo de estos años de trabajo. Como apuntan, es un instrumento con un recorrido casi automático entre el pensamiento y el brazo. Un camino ágil que les conduce a presentar sus ideas de forma vigorosa y abstracta. Esas manchas de agua tintada permiten una lejanía prudencial con respecto a la forma última que adoptará la propuesta y facilitan el debate conceptual, la esencia genuina de sus aportaciones. Esos dibujos, de diferentes formatos, pueden ser más o menos precisos (o difusos) contaminados, generalmente, con trazos y apuntes de gruesa lapicera que buscan fijar matices y preceptos que articulan el proyecto venidero. Este material trasluce el compromiso máximo entre los arquitectos y su trabajo. RCR no opera desde una inercia superficial, todas sus obras concentran una rica cantidad de variantes que certifican ese extenuante trabajo intelectual. William J. R. Curtis apunta que sus creaciones, gráficas y constructivas, se desarrollan durante un proceso largo pero armonioso, evidencia esa ligación, necesaria, que existe entre ambas facetas de su quehacer profesional (Curtis, 2017, p.6).En 2007 el catedrático Juan Antonio Cortés evidenciaba, bajo el epígrafe de “Naturaleza, pintura, arquitectura” ciertas reflexiones que ligaban a la arquitectura de RCR con cuestiones rítmicas trabajadas por el pintor Pierre Soulages y también con la aseveración de la existencia de un estilo propio de la oficina cimentado a través de diferentes variaciones ancladas a una concepción específica (personal) del hecho arquitectónico (Cortés, 2007, p.22). Sus dibujos son claves para llegar a comprender esta realidad intelectual, singular como pocas, y en continua búsqueda de esencias que sustancien nuevas intervenciones nacidas desde un trazo grueso. En este punto se hace necesario señalar cómo la arquitectura de su oficina es un referente internacional de primera magnitud pero el camino que apuntan sus dibujos, en sí mismos, nos hace atisbar una “vis artística” de poderosa constitución. Sin duda alguna, el futuro confirmará esta eclosión pictórica dentro del universo creativo de RCR.