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By: Devika D.K.P. and Sruthi Satheesan.
1. Student, Department of Architecture and Planning, College of Engineering Trivandrum, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India
2. Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture and Planning, College of Engineering Trivandrum, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India
Overtourism has emerged as a rapidly spreading concept across tourist destinations worldwide. Pilgrim sites, such as Varanasi, Vaishno Devi, and Tirupati, have suffered from the continuous surge of visitors, especially during peak seasons or festivals, causing environmental degradation, choking crowd situations and a lower visitor experience, and decline the quality of life for the residents. This, along with poor infrastructural planning, causes a significant threat to sustainable development in the pilgrim sites. Carrying capacity assessment is an approach to deal with the impacts of overtourism and develop sustainable development plans for the tourist destinations. Carrying capacity, as UNWTO explains, is the maximum number of people that can be at a tourist destination at the same time without damaging the physical, economic, and sociocultural environment or decline in visitor satisfaction. Despite being relevant, urban design and tourism developments are two areas that have not been integrated as often as in a planning approach. Bridging this gap, this study attempts to develop urban design strategies to mitigate overtourism impacts in the pilgrimage sites of India, using carrying capacity as a tool. The study will be limited to physical–ecological and sociodemographic dimensions of carrying capacity. The research aims to identify parameters, sub parameters, and ultimately develop design strategies that can be implemented at any pilgrimage site. The strategies adopted can be further detailed to suit the characteristics of a particular pilgrimage site that require carrying capacity-based design solutions for the same.
Keywords: Carrying capacity, overtourism, pilgrim sites, sustainable development, urban design
Citation:
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