Reframing Overtourism as Spatial Governance: Planning Mechanisms, Territorial Effects and Regional Interdependence

Ziming Li

doi:10.58683/sp.2184

Published : 2026-07-17

Vol. 50 No. 2 (2026)

Reframing Overtourism as Spatial Governance: Planning Mechanisms, Territorial Effects and Regional Interdependence

Ziming Li

https://orcid.org/0009-0009-2911-4291

DOI: https://doi.org/10.58683/sp.2184

Abstract

Overtourism is now a central concern in tourism studies, urban governance and destination policy. Yet much of the debate still treats space as the setting in which pressure appears rather than as one of the mechanisms through which it is produced and felt. This article develops a critical interpretive review of overtourism research from the perspective of planning and regional studies. It brings together four main strands of scholarship: volume and carrying-capacity approaches, perception-oriented studies, governance and destination-management research, and political-economic critiques of touristification. The review shows that these strands have generated valuable insights, but that they remain less attentive to destination morphology, circulation, infrastructure, land-use change, housing transformation and interdependence across spatial scales. In response, the article proposes a spatial governance framework that explains how visitor pressure is produced, spatially mediated, institutionally filtered and translated into uneven territorial effects. This reframing helps explain why similar visitor volumes can produce different outcomes across destinations, and why durable responses require planning interventions that go beyond dispersal, reservation systems and pricing instruments.

Keywords:

overtourism, spatial governance, tourism planning, touristification, regional studies

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Li, Z. (2026). Reframing Overtourism as Spatial Governance: Planning Mechanisms, Territorial Effects and Regional Interdependence. Studia Periegetica, 50(2), 2184. https://doi.org/10.58683/sp.2184

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