Focus on integrated coastal management — comparing perspectives

In 1999, the course on Integrated Coastal Management in the Mediterranean and Atlantic Coasts: Focus on Conflicts was held. It was convened by the EC/US Consortium for Transatlantic Cooperation in Marine Policy and Coastal Management Education, and took place in Genoa (Italy) and Seville (Spain) with the participation of students and teachers from various countries. In that context, intense discussions took place by comparing some case studies from the USA and Italy. Discussions led to focusing on different, conceptual and empirical approaches not only to coastal conflicts, but also to coastal management as a whole. This article aims at discussing these subjects considering the concepts of coastal management, and of coastal conflict, that have been adopted in the USA and those that may be drawn by the Italian experience. The USA pragmatic approach, which has led to consider the coastal conflicts in themselves with the aim of finding solutions between users, is compared with the Italian one, which has been more incline to consider conflicts between uses in the framework of coastal planning. Finally, three peculiar arenas of Italian coastal conflicts — namely, landscape, culture heritage and waterfront revitalisation — are considered.