Salvador Anton Clavé:
“The Contemporary Global Theme Park Experience Design Practices: Trends, Issues and Paradoxes”

Friday, 13 February 2026, 16:30
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, Ambientale e Architettura
Aula Magna “Gaetano Cima”
Via Corte d’Appello 87, Cagliari

In a context of increasing urban concentration of the population, growth of social disparities, accelerated mobilities, globalisation, digital innovation, and expanding environmental awareness, the theme park industry is driving a number of crucial transformations. Interestingly, entertainment corporations, design companies and attractions suppliers are shaping tastes and cultures of people.

Focusing on the nexus between social, economic and environmental issues from an interdisciplinary perspective, this presentation seeks to identify current trends, issues and paradoxes related to the current theme parks development.

They include the resistance of some “local” practices and developments in an increasingly globalised world, the purposely designed role of certain entertainment places as vehicles for community identity formation, and the contradiction between the multiplication of criticisms to the theme park development together and the growth of theme parked environments.

Salvador Anton Clavé is Professor of Regional Geographical Analysis, Distinguished Professor and Director of the Research Group in Territorial Analysis and Tourism Studies at the Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona (Spain). His research deals with the complexity of the evolution of tourist destinations, the globalisation of thematic entertainment and recreational attractions, and the effects on the region and on local and regional development of leisure mobility.

At Rovira i Virgili University, he was the first Director and Dean of the Faculty of Tourism and Geography and Coordinator of the Doctoral Programme in Tourism and Leisure from its creation in 2006 until 2020. His most important publications include the following books: Análisis Territorial del Turismo (co-author) (Ariel and Tirant lo Blanch, 1997 and 2011); The Global Theme Park Industry (CABI, 2007), rated as one of the top five essential references in the field by the Cornell University Library, United States; Geographies of Tourism: European Research Perspectives (Emerald, 2013, co-edited); Tourism Destination Evolution (Routledge, 2017, co-edited), and Key Concepts in Theme Park Studies: Understanding Tourism and Leisure Spaces (Springer, to be published this December 2022, co-edited).

Salvador Anton Clavé has been a visiting research scholar at the George Washington University’s International Institute for Tourism Studies in the United States, and has given courses and lectures on Master’s, PhD and specialisation programmes at more than 45 universities around the world. He is also currently Director of the Tourism Area at the Technology Centre of Catalonia—Eurecat. In 2021 he received the Roy Wolfe Award conferred annually by the American Association of Geographers for his outstanding studies in the field of tourism, and he is an Honorary Member of the Professional Association of Economists of Catalonia.