This book delves into the development opportunities for peripheral areas explored through the emerging practices of agritourism, wine tourism, and craft beer tourism. It celebrates the entrepreneurial spirit of people living in peri-urban regions.

Peripheral areas tend to be far from urban hubs, providing essential services but also typically suffering from marginalisation and remoteness, despite the access to environmental, cultural, and social resources. In this sense, this book investigates the linkages between local agency and tourism in peripheral areas, the role of existing policies, and the evolving bottom-up practices in fostering local development. The basic aim is to disestablish the dichotomies that often emerge when dealing with issues of rural-urban and/or centre-periphery relationships; innovation vs tradition; authenticity vs mise en scène; agency vs inertia; and social, cultural, economic mobility vs immobility; etc. With focused attention on the possible compliance or conflicting strategies of local actors with the existing policies, the book considers how local actors and communities respond to the implications of peripherality in areas often impacted by marginalising processes.

Drawing upon case studies from North America and Europe, this book presents this connection as a global phenomenon which will be of interest to community and economic development planners and entrepreneurs.

Maria Giulia Pezzi, PhD in European Ethnography, is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI) as a member of the Social Sciences research unit, working on a research project on the development of peripheral areas in Italy, specifically in relation to the Italian National Strategy for Inner Areas. Her current research focuses on tourism policies and heritage-making strategies as development tools for rural areas, and on the role that local entrepreneurship can play in such processes from a bottom-up perspective.

Alessandra Faggian is a Professor of Applied Economics, Director of Social Sciences and Vice Provost for Research at the Gran Sasso Science Institute, L'Aquila, Italy. She is past President of the North American Regional Science Council (NARSC) and co-editor of "Jourmal in Regional Science". Dr Faggian's research interests lie in the fields of regional and urban economics, demography, labour economics and economics of education.

Neil Reid, Ph.D. is Professor of Geography and Planning at the University of Toledo. He holds MA degrees in Geography from the University of Glasgow and Miami University and a Ph.D. in Geography from Arizona State University. He is an economic geographer and regional scientist with research interests in industrial location, regional economic restructuring, and local economic development. His current research focus on a number of areas including the health of metropolitan labor markets in the United States, policies to deal with decline in America's shrinking cities, and the economic development opportunities surrounding America's rapidly growing craft brewing industry.