Accessibility and Urban–Rural Connectivity in Marina Alta, Spain: Raising Awareness, Identifying Key Policies

The county of Marina Alta, better known for its capital and reference tourist settlement Dénia, features the rural-urban connectivity challenges of similar coastal territories all over Spain. When discussing about rural-urban connectivity in coastal tourist areas, either in the North, South, West or East of the country, some features repeat: poor transport infrastructure, high population density during tourism season, high density of urban settlements along the coast line where SGI provision concentrates, rural areas that lie within inner areas with lower population density and facing a process of population aging and an economy driven by tertiary sector and highly dependent on tourism sector. Through this chapter, the reader can easily identify the main challenges that the complex orography of these areas poses to the establishment of urban-rural linkages. Very often flat along the coast line and characterised by scattered hill settlements in the internal areas, the territory shows the concentration of the highest share of the population in the urban municipalities and the rural settlements, that are bigger in extension, suffer from depopulation and ageing processes and are poor in service provision. The complex institutional framework influencing transport and accessibility, which involves four different administrative levels, hinders the development of a transport infrastructures and services appropriate to local needs and does not manage to provide adequate solutions to the identified challenges.