Abstract

Since 1990 onwards, various post mining sites of the XIX century have been turned into mining museums or parks, thus promoting industrial remains as touristic attractions. Advocators of this trend promote mining tourism as a way to revert economic and environmental decline. On the other hand, there is still a gap in methodological approaches aiming to assess the real contribution of these initiatives to sustainable local development. The article proposes an analytical method stemming out from systems' theory; and a set of indicators aiming to integrate principles of heritage preservation and sustainable tourism, and presents an application of the method in the analysis of the former coal mining territory of the Arauco Gulf, in Chile.