The URBALTOUR project examines the intersections between urbanization and tourism in the mountainous regions of South and Southeast Asia. With the signifi cant rise in domestic tourism, hill stations and cities established during the colonial era in India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia are undergoing rapid transformations. Funded by France’s National Agency for Research, this multi-sited project is based on two hypotheses about tourism:
(i) It acts as a potent catalyst for the dissemination of globalized urban models.
(ii) It also contributes to restructuring the systems of actors and infl uences the modalities of public action in terms of planning, town planning, and economic development.