Gramado – RS

How can a city widely recognized for tourism remain relevant over the coming decades without losing its identity, quality of life, and ability to inspire?

This question gave rise to the “Gramado of Tomorrow” project, an unprecedented future-oriented strategy developed for Gramado in partnership with N/Lugares Futuros.

More than a tourism plan, the project structured an integrated vision for the city toward 2040, connecting urban development, collective well-being, cultural identity, innovation, and sustainability within a single strategic direction.

The construction of this future involved thousands of residents and visitors through a broad process of active listening, collective intelligence, and social participation. Workshops, focus groups, digital mapping, and analyses helped reveal not only the city’s challenges, but above all the aspirations, vocations, and potential that could guide a new chapter for Gramado.

The project applied the proprietary Place Strategic Foresight© methodology in a pioneering way in Brazil, using future scenarios to rethink cities and tourism destinations through desirable long-term futures. Rather than responding only to present-day urgencies, the strategy sought to anticipate global transformations and prepare the place for new behaviors, economies, and ways of living.

Throughout the process, major shifts that will shape the future of cities were identified, including the climate transition, the growing relationship between physical and digital experiences, new work dynamics, the expansion of the creative economy, and the increasing search for well-being and authenticity.

The result was the development of a new model for the city, built around strategic fronts connected to its local identity.

Over the course of the project, Gramado moved beyond seeing tourism solely as an economic activity and began to recognize itself as a platform for experiences, belonging, and shared futures.

The initiative also marked an important symbolic repositioning for the city. Gramado now affirms itself not only as an established destination, but as a creative, sustainable, and inspiring place, prepared to lead new conversations about the future of tourism cities in Brazil.

More than planning for the years ahead, “Gramado of Tomorrow” demonstrated how cities can build the future with intentionality, transforming strategic vision into collective mobilization, identity into potential, and planning into legacy.

• More than 3,000 ideas collected
• 29 engagement initiatives
• More than 6,000 people directly engaged
• More than 40,000 people indirectly impacted
• 43 activation and future-oriented projects

“We are building today the place we want to become over the next 15 years. Gramado is now shaping its future with intentionality and boldness.”

Ricardo Bertolucci – Gramado Tourism Secretary