Villages, restarting with the idea of community
Successful repopulation of small towns requires a project, but essential services are also needed
by Paola Dezza
Villages and inland areas. Places told through the prism of depopulation and decline that return to the centre of a reflection not only on tourism but on the very future of Italian territories. While the big cities face problems of saturation, high cost of living and real estate pressure, in the small towns new population flows are returning to agriculture, indulging in ample periods of smart working, focusing on the business of widespread hospitality.
The topic was at the centre of a debate that intertwined tourism, social transformations and new models of territorial development. 'Large cities are experiencing increasingly evident saturation phenomena,' observed Maria Carmela Colaiacovo, president of the Il Sole 24 Ore Group. Tourist flows in Italy recorded 480 million presences. The challenge is not to increase flows but to redistribute them, building models to enhance territories without emptying them of identity'.
A question that also concerns the meaning of the word suburb. 'There is a risk of constructing a simplified narrative in which small automatically coincides with authentic or sustainable,' explained Stefano Bruno Galli of the University of Milan. But small is not enough to generate living communities'. Behind the return of interest in inland areas lie profound transformations, accelerated by Covid but already underway for years, explained Luisa Corazza of the University of Molise. "In recent years we have seen a growing desire to leave the big cities," she noted, "In many cases we see people choosing to build new entrepreneurial paths in inland areas. But, he added, four pillars are needed: health, mobility. schools and work.
For Aldo Bonomi, founder of the Aaster consortium, the focus remains on 'flows and places'. "The highlands and inland areas are once again strategic because they hold new rare lands: water, greenery, environment, biodiversity," he explained. "For years, these territories were considered marginal compared to the great economic flows. Today, instead, they are becoming central precisely because they contain decisive resources within the ecological and climate transition'.
"Climate change forces mountain territories to rethink themselves not only economically but also socially and culturally," explained Michele Nardelli. He added: "The real issue today is to build a pact between those who stay, those who return and those who arrive from outside. The resilience of the territories will depend on the ability to create open and not closed communities, integrating new inhabitants and new economies'.
