High-potential inland areas in search of a development model
The situation. For experts, Snai is performing well everywhere, but less so in the South, where it is slowing down. In some regions, reporting and certification of expenditure are an unknown quantity. The case of Calabria
4' min read
4' min read
Intermediate, peripheral, ultra-peripheral, differently accessible depending on the distance from the large urban centres and the essential services offered by the cities. Depopulated, minor, marginal, fragile, rarefied inland areas that seem to be dying forever. But which instead often resist or even revive and rekindle with unexpected flashes of vitality, even innovation. As in some areas of Calabria.
Soveria Mannelli, in the pre Sila Catanzarese, is an example of an area that remains alive, despite depopulation. It has focused on computerisation and a deep-rooted manufacturing fabric. The lush landscape that surrounds the village is a gift of nature. It is here that the Rubbettino publisher has transformed its publishing house into a reality of international interest, with an industrial plant (the printing and papermaking workshop), a recently inaugurated business museum dedicated to books and typography and a park with contemporary art installations: a concentration of culture, nature, work and industry set up inside and outside the premises inaugurated in 1972.
And it was in Soveria, in the Reventino Savuto district, chosen as the first Calabrian pilot area of the National Strategy for Inland Areas, the one promoted in 2013 by the Minister for Territorial Cohesion Fabrizio Barca, that Rubbettino organised the second edition of the Festival of work in inland areas, together with the Apennine Foundation and the Respro association (Network of Production Historians). For three days, 70 scholars from various Italian and foreign universities and research centres discussed 'Production and landscapes in the mountains of the Mediterranean', comparing territories and experiences from other regions. And demonstrating that 'the Apennines can become, to all intents and purposes, a laboratory of the future,' as Augusto Ciuffetti, lecturer in Economic and Social History at the Polytechnic University of Marche, put it. "After all, its spaces with communities and production networks capable of combining agricultural and silvopastoral activities with craft and manufacturing activities," he added, "have always played a central role in the economic, social and cultural balances of our peninsula, at least until the second half of the 20th century.
With a lens on the Snai and cohesion policies, Luca Bianchi, Svimez's director general, emphasised the territories, with one caveat: "Beware of making the Snai a sort of club of the inland areas, which has little dialogue with the surrounding territories. Inland areas today are vast realities. They require a policy for their development that takes into account the typical features of the territories, their specific needs, those of which it is necessary to be the interpreter, in order to effectively reduce the territorial gaps, also from a European perspective'.
A constellation of villages and towns, of well-established companies and small businesses, of industrious communities, scattered along the Apennine ridge, now gains a new centrality within a broader territorial system: the Mediterranean becomes mountains, between Pollino, Sila and Aspromonte. An alliance between coasts, mountains, towns and cities, replicable further south and further north (as far as the Alps), "overcoming any concept of 'internality', to guarantee a solid future for mountain areas," Ciuffetti stressed.
