Mountain sustainable transformation and territorial regeneration with a culture - based activation.
Imagine the future visions for the Inner Areas is one of the biggest challenges of the contemporary age. We defined our scenario based on social cohesion: a cooperative mountain community, a place for socio-cultural innovation. In its materialization, the project has been structured based on two main pillars, a first includes the necessity of sociocultural infrastructures widespread, and a second regards the re-Inhabitation of the tangible and intangible heritage.
Local
Italy
The Case of Monte Cimone, Modena province in Emilia-Romagna region.
Mainly rural
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
As an individual in partnership with other persons
First name: Chiara Last name: Forghieri Gender: Female Age: 25 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Nationality: Italy Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Via Andrea Costa, 32 Town: Carpi Postal code: 41012 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 338 859 2929 E-mail:ch.forghieri@gmail.com
First name: Laura Cristina Last name: Parra Amariles Gender: Female Age: 28 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Nationality: Colombia Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Via Val Caffaro, 3 Town: Milan Postal code: 20134 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 351 805 2817 E-mail:laurac.parra21@gmail.com Website:https://issuu.com/lauraparra08
The mountain and inland areas of the Italian peninsula are today characterized by dynamics of strong marginalization, processes established starting from the economic boom after the Second World War, and which have not yet been reversed.
The Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, and the specific case of Monte Cimone, are structured through a constellation of towns, villages, small hamlets, and borgate which for centuries have constituted their social-cultural, regional, and national backbone. The Apennines today would not exist if the horizontal connections present between the plain and the mountain belt were missing.
The underlying question during the entire research was: in these fragile contexts, what can and what should be the role of landscape architecture? And how can the physical design of a place be the means for the consolidation of socio-cultural and economic dynamics capable of bringing out positive and sustainable development trends?
In this sense, the thesis path tries to configure plausible possibilities in which communities support the landscape, and at the same time how the landscape can support the communities.
Through the recognition and enhancement of the existing, the thesis project elaborates on the basic conditions for the consolidation of the habitability and infrastructure of the landscape of Monte Cimone. A research approach based on sustainable territorial regeneration is recognized. The developed scenario makes specific reference to the cooperative mountain community, a place for socio-cultural innovations.
The intentions declared in the pilot projects answer in terms of the offer of services and new job opportunities. The strategies and motivations materialize in a punctual landscape project. The work carried out wants to be perceived as a starting point, research capable of generating indirect positive effects, both in the academic panorama and on the reference mountain communities.
FRAGILE MOUNTAINS
HERITAGE MAINTENANCE
ABANDONED RESOURCES
COOPERATIVE PARTICIPATION
SUSTAINABLE TOURISM
Monte Cimone is endowed with a series of natural and cultural resources as the potential for the reconstruction of the identity of a place in abandonment, which, if activated, allow great possibilities of adaptation and response to crises, turning them into opportunities. This resilient capacity is derived from the interaction between local systems of natural, economic, and cultural capital as key facts of intentional adaptive action and potential for adaptation.
The project intends to integrate the three main pillars of sustainability from different spatial actions. From the environmental point of view, the restoration of the forest for the allocation of productive systems, the conservation of biodiversity, and the adaptation to climate change. From the social point of view, allowing to offset the depopulation, abandonment, and marginalization that the internal areas of Italy have been facing; offering new services and new work models to make this place attractive again. Finally, from the economic point of view, precisely understanding the value of natural systems to generate a perfect harmony between Man and Nature in communities that support the landscape, and how at the same time, the landscape supports communities.
Strengthening the relationship between the city and mountains opens the possibility to reflect on how to move towards a new model of circular economy and above all towards new habitability perfectly attractive from a social, economic, and environmental point of view, thus generating more sustainable territories.
Contribute to the territorial planning of the area of Monte Cimone with a regenerative systemic vision and improve its economic development through sustainable tourism alternatives that offer an experience in the rural landscape, generating a gradual reactivation that, from an economic, social, and environmental point of view, not only contributes to driving the territory into a more resilient landscape but also from the aesthetic point of view, find a way in the tangible and intangible values of the place to transmit them to the future through generating a large landscape reserve for the enjoyment of its inhabitants and as an attraction for its visitors.
Through two pilot projects, a series of spatial interventions were proposed: The socio-structural infrastructures pilot project aims to re-signify a new system of slow mountain mobility networks through the definition of 5 itineraries, running parallel to a strategy of points. In it, three types of typical, consolidated, and recognizable spatial configurations are identified, potentially capable of giving life to places of collective use, catalysts of a wider social and cultural resonance, called Mountain Hubs, they consolidate in spaces of meeting, appreciation, and congregation allowing to highlight the landscape values that Monte Cimone has to offer.
The Re-Inhabited heritage pilot project, on the other hand, seeks to create relationships between tradition and innovation through the restoration and management of the forest and the renewal of abandoned rural architecture, allocating productive systems in a cooperative life dimension, allowing people to enjoy nature while it regenerates.
Over the twentieth century the Italian inland areas were the protagonists of a progressive process of marginalization, becoming a real migratory context in the years of the economic boom. The Apennine mountains were characterized by depopulation and abandonment phenomena that went parallel to the great development of the urban-centered development model, which invested its growth opportunities exclusively in the cities.
The inland areas of the Italian Apennines appear today as a set of spaces capable of offering new opportunities for growth and development to contemporary society.
The value of the term metromontagna concept is based on the interdependence and cooperation of the different territorial systems. Its meaning allows relating the physical-material, environmental, economic, and infrastructural dimensions; counteracting the traditional urban model of localized visions. Based on a new settlement model for mountain inner areas, with a matter of prefiguring an overall vision and interdependence between human settlements and the natural environment and even in that sense, between the urban and mountain areas, on a new way of re-inhabiting Italy.
It is here when the main model of inclusion and the conception of an innovative social model appears as the main objective for the renaissance of the Landscape of Monte Cimone, the establishment of a cooperative mountain community. From the experiences of the already developed cooperative communities, it can be seen how these contribute to the production of social cohesion, allowing old and new mountaineers to remain in the Apennine environment and to develop cultural, social, and economic projects.
The inhabitants of the mountain communities are at the center of the entire project proposal. As expressed through the title "Communities supporting Landscapes, " the thesis aims to facilitate the configuration of a landscape specifically designed to increase the possibilities for the inhabitants of the Apennine Italian mountains. The project has as its objective the creation of community places in which to develop cooperation and sociability between those who live and those who visit these places. The strategy's definition focused on the area's traditional economies, partly abandoned today. In this sense, as the project is influenced by the community, so the community is influenced by the proposed landscape.
The project configures and creates new job opportunities and land management, and defines development scenarios capable of combining contemporary needs with the tradition and heritage of Monte Cimone. In this sense, the concept of "Community Cooperative" was introduced, a type of association capable of facilitating territorial reactivation processes, and witnessing positive experiences in the territories bordering the research area.
We believe that the type of approach studied and proposed in the thesis can lead to significant and relevant impacts for the re-foundation of new images of inland mountain areas. Today there is a profound need for new representations capable of positively influencing the consideration of these fragile landscapes.
We have decided to begin the narrative of both pilot projects with a hypothetical assumption regarding some possible territorial development policies adopted on a regional scale. Behind this choice is the belief that a territorial project capable of influencing the local reality must be supported by economic investments from public administrations, with a medium-long term.
The first project assumes that the Emilia-Romagna Region decides to invest its public funds in a sustainable re-infrastructure of the mountains. To promote new accessibility able to combine and reinforce the socio-cultural relations between the different altitude environments, from a perspective focused on the community habitability and the tourist attraction. Instead, the second project provides funds dedicated to people and families who want to renovate abandoned mountain buildings and parallel funds for those who want to restore or introduce practices for economic income. This is to oppose the current trend of depopulation and progressive abandonment with the definition of a new way of habitability supported by a local productive chain.
For us, the project's added value is to reconvert the paradigms of inland and rural areas in favor of scenarios of cooperation and social collaboration, essential elements for the success of a project. The presence of public actors is essential for the pursuit of these objectives. Furthermore, the proposal intercepts the local actors already present in the territories (for example the Italian Alpine Club and the Union of Municipalities of Frignano) and is aimed at their systematization, with the integration of the inhabitants.
The development and definition of the project involved several disciplines. First of all, the work was specifically developed as a master's degree thesis in the Landscape Architecture course at Politecnico di Milano. For this reason, we consider landscape architecture as a primary subject, the common thread that has united all the disciplines addressed during the drafting of the project. In fact, in order to achieve the correct degree of detail, the work we present to you has approached and studied other subjects: urban planning, architecture, ecology and agronomy, forest management, as well as insights into a political, economic, and administrative nature.
The drafting of the process has taken on design features throughout its development. While the first part of the theoretical and contextual study took place in a canonical way, focused on understanding the area under study, instead the definition of the specific project proposals had to come into contact with subjects related to landscape architecture, but never addressed during the years of study as compared to disciplines in their own right. This constituted an added value, both for us in terms of personal and professional knowledge, and for the project itself, which was deepened and conformed ad-hoc for Monte Cimone, reaching a minute and detailed definition degree.
We strongly believe that the integration of different study subjects is essential for the development of a correct project proposal. The challenge of studying subjects such as forest management and maintenance or agronomy has allowed the project to appear convincing and consistent, as it is based on a technical and scientific study of the topics covered.
The most important aspect that emerges from the most interesting experiences of culture-based social innovation in Inner areas in recent years is precisely to allow the local community accepts the possibility of consciously putting itself in crisis and exploring unknown paths. In this sense, culture-based social innovations should symbolically reaffirm the existence through an iconographic re-foundation of the place, to give a new form to the territorial images that will influence the near future.
The innovative concept starts with the act of re-thinking the mountain’s inner areas as spaces of opportunity, through horizontal exchanges. A system of interconnection between the most urbanized areas and territories that have been marginalized and neglected.
In this context, culture represents the key, the essential factor for generating new perspectives and opportunities. Looking at the Apennine areas as an incessant laboratory of experiences for the construction of a different future. A symbolic transformation is envisaged for the landscape of Monte Cimone. Cooperative Mountain Community aims to address the perspective of landscape resources as the main value of the place, translated into the recycling of infrastructures in a socio-cultural dimension and re-inhabiting the heritage related to rural architectures and the culture of the forest to turn this marginalized territory into a place of socio-cultural innovations.
By giving way to the creation of a meaningful path, without falling into stereotypes of a moment of change that may temporarily produce some transformations but which in the end crystallizes leaving uncertain results. But if it is really possible to give life to ways capable of taking the issue of expression and transformation on a cultural basis out of the regime of exceptionality, to make it a condition of the normal functioning of the local community, this would constitute a factor of exceptional importance for local development.
Many elements of our design can be replicated. In particular, the methodological development preparatory to the construction of project visions can be useful for the configuration of development trajectories in other fragile and rural areas. On the other hand, both pilot projects materialize with a physical design that cannot be transferred to other places, as it is specifically adapted to the specificities of the area.
Therefore, while the methodological premises and the "cooperative mountain community" scenario of social cohesion can be replicated in other contexts that present characteristics similar to those of Monte Cimone, it is not possible to transfer the single landscape projects to any other place.
This assumes a great value for us, we like to think that our work is able to help all those who want to face the realities of internal areas, and territories that really need new perspectives for their contemporary and future existence. But at the same time, it is a project conceived specifically for the topographical and environmental structure of Monte Cimone.
The marginal condition of the internal mountain areas has caused a social, environmental and economic imbalance in territories such as Monte Cimone. In their marginal condition, these landscapes face global crises related to depopulation and abandonment due to the lack of services, thus leaving an unattractive territory for habitants and visitors; A common scenario for alpine mountains and what constitutes the inner areas of the Italian peninsula. Thus, leading to an economic decline for the remaining populations that still inhabit the area. All this added to the environmental and climatic crisis as a contemporary problem of the Anthropocene that forces these territories to a need for change.
Mountain environments are territories endowed with a series of natural and cultural resources as the potential for the reconstruction of the identity of a place in abandonment, which, if activated, allows great possibilities of adaptation and response to crises, turning them into opportunities. This resilient capacity is derived from the interaction between local systems of natural, economic, and cultural capital as key facts of intentional adaptative action and potential for adaptation.
This initiative is based on the Metromontagna landscape concept, which responds to the need to break down the prejudice that considers urban spaces as the exclusive place for growth, dynamism, and innovation. The deconstruction of these implicit images is an act that has design value. Generating new dynamics of habitability, a sense of place from small local initiatives in the activation of the resources that the mountains offer to fight the global challenges that mountain territories are facing.
