Within the condition of complex connectivity and accelerated mobility that characterizes our lives, the article focuses on the world of migrants and the important challenges it poses to our way of understanding space, society and politics. The movement of these subjects, in fact, constitutes a factor of subversion: it reveals the violence of the national order structured through exclusionary geopolitical devices and becomes an opportunity to analyse the most important contradictions of a society and its political structure. The very idea of community, understood as a systemic, closed, consolidated structure, given once and for all faces a crisis under the weight of incessant migratory flows. The breaking of traditional ties and constraints outlines a different idea of community: permeable, changeable, unstable. A community of practices within which non-deterministically identifiable relationships and interactions are defined on a territorial basis. In this sense, migratory movements definitively transgress what Appadurai calls the metaphysics of sedentary life, that is, the belief and prejudice of considering sedentary living as the normal condition universally accepted/practiced by mankind.
This essay analyses past and present evolutionary and retro-evolutionary dynamics in agricultural, livestock, forestry, and wildlife landscapes in Cicolano highlands (Rieti). In this area, human activity left clear signs of its actions. In the mid-20th century, urbanization process led to almost total abandonment of all activities, resulting in a process of rewilding. In the 90s, Rieti and Cittaducale were hit by industrial crisis which resulted in a slow but gradual resurgence of agro-forestry-pastoral activities. The environment – which was in a clear recovery phase – experienced a new reversal of the evolutionary trend which partially restored the landscape’s former appearance, a trend that now is almost facing another halt. Based on available data and information, this essay outlines some hypotheses of how future landscape of the investigated area will be possibly configured.
The article explores the chances of a problematic return to the mountains through a comparison of data from the 1930s and surveys on recent immigration flows in the Italian Alps. Already in the 1930s, the INEA survey on “Mountain depopulation in Italy” (1932-1938) bore witness to a process of emigration intensified since WWI, identified its causes, dimensions, features and some possible remedies. A focus was placed on the qualitative aspects of an apparent repopulation process. Quite different appear the recent processes of “return to the mountains” in terms of selective characteristics, geography and nature of immigrants. The article comparatively discusses the depth and quality of the process, as regards the social aspect, innovation in the agrarian economy and its impacts on territorial maintenance and restoration. Finally, it suggests some policies to support re-immigration processes, comparing 1930s proposals with the more recent ones.
Significant migratory phenomena are affecting contemporary rural territories, making them complex, heterogeneous areas in which strong contradictions emerge. Migration has become a structural component of territorial transformation processes, whose spatial effects are formalised in the rise of informal settlements. Inhabited by migrant farm workers and known as ‘ghettos’, the article describes their spatial characteristics. The territorial context studied is Apulia, specifically the province of Foggia, where two cases with extreme characters emerge: Gran Ghetto and La Pista in Borgo Mezzanone. In order to identify solutions for the construction of new spatial configurations capable of overcoming the strong current criticalities, the article intends to give voice to landscape architecture. The theme is examined through the figure of the American landscape architect Garret Eckbo, who worked in the 1940s in the United States rural territories, in a context that offers effective insights on the contemporary.
Although Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) represent a valuable tool for urban planning to address the global challenge of carbon neutrality at the local level, planning is listed as an obstacle to the RECs deployment across Europe. With reference to the Italian case, the aim of this work is to investigate the current degree of inclusion and implementation of RECs in urban planning tools, in order to understand to what extent, they are considered and possibly promoted in planning practice. The methodological approach followed is to start with the study of the general and sectoral urban planning tools of the municipalities in which there are RECs implemented. Subsequently, the analysis is extended to the general urban planning tools of the provincial capitals. The results obtained show that Italian urban planning is mostly obsolete with reference to RECs issue. However, some municipalities stand out on the national scene as not silent, promoting RECs in their plans. However, these are very recent urban planning tools, for many of which the formation process is still in progress. Consequently, the inclusion of RECs promotion policies is mostly limited to strategic directions. In this direction, it is of interest to monitor the evolution of these plans, to understand if and how the strategic choices enunciated will be translated into operational choices and rules, with particular attention to reward measures for the RECs promotion.
By developing our awareness of the challenges posed by the continuous migratory movements that traverse our lands, this article encourages us to reflect upon the deep meaning of the word ‘city’. It challenges the idea that the city can only be identified as that stable, circumscribed form, the hub of territorial control, the place where power is centralised and production surplus accumulated and where the foreign and the diverse have to be kept at the edges, and it attempts to question again the origin of this phenomenon. It takes up Mumford’s constructive insights once more, confirmed by the archaeological discoveries of recent decades, and proposes that the deep core of the ‘urban’ be traced back to those sacred places for ceremonial meetings, where peoples that came from different parts converged to celebrate being together, with brief rituals and festivals linked with the course of the seasons, the passing of time, the cyclic nature of life and the cult of ancestors. This meditation on the roots leads to the seed enclosed within the word ‘city’ being expanded to take on a new meaning, of which we have however always been aware: that of a relational, collective work, never a cut-and-dried fact – a concern that must be continuously and creatively reimagined, indeed through the sharing and pooling of different ways of life and the interaction and exchange between diversities.
The Last Twenty Report is a research paper about the current state of the world’s 20 most impoverished and vulnerable countries. Despite their richness in culture, arts, and knowledge, these countries face significant challenges exacerbated by prolonged conflicts and other detrimental mechanisms. The medium to long-term goal is to gauge the social, political, and environmental ‘temperature’ of our planet starting from its bottom rather than its top. This approach offers a perspective on the future from the less visible side of the Earth, providing more accurate insights into where we are heading. Launched in 2021 in Reggio Calabria, the L20 project has promoted events in cities like Milan, Rome, L’Aquila, and Santa Maria di Leuca. They laid the foundations for ongoing monitoring of L20 countries’ conditions, with a special emphasis on critical issues such as climate change, poverty, and inequality. The 2023 report, second edition after 2022, aims at tracking the evolution of these countries, highlighting not only socio-economic challenges and the impact of climate change, but also new geopolitical scenarios and their interactions with L20 countries.
The growing importance of energy independence and security has been amplified by rising prices due to ongoing conflicts and the need for decarbonization. Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) have been introduced at the European level as autonomous entities aimed at facilitating the integration of renewable sources and promoting local energy production. Despite the residential sector offering significant potential, legal and administrative challenges, as well as decisions regarding the placement of these communities, continue to hinder their widespread adoption, particularly in Italy’s inner and southern regions. This study focuses on highlighting the potential economic, environmental, and social benefits associated with the establishment of an REC in a residential area of inner Abruzzo. Specifically, the analysis covers Campli, a municipality in the province of Teramo. The municipality is characterized by a complex territorial structure (with 42 localities), it is partly within the Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga National Park, it included in the 2016 earthquake zone and classified within Italy’s inner areas (SNAI). In this study, the proposed REC model envisions energy sharing from renewable energy systems installed on existing rooftops, with direct involvement of local citizens and public administration.
In recent decades, due to the processes of capitalist rearrangement of the agri-food sector, rural areas have witnessed a respatialization of migration which has seen an increasing number forced migrants and economic migrants, seasonal or otherwise, settle in peripheral areas, employed as flexible and precarious workforce in agriculture. The contemporary agri-food system is now characterized by the dependence of some labour-intensive production sectors - such as the production and distribution of food - on the use of foreign workforce. But if on the one hand the presence of migrants in agri-food systems is considered essential for the maintenance of the productive sector, on the other it is systematically invisibilized by dynamics of exploitation and denial of rights. The goal of this work is to analyse the case of the Gioia Tauro Plain (Calabria), to evaluate the migration-agriculture relationship within rural spaces, highlighting how this connection is the result not only of factors linked to race and ethnicity, but also of the specific characteristics of territories and local policies, in particular those related to housing. A modelling of widespread and dignified living is proposed as a response to the needs of farm workers.
In Calabria and Sicily, as well as throughout Southern Italy, widespread consumption and degradation of the territory, in striking contrast to enduring landscape excellences, result in the huge dimensions of empty or unused housing heritage, at the top even compared to the sensational levels reached by this phenomenon on the national scale. If in Italy about a quarter of the housing stock is in fact empty, this share reaches 30% in Sicily and exceeds 40% in Calabria. This makes paradoxical not only the existence of local housing problems, but also the fact that migrants cannot find a home and often have to lie, in sub-human conditions, in improvised and precarious ‘welcome’ centres. Therefore, even more than in the rest of the country, in the Italian South, Sicily, Calabria and especially in the Messina Strait Area it appears urgent to make empty and often abandoned housing stock – and building heritage in general – available for the priceless human and social capital represented by the migrants. Those of them who intend to stay in these areas could actually contribute to local self-sustainable development actions promoted, today, by community planning practices together with the ordinary landscape and spatial planning instruments of the two Regions. This article explores such topics and illustrates some actions, also ‘grassroots’, through which we are trying to combine heritage reuse, social and cultural integration, and reterritorialization.
The growing importance of energy independence and security has been amplified by rising prices due to ongoing conflicts and the need for decarbonization. Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) have been introduced at the European level as autonomous entities aimed at facilitating the integration of renewable sources and promoting local energy production. Despite the residential sector offering significant potential, legal and administrative challenges, as well as decisions regarding the placement of these communities, continue to hinder their widespread adoption, particularly in Italy’s inner and southern regions. This study focuses on highlighting the potential economic, environmental, and social benefits associated with the establishment of an REC in a residential area of inner Abruzzo. Specifically, the analysis covers Campli, a municipality in the province of Teramo. The municipality is characterized by a complex territorial structure (with 42 localities), it is partly within the Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga National Park, it included in the 2016 earthquake zone and classified within Italy’s inner areas (SNAI). In this study, the proposed REC model envisions energy sharing from renewable energy systems installed on existing rooftops, with direct involvement of local citizens and public administration.
Between 2021 and 2022, as part of the SI.VALUTA local assessment project, the authors carried out a research and analysis work in Castel Volturno, exploring some local housing dynamics in the light of the migration processes that, in various ways and at different times, have affected this area. Here, dispersed in an extensive semi-abandoned housing stock, Italians and foreigners coexist, with different backgrounds but similar housing outcomes. In this paper, we investigate the common elements of such housing paths that emerged from structured and semi-structured interviews. The fieldwork, which involved several periods of observation, highlights the role of Castel Volturno as a landing place for life paths in contraction: a time of economic instability, of housing hardship, of administrative irregularity. This phenomenon is the result of ‘structured’ forms of precariousness, regardless of the geographical, ethnic and cultural origin of the subjects encountered. As a conclusion we show how, despite the many contact points in the reasons for arriving to this territory, there remains a lack of mutual recognition between the different groups, which leads to an impossibility of building alliances.
Today’s dominant narrative regards migrants, nomads and hikers as threatening intruders who menace to further undermine already collapsing territorial, social and environmental settings. Resuming the long-standing territorialist reflection on “new inhabitants”, which came to think of them as the co-founders of a new locally self-sustainable civilisation, this article and the entire issue provide an interpretation of moving as the seminal action of new territorialisation dynamics, accompanied by conflicts but also by unprecedented forms of coexistence and citizenship which seem much better equipped to face local and global crises.
Through a strategic and transformative approach, the aim is to facilitate constructive dialogue between local communities and external entities, reconciling urban-centric and polycentric visions. The growing awareness of climate change emphasizes the importance of valuing marginalized spaces, particularly in mountainous areas, where experimenting with energy and digital transitions presents significant opportunities. Public anthropology, with its ethnographic methodology, provides a profound understanding of local realities, while the mutualism between new and longstanding residents fosters meaningful synergies. This cultural interaction enriches communities and stimulates creative processes, suggesting that rediscovering life in small mountain villages can serve as a valuable resource for future social and community developments. Renewable energy communities emerge as essential tools for transforming perceptions and planning territory with a sense of self-determination.
Mobilizing the figures of Lifelines and Slow death the paper offers a series of incomplete spatial narratives of different territories in crisis in which inhabiting is questioned. Beirut, peripheral Paris and north Lebanon shows an Inhabiting on hold: a form of space where reconfigurations of an affective economy of precariousness is questioning architecture and urbanism forging spaces of inconvenience to describes the pressure of the proximity of many kinds of tension, positively and negatively valences. The paper aims to visible a series of margins, edges of cities, minorities inhabited by majorities, spatial micro-worlds in which one can see the macroscopic remoteness of institutions and the gigantic power of autonomy, of the makeshift, effects of structuring territorial inequality in a perpetual state of becoming.
The introduction, by international organisations, of a variety of policies, tools, and financial resources aimed at achieving climate neutrality represents the epiphenomenon of an important paradigm shift, in which the traditional anthropocenic approach is practically overturned in favour of a new centrality of cohabitation between humans and nature. Moreover, in Italy, the recent introduction of incentives such as ecobonus, seismic bonus, and superbonus has certainly highlighted patent critical issues, such as energy poverty, but also opened new pathways for a sustainable rethinking of dwelling. Starting from the energy production of communities and broadening the view to connected socio-technical aspects, such as energy efficiency of buildings and environmental remediation of cities, neighbourhoods, and small urban centres, it may be useful to evaluate the effects of such pathways in terms of the opportunities they offer for an overall ecological rehabilitation of settlements. These are increasingly unconventional practices, growing along with the emergence of new scientific insights on dwelling, a momentous example of which is represented by Positive Energy Districts (PED), tools that can provide an extraordinary chance to experiment with ecological and social justice by mainly leveraging consumption and, therefore, on the rebalance of water, land, and territorial resource consumption.
The article presents a unique case study where the principle of territoriality is applied in war-torn Syria (2012), particularly in the northern part of the country, where self-governance has taken root. In the territories of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), known as Rojava, the population has established an exemplary form of direct democracy (KNAPP ET AL. 2016; CEMGIL & HOFFMANN 2016; DIRIK ET AL. 2017). Within this context, the Kurdish Women’s Liberation Movement (KJK) founded the women’s eco-village Jinwar, built by women for women to live according to communal principles. The village was established near the Turkish border, an area threatened by potential attacks from Turkish military forces. This active research experience allowed the author to participate in both the construction works (2018) and the communal life (2019/20). The model of reconciled coexistence of Democratic Confederalism, which supports the village’s experience, constitutes the foundation for evolving a free society capable of finding a new balance with its territory.
Beginning with the premise that research on energy sources alternative to fossil-based, accompanied by a consumption-reducing policy, is an objective to be vigorously pursued, the article intends to critically analyse the direction this transitional phase is following. By highlighting that the methods implemented follow that same technocratic worldview – based on man’s separation from nature and on a finalistic, instrumental rationality underpinning the ecological crisis we are going through – it aims to press for a change in paradigm. A paradigm change that is becoming increasingly urgent and necessary due to the conflicts emerging on various territories. In taking Sardinia as an emblematic case, where a rebellion is underway against the installation by large multinationals of high-powered wind and solar power plants, which have been dropped in the island's context by the sprinkling of power, we want to contribute to taking another road. One made possible by another instrument introduced by legislation: the energy community. The idea is that through this particular mechanism, the energy production issue may revert to being considered not an element disconnected from the context but rather an inseparable, integral part of that complex network of relations that links a community with the care of its living environment and landscape production.
