key: cord-0060347-mitnqotz
authors: Aragona, Stefano
title: Rural Areas as an Opportunity for a New Development Path
date: 2020-10-06
journal: Smart and Sustainable Planning for Cities and Regions
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-57332-4_23
sha: 92bde1ef711b591c1e2c8f29392c829ebef9bb4f
doc_id: 60347
cord_uid: mitnqotz

The paper proposes an integrated view of the territory in which there is no conflict between rural areas and urban areas. This is in line with the indications of the 2007 EU Charter of Leipzig which calls for integrated planning strategies between rural and urban, small, medium, large, and metropolitan areas. Therefore, an ecological multidisciplinary approach to the territory, using the concept of ecology proposed by the 1950s by Dioxiadis, is suggested, concept then taken up by Appold and Kasarda in the early 1990s. And it is the key word of the Encyclical Laudato Sii for the Care of the Common House of Pope Francis 2015 which refers to the principles of the 1992 Rio Conference based on the centrality of “human ecology” and on the alliance between man and nature, which in 1995 Scandurra had requested in L’ambiente dell’uomo (The Environment of Man). The phenomenological, from the Greek world phenomenon, is the methodological keystone of the paper. The well-being of the person and of the communities must be the objective of those who deal with the development of the territory. Rural areas in this sense can offer great opportunities, generated today by the many technological innovations, both tangible and intangible, potentially available. However, this should not overshadow the need for links that facilitate access to these areas. One of the important positive effects of the presence in rural areas is the reduction of hydrogeological risk thanks to the presence and daily maintenance of them. Among the aspects that raise questions that are difficult to answer is the risk that the more accessible an area becomes, the more there is a threat of its loss of uniqueness. Last but not least, it should be pointed out that the rural areas are a sort of territorial “reserve” for populations that have to abandon their lands due to climate change or who seek a quality of life not possible in large metropolitan areas. All this means that some geographical areas, primarily Calabria, are potentially territories where scenarios can be hypothesized for a different modes of anthropizations indispensable to move toward the objectives of the UN 2020–2030 Charter on sustainable development. In light of the COVID 19 emergency, these indications are even more relevant.

Keywords Opportunity · Multidisciplinarity · Sustainability · New anthropization · Scenarios 1 Rural and More "Rurality" characterizes the internal areas, often defined as "minor", but is also becoming a significant element of many urban suburbs. Emanuel already in the early 90s coined the expressions "urbanization of the countryside" and "ruralization of the city" (Emanuel 1990) . 1 This twofold phenomenon, if managed and addressed by territorial and local strategies, can give further consistency to sustainable and more useful methods of anthropization for the well-being of people, in line with the objectives of the UN 2020-2030 Charter, inhabitants of the territory or citizens they are. Phenomenon that characterizes Italy because of its ancient and recent history, the reason for a landscape rich in social, architectural, and environmental diversity. Phenomenon can be measured only partially, being largely qualitative 2 and with indirect effects and externalities difficult to measure. Phenomenon linked in a relevant way to the political choices to which technicians can only suggest mostly qualitative scenarios.

The main conceptual reference is the resident of a place, even if this characteristic no longer has the pervasiveness, the "hardness," which was present in the anthropization processes of the past. Historical settlements were often called the "stone cities," the more "stable" they were, the safer they were, the more they could grow. They were in defense of agricultural areas, one of the three territorial invariants suggested in 1987 by Raffestin. 3 Of the natural resources they needed, the most essential was water. Earth, water, and stability were the elements that guaranteed the continuity and prosperity of the local communities. The concept of "civic use," invented by the Romans, recognized the community of residents and the lands burdened by this denomination belonged to it, which is neither public nor private but collective.

The economic activities that have emerged and affirmed in recent years are often "temporary," that is, precarious and uncertain, almost volatile. And therefore, the settlements associated with them have often been, and are, equally unstable and unable to build a "place". 4

Settlements and rural activities have opposite characteristics: They need stability, continuity, presence, and control. So they participate significantly in the construction of the landscape, as the Charter of the same name defines it, i.e., the outcome of the relationship between human activities and nature. Thus, over the millennia, Italy has become "the country of 100 bell towers" (Coscetta et al. 2014 ). This occurred not with industrialized agricultural activities but with "human" relationship with the land, that is, that which is at the basis of the construction of local communities that used or built networks, canals, mills, etc., which were often seeds of villages and then often cities.

Innovation, technological, and technical transformations must be used, but this must be done in a "cultured" way (Del Nord 1991) , that is, at the service of man and not vice versa. In social, economic, and spatial changes, rurality has been neglected both on a territorial and urban scale. The industrialist development model has overwhelmed rural landscapes, it has been indifferent to the territorial context. The post-World War II agrarian reform created many small or medium-sized owners, but immediately afterward the policies pointed at industrialization. So where there were inadequate conditions for it, the attempt was to build the elements for industries to arise. Then, a working class grew up, a wage, and finally, a "spending power" and "demand" related to industrial/modern goods.

With this mechanism, efforts were made to bridge the gap between the wealthiest and the least wealthy areas, both in relation to infrastructure and in relation to wage differences. And partially, they succeeded in. Because the most disadvantaged areas, from the unification of Italy onward, were mainly in the South, the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno-CASMEZ was born. 5 Situation worsened also following of the Second World War which had many battle theaters in the south and center of Italy. This has meant the widespread destruction of infrastructure networks and nodes as well as urban centers, towns, which represented military garrisons, defenses, of which the case of the Montecassino Monastery is a striking case but that small rural 5 The Cassa for extraordinary works of public interest in Southern Italy was born in 1950 and ends in 1984 (instead of the planned 1960). It was intended to create the infrastructural conditions and primary urbanizations to facilitate the establishment of industrial activities. In the internal areas and especially in the South, from the Unification of Italy onward, a growing gap had arisen in terms of connection networks, energy, telephony, etc., i.e., what was called "The Southern Question." The cultural, political, and operational reference was the Keynesian vision, the basis of the New Deal USA, and the experimentation of the Tennessee Valley Authority. In 1986, the CASMEZ was replaced by the Agency for the Promotion and Development of the South (AgenSud) until 1992 when it was suppressed with the law 488 which came into force in 1993. From that year, the coordination and programming of the intervention in the depressed areas of the national territory passes into the hands of the Ministry of Economy and Finance. In the meantime, since 1986, areas whose development is lagging behind in Europe become the subject of European cohesion policy. (2019) settlements such as Castelforte (FR), in the valley of the Liri, are sadly exemplary of the almost total destruction to which they have been subjected (Fig. 1) .

Since the beginning of the 90 s the internal areas, often defined as "minor," those where "rurality" is more present, undergo a progressive deconstruction first of all because the devastating "cutting of the dry branches of the railways" begins, which significantly worsens the accessibility (Aragona 1993) .

Added to this are the privatizations and liberalizations of many services. Services that were people's rights and that were transformed into "products" to buy. The "excuse," the reason for this is that their price dropped thanks to the competition that was created. Thus, more and more the citizen, that is the cum-cives that shares the civitas, is transformed into a consumer. Since supply goes where demand is more dense and with higher spending capacity, the "smaller" areas, the internal ones, mostly rural, have seen many basic services disappear. These choices took place while, at the same time, the state made a drastic decrease in its presence: historical identity places, railway stations, barracks, etc., disappeared along with the closure of pharmacies, post offices, bank branches, and even ATMs. All this has deconstructed, and is continuing to deconstruct, these areas.

A different idea of rural and/or internal areas, we can say an attention to them, has been making its way only for a few years with the National Strategy for Internal Areas-SNAI (Lucatelli 2015 (Lucatelli , 2016 and then the Law n. 158/2017 Measures for the support and enhancement of small municipalities, as well as provisions for the redevelopment and recovery of the historic centers of the same municipalities or municipalities under 5000 inhabitants, although the former is being tested only in a few realities and the latter it has a budget of just 150 million Euros.

The National Union of Mountain Municipalities-UNCEM, which groups these small or very small centers, is requiring for essential services to be guaranteed or (2017) to return to these places. Among the many requests, there is also that linked to the presence of digital connections that allow the use of telematics services, so that this "competitive disadvantage" 6 can be reduced (Fig. 2) . It should be noted that until the end of the 70s in Italy, the public companies that created and managed the basic services were obliged to make substantial investments-ca. 40% of the new onesin areas whose development is lagging behind (Aragona and Pietrobelli 1989) . This allowed a progressive rapprochement between the richer and less wealthy areas, bringing electricity, water, and telephony.

André Torre, President of the European Regional Science Association and professor of Agriculture, at the ERSA 2019 Congress, highlighted the huge opportunities that are offered in the rural area in having the presence of networks that allow the use of "online" activities. However, innovation should not be limited to technological aspects and those related to the production process but also which, in large part, involve social ones. That means that is necessary that it concerns innovation in the organization, in the social sphere, and in the institutional one. All this is with a vision, with transdisciplinary strategies and "integrated" policies. With this philosophy, the rural environment can be a relevant actor of the "glocal" (global and local) suggested byRobertson (1995), the unification of global and local expresses a concept that potentially allows the integration and contemporaneity of the different territorial scales. In order to do this, it is necessary to govern the network, the information, and the exchanges, tangible and intangible, in a way that is able to defend the Fig. 3 From left, average distance of the areas, weighted for population, from its reference pole and wide band. Source Internal Areas Technical Committee-SNAI (2015) complexities, 7 i.e., thinking globally but acting locally. But, accessibility to networks is needed.

The Forum Inequalities and Diversity in the Charter of the population reached by broadband (2018) shows the strong marginalization that the internal areas have as identified by SNAI: "In looking at the rural/urban fault, the "distance" can be read with an indicator of physical/material access (average distance of the areas, weighted for the population, from its reference pole… and with an access indicator and intangible connectivity (digital divide…). In the latter case, it is a pre-condition strongly correlated with citizenship services (think of telemedicine, the development of elearning approaches, the experiences of "remote school" or "online schools") and with the widest access of people and markets (knowledge, openness/attractiveness, production systems)" (Fig. 3) .

The "rural" components, both of areas defined as such and also in urban areas, can be a very useful "tool" to increase the resilience of the territory. Maintaining its presence will increase safety as it means lowering the level of risk as well as improving the level of local and "downstream" well-being. While the abandonment of internal and rural areas increases the fragility of the areas. So with a multicriteria approach, as well as multiscale, both negative and positive externalities must 7 Together with the ease of access to information even in difficult regions, such as Calabria, for some time now, a technical and technological core of knowledge has started to form (see Aragona in the AISRe contributions 2001, 2003, 2004) , a literacy process has started which is in fact already telematics, therefore beyond mere computerization, the basis of what Zeleny (1985) calls "higher technology knowledge." enter the set that political decision makers use to choose strategies. Obviously, this means overcoming the microeconomic philosophy, previously mentioned, based on the (presumed) benefit of the consumer in terms of the purchase prices of the goods by introducing a wider, multidisciplinary dimension with short-, medium-, and longterm assessments. To all this must be added that maintaining bio-diversity means not decreasing the ecological resilience useful to the biosystem understood in a broader sense.

The utility mentioned above is particularly relevant considering the changed climatological conditions: from "water bombs" to periods of particular heat in seasons that are traditionally cold. In fact, much of what has been built, and the places where it has been built, are not prepared, designed to withstand these unexpected events. Therefore, every element, both locational and constructive, which increases its resilience must be valorized.

The elements of "rurality" offer a very significant opportunity to increase local resilience, both material and social resilience. Regarding the first, returning to the "ruralization of the city," the theme of "green" is emerging in an increasingly important way. It, together with the "water" element, can be a great resource of local resilience. Following this logic and taking note of the relevance of the theme, in 2017, the Committee for the development of public green spaces of the Ministry of the Environment and the Protection of the Territory and the Sea elaborates the National Urban Green Strategy. Resilient and heterogeneous urban forests for the health and well-being of citizens and Guidelines for the management of urban greenery and first indications for sustainable planning are the first structural, systemic indications on a territorial scale that go far beyond the law n. 10 of 2013 Rules for the development of urban green spaces that made it mandatory for municipalities over 50,000 inhabitants to adopt a "green plant that had a project and management of this, however, the first organic intervention.

With such attention to "rurality," there can also be a great social resilience as shown by the management of abandoned agricultural areas in Rome. In 2014, the municipal administration made a call to entrust the management of them to cooperatives of young farmers who proposed a mainly agricultural and didactic use (Municipality of Rome 2014). It is useful to note that many of the outskirts of the capital, but also of the other large and medium Italian cities, are in the same conditions. So, this method of governing the relationship between "rural" and "urban" can be particularly emblematic.

Alongside both material and social aspects, there are local experiences of which the "urban gardens" are emblematic situations. Even if not defined in this way, already in the late 60s and mid 70s, they appear in small to medium cities. When inhabitants move to new buildings, often economic and popular construction, in regions such as Umbria-strongly characterized by natural and agricultural components-various local administrations to maintain the historical relationship between man and nature, deeply felt by the elderly population, together with the apartments they assign agricultural plots. Over the years, this theme of the plot of land to be managed has taken the name of "urban gardens," as cited significant example is Città di Castello (PG) ca. 36,000 inhabitants, where the mayor says, speaking of the urban (2018) gardens dedicated to the memory of Gualtiero Angelini, (Fig. 4) "… The municipal administration cares a lot about this experience, which allows us to preserve and nurture fundamental social relationships for our community, offer the opportunity to maintain the relationship with nature and preserve the rural culture from which we all come, important elements of the quality of life that we try to promote daily in our city … Ideal testimony of the benefits of outdoor life in the vegetable gardens of the municipality is Olga Capecci, with her 91 years is the oldest farmer among all pensioners holding a plot of land in the Municipality." (Redazionale 2018).

The abandoned and uncultivated spaces grow, and many citizens take them into management with the intent to start participatory gardening initiatives. For this reason, several municipal administrations have drawn up "ad hoc" regulations. In the last 5 years, the record of over 1.9 million square meters of land owned by the municipalities for domestic use has been reached, with a growth of 36.4%. 8 Northern Italy is the area where the highest growth of urban gardens is recorded, with Emilia Romagna in the lead: 37% of public gardens cultivated nationally are located here. Lombardy (10.2%), Tuscany (9%), Veneto (8.5%), and Piedmont (7.6%) also fall into the "top 5" of the trendiest regions in urban gardens. Among the regions of Central Italy, the leadership lies with the Marche, with Umbria and Lazio behind them. Campania leads the ranking in the South, followed by Sicily, Sardinia, and Calabria. The passion for the land, the search for greenery, and the desire to recover more natural rhythms in daily life seem to be the reasons behind the boom in urban gardens.

Calabria is in the last places as urban gardens, most likely since the vast majority of its urban centers are very small, between a few tens, or hundreds of inhabitants to a few thousand. There are only 15 cities over 15,000 residents, Reggio Calabria, the most populous city, has approx. 189,000. So in many cases, there is already a close relationship with nature. In the face of the very low current settlement density, however, there is a widespread real-estate heritage. Not considering the illegal and unsafe one, however, there are resources, in terms of considerable potentialities. Urban, historic center, albeit small, and nature was functional to its construction and social recovery: urban waste collection made with donkeys, as in some municipalities of the metropolitan area of Rome, bees as indicators of air quality, repopulation of the historic center and revaluation of ancient crafts, with international tourism. Landscape, therefore, which is built with new ways of anthropizing, of the relationship between rural and urban, conjugation between local identity and modernity.

The topic we are talking about belongs to, is part of, the change in the "industrialist" paradigm that has emerged from the first industrial revolution until the early 1970s, that is, for over 300 years. The unsustainability to continue with this development model emerged thanks to The Limits to Growth report, elaborated by the Meadows research group commissioned by Aurelio Peccei, President of the Club of Rome, in 1972. So references, theories, phenomenology, etc., they must be viewed in a historical key, that is, in the long term and not by reference to the short and medium term.

Thus, they are "periodizations" for experimentation and/or verification of steps that are being developed in the construction of different methods of anthropization, that is, of socially and environmentally sustainable scenarios. And of which rural areas, or urban areas with predominant rural features-in the contemporary and/or in the future-are an important part. So, continuing Emanuel's reflections, with a vision very close to that of the Society of Territorialists, what is proposed is a different concept of rurality, but also of city, which combine one and the other, "perhaps one within the other one" (Emanuel 1990) .

And as the President of the National Union of Mountain Community Communities (UNCEM) said at the Assembly of the National BioArchitecture Institute (2019), the rural areas, the inner areas, may be "land of reserve" since more researches show that in large urban areas the quality of life is worsening. But they are also reserve areas linked to the climatological changes that are making the sea level rise. Thus, progressively, hundreds of millions of people currently living in marine cities will have to migrate to other safe places. However, the cause-effect relationship is not new as Bonardi (2004) recalls in the study of the relationship between the movements of people and climate. That is even more relevant considering that, due to the Coronavirus, there has been a blockage of many work activities and movements which have resulted in a large decrease in pollution. Factum, evidence not only in the more industrialized areas as shown by the satellite photographs but also in the natural ones where the fauna and flora have returned in good conditions (Fig. 5) .

A positive signal comes from the will of the present government (2020) to demand that almost 40% of new investments be made in areas with a delay in development, thus returning to those policies which, after the Second World War, had managed, even if partially, in diminishing the gap between territories, as previously written. All these consider the territorial, social, economic, and spatial transformations, that is the landscape, as public space (Bonesio 2006). 

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