COMMUNITIES SUPPORTING LANDSCAPES

Mountain sustainable transformation and territorial regeneration with a culture - based activation.

The case of Monte Cimone

Politecnico di Milano

Academic Year 2021/2022

School of Architecture Urban Planninig Construction Engineering

Master of Science in Landscape Architecture. Land Landscape Heritage

LM-3 - Landscape Architecture Thesis Supervisor Co-supervisor

Thanks for the great contribution provided by Professor Federico Zanfi and Mattia Tettoni, whose support has been precious throughout the whole process of the project. The development of the research has allowed us to reflect and discuss actively on issues of primary importance for the support of fragile territories.

Thanks to Antonio De Rossi, his availability and advice have guided us towards a project that meets the real needs of Italian mountain areas.

Thanks to the trajectory of the thesis in a more general sense, to the meaning that it will assume in our path as landscape architects.

The current marginal condition of the Apennine Mountains. The history of Mountain economies. Between abandonment and Reconquista. Ruins and Forest as rural Mountain heritage.

Climate change in mountain territories

Decay or transition?

Mountain resilience in the face of climate change. Tourism winter sport decline and community impacts. Future perspectives for sustainable Mountains.

The Apennine laboratory

Opportunities for contemporary society

Territorial regeneration with culture-based activation approach. The meaning of Metromontagna.

SNAI and GAL, territorial development strategies. The place-based experiences of Cooperative di Comunità. The essential symbolic transformation.

2. CARTOGRAPHIC FRAMEWORK

Territorial Characterization

The Northern Apennines | Understanding territorial structures and flows. The Emilian Mountain | The Modenese landscape. The Emilian Mountain | Welfare density distribution.

Monte Cimone Landscape | Agro-ecological system.

Monte Cimone Landscape | Built environment system.

Atlas of physical dynamics

A photographic narrative of landscape configurations.

3. COMMUNITIES SUPPORTING LANDSCAPES

Cooperative Mountain Community

A place for socio-Cultural Innovations

Strategic Vision. Landscape Resources. Actions and design premisses. Masterplan.

Sustainable territorial regeneration pilot projects .

Socio-Cultural Infrastructures. Slow mountain mobility

Mountain Hubs

Re-Inhabited Heritage. Forest restoration

Rural Abandonment Renewal

Step by step plan.

4. REFERENCES

The mountain and inland areas of the Italian peninsula offer forms of rural life deeply rooted in their topographic conformation. At the same time, today they are 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, or they would remain a mere memory 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.

The structure of the thesis brings out how it was developed. The composition started with the chapter Fragile mountains, which includes the literature studied to support the research. Continuing there is the Cartographicframework, which consists of the graphic designs developed for understanding the area under study and refers to the numerous site visits carried out over the last year through the construction of a photographic atlas. Then the project definition of Communities supporting Landscape is developed, which contains the explanation of the project proposal defined through two pilot projects: Socio-CulturalInfrastructures and ReInhabitedHeritage

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.

La montagna e le aree interne della penisola italiana offrono forme di vita rurale profondamente radicate nella conformazione topografica dei loro territori. Queste aree sono oggi caratterizzate da dinamiche di forte marginalizzazione, processi instauratesi a partire dal boom economico successivo alla Seconda guerra mondiale e non ancora invertiti.

L’Appennino Tosco-Emiliano e il caso specifico del Monte Cimone si strutturano attraverso una costellazione di paesi, villaggi, piccoli borghi e borgate che da secoli ne costituiscono l’ossatura socioculturale, regionale e nazionale. L’Appennino oggi non esisterebbe, o di sé vi rimarrebbe un mero ricordo, se venissero meno le connessioni orizzontali presenti fra la pianura e la fascia montana.

La domanda sottesa durante l’intera ricerca è stata: in questi fragili contesti, quale può e quale deve essere il ruolo dell’architettura del paesaggio? In che modo il progetto fisico di un luogo può essere il tramite per il consolidamento di dinamiche socioculturali ed economiche in grado di far emergere tendenze di sviluppo positive e sostenibili?

In tal senso il percorso di tesi cerca di configurare plausibili possibilità in cui le comunità supportano il paesaggio, e allo stesso tempo opportunità in cui il paesaggio supporta le comunità.

La struttura della ricerca fa emergere le modalità con cui è stata sviluppata. L’ elaborato inizia con il capitolo Fragile mountains, esso include la letteratura studiata a supporto della ricerca. Continuando si trova Cartographic framework, costituito dagli elaborati grafici sviluppati per la comprensione dell’area oggetto di studio, il capitolo rimanda ai sopralluoghi effettuati nel corso dell’ultimo anno attraverso la costruzione di un atlante fotografico. In seguito, è sviluppata la definizione del progetto Communities supporting Landscape, questa parte contiene la spiegazione della proposta progettuale definita attraverso due progetti pilota: Socio-Cultural Infrastructures e Re-InhabitedHeritage

Tramite il riconoscimento e la valorizzazione dell’esistente, il progetto di tesi elabora le condizioni base per il consolidamento dell’abitabilità e dell’infrastrutturazione del paesaggio del Monte Cimone. Si riconosce un approccio di ricerca fondato su una rigenerazione territoriale sostenibile. Lo scenario sviluppato fa specifico riferimento alla cooperativa montana di comunità, un luogo per innovazioni socioculturali.

Le intenzioni dichiarate nei progetti pilota danno una risposta in termini di offerta di servizi e nuove opportunità lavorative. Le strategie e le motivazioni si materializzano in un puntuale progetto di paesaggio. Il lavoro svolto vuole essere percepito come punto di partenza, una ricerca in grado di generare effetti positivi indiretti, sia nel panorama accademico sia sulle comunità montane di rifermento.

Along the Italian peninsula runs the mountain chain of the Apennines, a complex and varied orographic system lower than the Alps but with extremely significance and importance in the composition of Italian geography. To illustrate the events that combine many areas of the Apennine system, we need to address the question of the internal and marginalized areas of the Bel Paese. Most of these territories are made up of hamlets and small rural and mountain villages characteristic of the anthropization model that has historically characterized the entire peninsula. Today, these areas are subject to a profound cultural, social and economic crisis, the collapse of a substantial part of Italian territory characterized by long-term depopulation, abandonment of the building heritage, and under-use of tourist settlements with the consequent homologation of the mountain urbanization. The issue of inland areas is not only a question of historical and social justice, but it represents a question of survival: if these territories are not given a new meaning and value, they will sentence to abandonment and neglect.

The positive and, although minimally, reassuring aspect is represented by the new flowering of studies on the enhancement of geographical and cultural specificities, rural and mountain areas become in this case the potential for the rediscovery of a new idea of the quality of life and social cohesion. The best experiences of regeneration taking place in the internal areas of the Italian country show that it is possible to build fires capable of acting as accelerators of the social and economic development of the territory by intertwining themes such as culture, community health, and small local services, training and access to new technologies, support for microeconomies. Small territorial-based competence and service centers are capable of functioning as exchanger spaces between metropolitan and internal areas, in a truly metromontane and cooperative perspective.

The Tuscan-Emilian Apennines is in the northern part of the Apennines spine. In this context, the landscape of Monte Cimone is recognized as one of the most important components of the territorial Apennines chain. As part of the central Emilia park, this territory has a natural capital of great relevance, composed of a network of small towns that in the past decades has experienced a decrease in population, leaving abandoned settlements and the reclamation of spontaneous vegetation, followed by a decline of original rural local economies which has brought massive tourist development with seasonal recreational activities with the development of a series of small winter sports infrastructures and resorts, leading to a loss of identity in the territory for its inhabitants and a lack of sense of place.

It is essential to underline how the experiences of Community Cooperatives have settled in the territorial system of the Emilian mountains, culturally based territorial regeneration strategies recognized at a national level as good practices for the creation of new attractive societies both culturally and professionally.