Conveners
SS_03 REPOPULATING LEFT-BEHIND TERRITORIES: POLICIES, PRACTICES, AND EMERGING PATHWAY
- Mauro Fontana (Politecnico di Torino)
- Loris Servillo (Politecnico di Torino)
The more the regenerative projects and experiments of paths of epopulation of the left-behind territories and mountainous areas advance, the more a fact emerges forcefully: the concrete difficulty of welcoming and accommodating, transforming them into inhabitants, the various people who today, in Italy, seem to express a growing demand for mountains.
This finding that emerges from the...
Across diverse sized cities in England, School Zones are a new way to plan for districts centred on securing the next generation’s well-being in disadvantaged areas. This paper teases out lessons for repopulation from social infrastructures, which is demonstrated by such zones around public educational facilities in England. The paper builds on a recent study of ‘School Superzones’ in London...
Human mobility has been investigated as a key factor in the challenges faced by left-behind areas (LBAs), yet its actual capacity to drive sustainable development remains underexplored. This study critically examines the case of Valle di Viù, a mountain area in the Turin Metropolitan Area, Italy, to explore the limitations, contradictions, and potential of relying on human mobility to address...
The newly emerging housing question is widely considered to be exclusively affecting large metropolitan regions. This is also true for Italy, where Milan – and its metropolitan region – have become the hotspot of a housing supply and affordability crisis that does not seem to mitigate in anyway. However, many peripheral areas in the region of Lombardy are experiencing high stress in their...
Among Italy’s many "middle lands," the Po Valley’s lower plains (Bassa Padana) remain one of the least studied. This area, stretching across Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, and Veneto, has long been perceived as marginal and economically depressed. However, recent years have seen profound transformations reshaping its spatial structure, socioeconomic fabric, and collective identity.
The Bassa...
This paper discusses the case of the ‘Radici’ (Community Roots) Research Project, which aims at reversing ongoing territorial and socio-economic decline dynamics in one of the fourteen districts that Lombardy’s regional government has included into its regional Strategy for the so-called ‘Inner Areas’. This Research Project focuses on nineteen small mountain municipalities belonging to the...
The more the regenerative projects and experiments of paths of repopulation of the left-behind territories and mountainous areas advance, the more a fact emerges forcefully: the concrete difficulty of welcoming and accommodating, transforming them into inhabitants, the various people who today, in Italy, seem to express a growing demand for mountains.
This finding that emerges from the...
Since 1975, Spain's population has increased by approximately 42%, rising from 34.2 to 48.6 million in 2024 (INE, 2024). However, this growth has been unevenly distributed, with rural areas experiencing significant depopulation due to economic transformations and migration to urban centres. This demographic shift highlights the phenomenon of "Empty Spain" ("España vacía") described by Del...
