Geography Notebooks. Vol 1, No 2 (2018). Living in the Third Millennium. Agenda 2030 and the new Sustainability Objectives for the realisation of a global utopia at local level

AA. VV., Alice Giulia Dal Borgo, Maristella Bergaglio, Alice Giulia Dal Borgo, Maristella Bergaglio

• Editore: LED Edizioni Universitarie
• Anno: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9788879168960
• Argomento: Scienze sociali
• Categoria: Geografia umana

L'Utopia realizzabile della sostenibilità, Alice Giulia Dal Borgo-Maristella Bergaglio - Sustainable places in urban settings: abandonments and returning at the time of Agenda 2030 - Alice Giulia Dal Borgo-Maristella Bergaglio - Città inclusive, sicure, resilienti e innovative. Riflessioni sul caso italiano, Raffaella Afferni - Tutela attiva e sistemi agroalimentari nelle Aree Interne italiane, Monica Morazzoni-Giovanna Giulia Zavettieri - Gli agroecosistemi come utopie sostenibili: il Progetto Neorurale nell'area metropolitana milanese, Giuseppe Gambazza-Giacomo Zanolin - Deconstructing coastal sustainable development policies: towards a political ecology of coastalscapes in Vietnam, Andrea Zinzani - Negli spazi vuoti della metropoli: esperienze di riuso collettivo tra temporaneità e permanenze, Emanuele Garda - Didattica della sostenibilità, Silvia Anselmi - E. Giovannini, L'utopia sostenibile. Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2018, pp. 172, Marcello Tanca.

GEOGRAPHICAL
APPROACHES

Sustainable places in Italian urban settings: abandonments and returnings at the time of Agenda 2030

Alice Giulia Dal Borgo - Maristella Bergaglio¹

Università degli Studi di Milano

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7358/gn-2018-002-dal2

ABSTRACT

If we consider the theme of abandoned places on the one hand and their rebirth on the other one soon realizes how this issue must necessarily be traced back to the great question of sustainability, which goes beyond the borders of States, uniting all the peoples of the Earth in the difficult path that should lead them to the achievement of shared goals. It is no coincidence that Agenda 2030 set sustainable settlements as one of its seventeen strategic sustainability objectives. With the aim of providing useful food for thought for the debate on the principles and values to be applied in the planning and construction of sustainable settlements, the contribution will then focus on the theme of abandoned sites and the processes of return and re-signification that are manifesting in recent times, with particular reference to the urban context.

Keywords: sustainability; abandonment; urban reuse; Agenda 2030.

Parole chiave: sostenibilità; abbandono; riuso urbano; Agenda 2030.

1.INTRODUCTION

On 25 September 2015, the United Nations approves the Global Agenda for Sustainable Development, indicating 17 Sustainability Objectives (Goals), divided into a further 169 Targets (Targets), to be achieved by 2030. Agenda 2030 goes beyond the strictly environmental vision of sustainability, widening the perspective to other dimensions of social equity, economic efficiency and institutional accountability and committing the signatories to the definition of a strategy for the achievement of the new objectives, as part of a process coordinated by the UN. For the purposes of our analysis on abandoned places, we believe that of the 17 sustainability objectives, the eleventh is the one to be used as an interpretative and analytical key of the processes under investigation. How, then, to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, durable and sustainable by 2030 when, according to estimates, the world population will reach 8 billion and 5 billion people will live in about thirty mega cities, most of which are located in Asia, Africa and Latin America? And what are the values to be safeguarded so that the planning of sustainable settlements can be effective and implemented in the short time available between now and 2030?

Answers to such questions are not easy to find and even if the best options are identified, their implementation is certainly not immediate, nor is the result guaranteed. Having made this consideration, we will dwell in the next paragraphs the theme of abandoned places and processes of rebirth and reactivation that, in recent years, are continuing in different territorial contexts, with the aim of finding answers, albeit partial, to the research questions raised above. In fact, it seems to us that the process of abandoning places, with the consequences that this generates, can provide a different perspective from those usually used when approaching the issues of settlement sustainability (such as the consumption of resources, polluting emissions, social discomfort and so on). A perspective that sees in the outcome of an interrupted living –the abandonment of places – not only the negative aspects, but also the multiple possibilities of return, rebirth and, finally, redemption of those places themselves.

2.THE ABANDONMENT OF PLACES, A COMPLEX PHENOMENON

The fact of abandoning places is certainly neither recent nor new: the history of humanity shows us how the environmental, socio-cultural, technological, economic and political changes of human groups have led, and always will lead, to abandoning places that had been inhabited and used up until then (Scaramellini 2016). However, in the last thirty years there has been a significant increase in the number of abandoned sites in many Countries, due to several factors. In this context, the Italian case seems significant and connected on one side, to the historical and socio-economic dynamics that in Italy have become more intense after the Second World War in the processes of industrialization and tertiarization, linking in a double way to migratory movements, both domestic and international. On the other side, in the post-modern era, to the disposal of industrial and agricultural structures and production areas as well as to urbanization and land consumption.

About 6000, according to the most recent estimates², are the villages, including villages, pastures and stables, with less than 5000 inhabitants (70% of the Italian municipalities, where only 17.2% of the population lives³). Of these 6000 villages, almost half are at risk of extinction as they are completely, some or almost, others, uninhabited. This situation can be found throughout the country, from north to south and from west to east, but it is becoming widespread especially in some regions of central and southern Italy: the internal areas of Tuscany and Marche, Basilicata, the entire southern Apennine arc, from Abruzzo to Calabria, through Molise.

In its more contemporary occurrence, the abandonment of places is characterized as a heterogeneous phenomenon because it affects very different ‘territorial objects’: certain parts of urban settlements, or the historic mountain centers⁴, the outlying areas of large cities as well as disused buildings in central urban areas. The abandonment of places can also occur in historical and architectural assets located in areas of high landscape value, or it can manifest in buildings intended to house offices. Again, infrastructure interrupted during their construction or never used, excavation and withdrawal of aggregates, uncultivated land, disused areas and former construction sites lead us to the abandoning process. As long as the abandonments of places starts, it also contributes to increase the level of geographical complexity. This happens because it has consequences for the territories in which it occurs, linked not only to the risks that dangerous structures manifest, but also to soil pollution, or to collapses and landslides evident where mountain slopes are no longer cultivated (as in the case of terraces), to the degradation of the landscape, to a sense of disorientation and to forms of use that lie at the limit of legality. All the consequences underlined above pose many questions in terms of environmental, social, economic and institutional sustainability. The abandonment of places, moreover, shows unstable geographies as new cases are added or subtracted, thus defining an extensive archipelago with uncertain and constantly evolving boundaries (Garda 2016).

It is therefore important, in approaching the analysis of abandoned places, to use qualitative and quantitative instruments of investigation, which allow to define taxonomy and distribution of the phenomenon, as well as proposals and adoption of shared policies able to mitigate the effects of what is considered by many as a real emergence of territories and landscapes. An initial taxonomic hypothesis is that suggested by Amari, which identifies three categories of abandoned places: (a) ghost villages, i.e. towns and villages abandoned between the fifties and eighties of the twentieth century as a result of natural disasters or in relation to migration processes; (b) functional buildings, which have lost the function for which they were built; (c) semiophors of the incomplete, structures that have never played the function for which they were designed because never completed (Amari 2016).

Marini (2016) has indicated four macro categories useful to define a catalogue of abandonment referable to problems given by the context⁵, by function (which is lost, and with it the relational link between communities and places and the sense of identity), by dimension (which is often a trigger for abandonment) and form (which adapts to the processes of abandonment, according to the category of the third landscape).

Garda (2016), in its analysis of the multiple forms through which the abandonment of places is presented, underlines how important it is to dwell on the causes that led a place to be abandoned and that are generally attributable to economic and social changes, natural events, material-environmental conditions (presence of pollutants) and the enduring economic-financial crisis that characterizes recent times.

The abandonment of places frequents, therefore, multiple paths generating, as it proceeds, heterogeneous forms of marginalization of territories, environments and landscapes. According to our research objectives, it becomes interesting, as well as useful, to understand not only what forms are taken by abandoned places, but also what are the alternative options to abandonment, depending on the context in which it occurs. This is because we firmly believe that the “sense of the place”⁶ in contrast to the “non-place”, is a value to be safeguarded even in the awareness of knowing how to ‘lay down your arms’ when surrendering to abandonment seems the only possible choice. In the following paragraphs we will focus, therefore, on the returns that allow us to restore meaning to abandoned places and we will do so first through a brief general overview dedicated to the ways of regeneration of these places, and then dwell in more detail on specific forms of reuse in an urban context.

3.SUSTAINABLE CHOICES: RETURNING TO PLACES

Since the Nineties, many initiatives have arisen dedicated to the redevelopment and reuse of abandoned places: awareness actions, scientific research projects, recovery and renovation programs, movements of citizens and associations, first in a pioneering way and then more and more widely, have had and continue to have as their object the neglected places. Beyond the geographical-territorial context, initiatives for the recovery of abandoned sites can be divided into two main categories. On the one hand, there are direct or site-specific actions, which focus on the specificity of places, local products and activities and the concept of adaptive reuse⁷, which defines intervention practices aimed at reusing old structures for new activities, through ways that can establish a dialogue with the characteristics of the place where the intervention is done. On the other hand, indirect actions, which stimulate the creation of networks, local, national and international, promoted by various bodies and associations. In both cases, the actions and projects may be specific, i.e. they may concern a single element of the site in question (a building, a field); they may be spread over several elements of the site (several buildings, land, road networks); they may be linear when they are carried out on structures passing through several places (disused railway networks, paths, tracks, etc.); and they may be spread over vast areas and landscapes.

In the urban/metropolitan context, the forms of recovery and reuse of abandoned or unused places are multiple and range from temporary reuse⁸, to co-housing, which is often flanked by co-working and, again, from the restitution of spaces of various kinds to the use of collectives for the creation of urban gardens, public green spaces, meeting centers, museums, libraries, schools, etc., to the reclamation of disused industrial areas and former construction sites for housing and/or social use.

Finally, in rural and extra-urban areas, the possibilities of requalifying and enhancing abandoned places range from the foundation of educational farms, often linked to farmhouse and agritourism, to the planting of organic and biodynamic crop⁹ to simpl...

Indice dei contenuti

• Copertina
• Frontespizio
• EDITORIAL
• GEOGRAPHICAL APPROACHES
• INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES
• GEOGRAPHY FOR EDUCATION
• BOOK REVIEWS