Landscape as driver to build regeneration strategies in inner areas. A critical literature review

Abstract

In the scientific debate and political strategies, solving the gap between core and non-core areas is becoming pivotal for achieving a more balanced territorial development. The emerging issues in current scientific literature regard how to reverse marginalisation trend in inner areas by carrying out approaches able to enhance the territorial capital in an endogenous development perspective. For this purpose, strategies for these areas have to look carefully at their strengths, such as a low pollution rate, a more direct access to natural resources and a rooted local identity. In many of these contexts, landscape is a specific asset that should be enhanced as driver to trigger new development dynamics, to achieve local attractiveness and competitiveness starting from multidimensional values recognised to the landscape. In this perspective, collaborative processes can be developed, aimed at involving local communities and stakeholders in recognising landscape resources and values as starting point to enhance place identity in marginalised contexts. Therefore, the interpretation phase should develop a dynamic and collective process, supported by interdisciplinary methods and tools to improve territorial capital and, at the same time, strengthening social cohesion, in order to lay the groundwork for co-planning and co-designing processes.