emigration re-occupation connectivity
rural urbanism technology by lauren abrahams
isolation flexibility
endangered Italian villages find new life where tradition and technology interface
In the early 1990s, the deserted mountain village of Colletta di Castelbianco was resurrected. Realised by Milanese architect Giancarlo de Carlo in collaboration with the telecom and digital communications specialists, Telura, the village is one of Europe’s first borgo telematico or cybervillages. The reconstruction remained architectonically true to the original medieval form while wiring the town with an advanced telecommunications network to serve a niche clientele of international business travellers as well as the restructured apartments. High-speed fibreoptic broadband cables support a long list of e-business necessities such as teleconferencing and ubiquitous wireless connectivity, all cleverly hidden within the local stone walls. After decades of abandonment, the town was back online. Since construction finished in 2000, Colletta di Castelbianco has successfully marketted itself as a centre for corporate tourism and as a virtual vacation destination. However, in the years since its completion, the borgo telematico prototype has yet to be replicated. With very minimal provision for the type of mixed public amenity required to rebuild a sustainable
to well under 500 residents of which the majority are elderly and retired. This exodus occurred in waves, driving inhabitants towards the cities or even abroad. The small percent of towns that thrive today exist solely on tourist revenue and tend to be clustered together in the wealthier areas of the country. The rest are struggling or abandoned, disconnected from high frequency public transit and without their historical agricultural income base. Their fortifications have failed to protect populations from a century marked by industrialisation, urbanisation and a fierce global economy. Their walls may still be intact but the towns themselves have all but collapsed. So what would it take to bring life back to these towns? Even if there was sufficient funding for restoration efforts, conventional infrastructural and architectural revitalisation is peripheral to the core challenge facing these villages. More than restructured buildings and repaved streets, what these towns really need is a new raison d’être , a reinvented economy that reflects local and global interests and can sustainably support the growth of a balanced population.
Driving through the Italian countryside, it is striking how unchanged the mediæval landscape of rolling pastures punctuated by rising hill towns appears to be. While the image of the inhabited rock face seems to defy the passing of time, one could hardly say the same about the decaying villages themselves. These compact urban forms, still bound by the old fortified walls engineered to keep enemies out and inhabitants safely within, have experienced enormous population decline over the past century. Threatened to the point of extinction by mass migration, the last decade has seen the rise of technologically driven preservation strategies attempting to save these culturally and architecturally rich villages from literally crumbling to their demise. From the North to the South of Italy, there are over 5500 borghi or small towns with populations less than 5000. 1 Mostly of medieval heritage, these once flourishing settlements have been shrinking over the past 150 years. At the beginning of the twentieth century over 34% of the total Italian population lived in small towns 2 compared to less than 17% today. 3 Many borghi have witnessed populations drop
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