opposite: Colletta di Castelbianco, a borgo telematico prototype, established in 2000.
below: Castelvecchio Calvisio, current photos of an almost abandoned town
permanent stone walls are juxtaposed with new transient uses and users. Balancing tradition and technology, these smart settlements can offer a necessary urban alternative. /
local services. A writer, a financial consultant, even a designer can now accesses the same data from a remote village as they can from a downtown office building.” 5 Rankin and archaeologist Dora Cirone have initiated a strategic plan for the town of Castelvecchio Calvisio whose population has plummeted from 1100 to less than 200 over the past century. 6 The project aims to revitalise the town and surrounding territory by reinvesting in traditional agricultural and artisanal production, and by stimulating a new, digitally-dependent economy supported by study of the area’s rich history, ecology, archaeology and architecture. The project proposes a flexible public realm that responds to a range of users and promotes various durations of stay in the town. The compact city structure sustains a diffuse network of multipurpose linked-in spaces to benefit a fixed population while simultaneously providing research facilities for short-stay scholars and school groups. Being able to work from anywhere is certainly not a new idea, but the potential for this concept to transform the Italian landscape of abandoned towns is hugely significant. Urban sprawl in Italy is a growing problem. These towns, in their reincarnated state, propose a new development model in which the
community, critics of the project fear that reliance on a niche demographic creates an economy that cannot support the growth of a balanced settlement. Furthermore, the cost of connecting remote towns to the broadband network far outweighs the benefits for large providers and therefore requires a private revenue generating strategy such as the business model of Colletta di Castelbianco. Despite enormous headway in universal coverage for all Italians by the Ministry of Communications, 7.6 million citizens are still without access to broadband. 4 Organisations, such as Borghi Autentici for the promotion and restoration of Italian villages, see the digital divide between urban centres and the disconnected rural towns as a critical hurdle that must be overcome. They recognise the potential of advanced communication technology as a catalyst for revitalisation projects, but only when applied as part of a larger environmentally and socially sound plan. Rome-based American architect, urbanist and teacher, Tom Rankin, agrees. “There are ever more reasons today for people to move to (or move back to) these small centres, especially if they are redeveloped effectively to ensure low-impact connectivity with the world through high-speed data networks and ecological public transit links and a minimum of quality
1 La Nave, Massimo and Paolo Testa. 2009 Atlante dei Piccoli Comuni . Rome: Cittalia. Fondazione ANCI Richerche, 2009 2 Bonifazi, Corrado Bonifazi and Frank Heins. Dynamics of Urbanisation in Italy . Salvador, Brazil: International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, XXIV General Population Confer- ence, 2001. 3 La Nave, Massimo and Paolo Testa. 2009 Atlante dei Piccoli Comuni . 4 Caio, Francesco. Portare l’Italia verso la leadership europea nella banda larga: Considerazioni sulle opzioni di politica industriale. Rome: Report for the Minis- try of Economic Development- Communications Department, June 9, 2009. 5 Tom Rankin. Il Progetto Borgo Abruzzo a Castelvec- chio Calvisio . Lauren Abrahams, editor. Rome: Edizioni Exòrma, 2010 6 Popolazione dal 1861 al 2007. http://www. comuni-italiani.it (elaborated from ISTAT data)
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