Dati informativi aperti per l'attivazione dei contesti locali

Open data to reactivate local contexts _ Also reconsidering some salient findings from the first step of this research (see the e-book Attivare risorse latenti, and the “atlas” of experiences documented inside), this paper aims to carry out a rapid survey about the possible role and potential of open data and cultural heritage information in the policies of local development and activation. Building “nebulas” of cultural heritage information – making them dense, recognizable and evident while they are often scattered, thin and hidden – is the characteristic of many initiatives aimed to territorial valorization and promotion through the opportunities offered by the implementation of open data sets. On the one hand, this is typically the mission of some institutional bodies formally dedicated to collect data and make them available for open public consultation. On the other hand, the integration of existing – but sectoral, partial and fragmentary – open data sets is the specific objective of further research programs and initiatives. About such “nebulas” of open data and information, sometimes the problem is not to integrate but to construct them, above all about those places that are so rich of cultural heritage resources but so poor – because of their peripheral and marginal conditions – of information able to document and communicate them effectively. According to this idea, the “information void” about the village of Corte Sant’Andrea (Senna Lodigiana, Lodi) that was selected as a case study and “target” of this research, has been filled with a number of open data by the “Mapathon For Cultural Heritage” carried out on March 30th, 2017 in Milan, in an instant data input and collaborative mapping event supported by Wikimedia Italia. Making information available and accessible is the first step towards the re-emergence and re-appropriation of places, and the open data density makes people aware about their space/time consistency and depth. Volunteered geographic information e collaborative mapping initiatives – when applied to “fragile” territories to rediscover, safeguard and valorize – may be reconnected with the experiences of ecomuseums. These projects are interesting not to reaffirm defensive territorial “identities”, but in their openness and generative potential: in fact, they are dense territory representations that are expression of active parts of local societies under transformation which explore the opportunities for the future local development in the discover and discussion of tangible and intangible elements of cultural landscape. Therefore, it is not an accident that when ecomuseums address urban territorial fields they are above all related to peripheral contexts. And in the big cities this kind of gaze and aim dialogues with their administrative sub-articulations – their internal organization by “municipi” or “quartieri” (boroughs) – in search for developing urban policies rooted in the local context. It is also intertwined with the forms of planning tools, i.e., with the structure and syntax of the urban plan at the local scale. For instance, urban planning contents are articulated (referring to the recent cases of Bologna and Milan) according to the different “Situazioni” (urban situations, or environments) and “Nuclei di identità locale” (nuclei of local identity). They are significant expressions that reveal the attempt to interpret the local space/time geography of places. This may represent a common ground for formal institutional planning initiatives and bottom-up self-promoted actions founded also on VGI, collaborative mapping and open data setting.