Slow Travel Project for Enhancing Territories: Motivations and Directions

Every project should follow an idea, a theoretical and intentional framework orienting the sense of its practical actions. Nevertheless, in many cases the project comes before then the motivations. This can be a mistake, especially in cases of regional projects affecting policies, people and territory.Giving priority to the idea makes the project more effective and people and institutional stakeholders involved more aware. This is the reason why the project VENTO, the proposal of a long cycle-tourist path in Italy, is born firstly by elaborating its motivations and objectives and, later, by designing the bike track. VENTO has the precise aim of regenerating marginal areas thanks to the introduction of the paradigm of the slow travel: it is a model of sustainable development with the shape of a cycle path. This paper analyses motivations and goals of the project and explains in which sense VENTO can be considered as a project of territory, as a way to increase local green jobs, as a political manifesto, as a new deal for investing in infrastructures, as a proposal for travelling and not for spending just few hours, as a vernacular opportunity, as a anti-fragility policy. These ideas have sustained the process of realization of the project.