Territori rurali oltre una visione urbanocentrica. Il caso degli Iblei e di Scicli

For a long time, the materiality of the rural territory was hidden by the prevalence of sectoral and intangible policies, administrative boundaries, aphysical plans and projects, without real beneficiaries, by strategic actions that were never spatialized. Rural space, which also determines the GDP of many places and represents a very large portion of territory or inhabitants, has been the great absentee in the processes of territorial transformation, a space that is out of focus with respect to urban issues and continually compromised by the urban. The intervention on ordinary rural territory in a transformative sense leads us to consider several factors: the limitation of consumption and fragmentation of agricultural soils due to the advance of the urban; the repair and strengthening of ecosystem services and green infrastructures in the intertwining of natural-artificial and in relation to ongoing climate changes; the reuse of the abandoned in new forms; the reconstruction of practices and relations through the mobilization of beneficiaries and through new forms of cooperation between inhabitants-producers; the response to different types of needs in urban-rural areas between tourism and immigration; the role of agrifood resources in the construction of bio-districts and circular economies, related to waste processing, energy and water; the coexistence of proximity production chain together with those of long distance. The Hyblean territory is a very stimulating terrain where we can compose hypotheses on the existing spatial resources in rural areas. Through an attitude aimed at maintain, repair, reorganize, enhance, it is perhaps possible to imagine a reconstruction of the sense of rural spaces.