The THEMA tool to support heritage-based development strategies for marginal areas: Evidence from an Italian inner area in Campania Region

The ongoing forced reflection on the leading urbanization models’ crisis has led to greater attention to marginal areas. In Italy, the scientific and media debate has focused on inner areas that, since 2014, have represented the target of an innovative national cohesion policy aimed at tackling their shrinking dynamics: the National Strategy for Inner Areas (SNAI). Indeed, Italian inner areas are endowed with extraordinary natural capital and settlement models far from urban density. Thus, they seem to respond perfectly to the new raised living needs. However, leaving aside the optimistic rhetoric, strong political and administrative choices are necessary to trigger a ‘return process’ based on this broader attention toward inner areas, thus countering humankind’s natural tendency to concentrate on urban realities. In this light, the paper proposes a tool to support SNAI in designing and implementing heritage-based local development strategies to address inner areas’ real needs. After a critical reading of the new challenges for planning posed by the pandemic and SNAI’s role within them, the contribution moves to frame the THEMA (Tool for Heritage-based Enhancement of Marginal Areas) tool, focusing on specificities of the inner areas as cultural heritage. Finally, the tool’s application to a case study, an inner area in Campania Region, allows to outline and discuss its possible benefits for SNAI implementation and its limits.