Lost and Found. Processes of abandonment of the architectural and urban heritage in inner areas. Causes, effects, and narratives (Italy, Albania, Romania)

The recent pandemic season renovated the interest for depopulated small rural or mountain towns in inner areas, also thanks to their partial repopulation by “smart workers” during the various lockdowns. Experts in different fields have been wondering if such phenomena can solve the problem of depopulation, mainly in those areas where this phenomenon occurred mainly caused by physical (e.g., hydrogeologic risk, seismic risk) and/or socio-economic risks (e.g., poverty, marginalization, ethnic discrimination). The research Riba 2021 Lost and Found. Processes of abandonment of the architectural and urban heritage in inner areas: Causes, effects, and narratives (Italy, Albania, Romania), funded by the DAStU Department of the Politecnico di Milano, whose results are gathered in the volume, investigates how abandonment factors and their effects influenced the processes of construction of memory and identity over the 20th-century, to further understand how these processes can condition the contemporary perception and interaction with depopulated areas and abandoned heritage by different user groups. The results are important to assess the potentiality of repopulation and reuse of the abandoned built environment. The research also aims to compare some case studies in southern Calabria with similar cases in Europe, particularly Romania, and Albania, which present some common features concerning the reasons for abandonment and have currently experimented new strategies for repopulation. The final purpose is to investigate how a history-based approach for the study of marginal regions affected by depopulation can help in addressing possible strategies for “mitigating” the phenomenon and its consequence in terms of cultural heritage abandonment. The history-based approach is here intended as a methodology that places the deep-rooted reasons for abandonment, as well as its repercussions on territories and settlements, within a historical context. Such an approach should help assess the potentiality of the relaunch or, conversely, the end of a specific site, and to define, in a possible future, an interpretative model able to be applied to possible strategies for repopulation and reuse of the abandoned architectural heritage in Italy and the global context.