Politiche urbanistiche, co-design e governance dei territori montani

Over the last two decades, the relationship between cities and mountains has taken on a new centrality in the debate on urban planning and spatial planning. The Covid-19 pandemic, climate change and the crisis in traditional production models have made it clear that the dichotomous categories of “urban” and “rural”, “centre” and “periphery”, “plain” and “mountain” are no longer capable of describing the complexity of contemporary territorial relationships. In particular, in the Lombardy and Alpine contexts, there is a growing interdependence between metropolitan areas and mountain territories. Commuting dynamics, the spread of smart working, the digitalisation of services and the search for environmental quality have profoundly changed the ways in which we live and produce, redefining territorial hierarchies. The mountains, beyond the stereotypes of a place of escape or seasonal tourism, are an integral part of a polycentric and networked urban system, where new forms of territorial citizenship and local innovation are being experimented with. The discussion aims to analyse these processes through a dual lens: on the one hand, the theoretical perspective that rethinks the categories of urbanity and mountainity in the light of the total urban society; on the other, the operational perspective that considers co-design and multi-scale governance as tools for addressing the complexity of mountain areas.