Trento Social Commons. Community Engagement as Tools for New Physical and Cultural Relationships Between Rural and Peripheral Spaces

Abstract

Expansion of urbanized areas heavily changed cultural landscapes' features in many European countries. Mountain territories have been hit by such processes too; due to their peculiar social and topographical characteristics these effects have been greater than in other territories. Moreover, urbanization expansion process in the Alps is strongly related with temporary dynamics depending from touristic fluxes, implementation of new spaces of mobility, economic development and living.In a context of extreme land scarcity like in the Alps, urban sprawl and dwellers' search for nature proximity to homes and residential areas put territorial governance instruments under pressure and opens up complex questions.Beside other experiences between urban and peripheral spaces, the essay aims at speculating that typical rural communitarian governance models are able to strengthen collective interests over individual ones and can be translated into urban governance models by public authorities. Direct observations in the city of Trento demonstrated how citizens - even where specific collective governance models are not commonly applied – involved in specific projects are able to generate systemic solution and self-develop associative and cooperative models to regenerate open spaces around the city. Such examples can be considered as pilots to be extended to other (alpine) urban territories following an approach that the city of Trento is implementing through different participatory policy instruments or through European projects.