Policy and regeneration of Italian historic villages

General introduction to frame the context of the proposed policy/project/research: Depopulation and marginalisation of villages and small town is an increasing phenomenon across Europe. Historic villages are depositaries of a territorial heritage, both cultural and environmental, capable of expressing a potential, today not fully enhanced, that needs to be rediscovered because it could establish itself as a possible driver for reversing the current dynamics and as a significant resource capable of activating processes of regional regeneration and local development. Objectives of the proposed policy/project/research: Through an integrated and trans-disciplinary approach, the research aims at defining an operative tool to support planning, policy-making and intervention actions, by local authorities and operators, to manage and start sustainable, controlled and adaptive regeneration processes for historic villages, able to combine the strategy of heritage conservation with cultural, social and economic enhancement. Results of the proposed policy/project/research: This paper presents the first outcomes of the research, funded by the Territorial Cohesion Agency within the framework of the National Strategy for Inner Areas (SNAI) for the inner area Valle del Giovenco-Valle Roveto, and offers a critical assessment of the state of the art in the field of historic villages regeneration, reconstructing the Italian cultural and regulatory framework and analysing the methods, objectives and limits of the main policies and operational practices in this field. From this initial phase a significant divergence between theories and practice seems to emerge, which leads to the need for a shared definition of regeneration and to establish through which policies and actions it is possible to pursue it in a perspective of integrated and systemic management of instruments as well as interventions.