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Book Title New Metropolitan Perspectives
Series Title
Chapter Title Attractiveness and Problems in a Rural Village Restoration: The Umbrian Case of Postignano
Copyright Year 2022
Copyright HolderName The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Corresponding Author Family Name Pizzi
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Given Name Marco
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Organization University of Perugia
Address Umbria, Italy
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Organization Political Science Department
Address Via Pascoli 20, 06123, Perugia (PG), Italy
Email marco.pizzi@studenti.unipg.it
Author Family Name Salvo
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Organization University of Perugia
Address Umbria, Italy
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Organization Political Science Department
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Author Family Name Burini
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Given Name Cristina
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Organization University of Perugia
Address Umbria, Italy
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Address Via Pascoli 20, 06123, Perugia (PG), Italy
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Abstract The hamlet of Postignano is located in Umbria, into the Municipality of Sellano, in a rural marginal
peripheral area. The relaunch project for this area is the main research object, in this paper. In 1992, two
Architects bought the whole hamlet, investing a great amount of money and human and professional
resources to make it live again after its abandonment, which took place in the 1960’s. The research is the
result of a series of interviews to selected key-actors and to people who bought a flat in the hamlet. The
interviews are aimed at understanding what made the hamlet attractive and how the owners’ approach to
the settlement management has been changed during the last decades. The project, indeed, has crossed
crucial decades for the international laws about the rural development, facing new challenges like the
global economic crisis in 2008 and local problems which forced the owners to reinvent deeply their
approach to local development. The redevelopment process of Postignano confirms the necessity to build a
touristic plan involving the local communities and being respectful through the sustainable development
concepts.
Keywords
(separated by '-')
Rural renaissance - City planning - Local development
Attractiveness and Problems in a Rural Village
Restoration: The Umbrian Case of Postignano
Marco Pizzi1,2(B), Paola de Salvo1,2, and Cristina Burini1,2
1University of Perugia, Umbria, Italy
marco.pizzi@studenti.unipg.it
2Political Science Department, Via Pascoli 20, 06123 Perugia (PG), Italy
Abstract. The hamlet of Postignano is located in Umbria, into the Municipality
of Sellano, in a rural marginal peripheral area. The relaunch project for this area is
the main research object, in this paper. In 1992, two Architects bought the whole
hamlet, investing a great amount of money and human and professional resources
to make it live again after its abandonment, which took place in the 1960’s. The
research is the result of a series of interviews to selected key-actors and to peo-
ple who bought a flat in the hamlet. The interviews are aimed at understanding
AQ1
what made the hamlet attractive and how the owners’ approach to the settlement
management has been changed during the last decades. The project, indeed, has
crossed crucial decades for the international laws about the rural development,
facing new challenges like the global economic crisis in 2008 and local problems
which forced the owners to reinvent deeply their approach to local development.
The redevelopment process of Postignano confirms the necessity to build a touristic
plan involving the local communities and being respectful through the sustainable
development concepts.
Keywords: Rural renaissance ·City planning ·Local development
1 Introduction
Many rural and marginal areas of the European countries, today, are lived and governed
as loisir and consumer places rather than spaces to be developed. The commodification
of places [1], the turistification [2] and the outcomes of many top-down decisions about
local development [3], indeed, pushed a lot of fragile areas into the socioeconomic profile
of the mere show-territory [4] making them increasingly entrusting with the touristic
field to gain back the lost wealth. Although such approach has become the mainstream,
at least in Italy, many public initiatives have been started with the aim to promote the
most efficient, participated and affective development process.
Recent Italian public policies – such as the National Strategy for Inland Areas
(SNAI) – started to manage local development of such areas trying to subvert the
urbanocentric approach which characterized the territorial interpretation from the sec-
ond postwar period. The major importance given to the cities by scholars and politicians,
however, is a cultural asset far to fall, overall considering the urban trends expected for
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
F. Calabrò et al. (Eds.): NMP 2022, LNNS 482, pp. 1–11, 2022.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06825-6_69
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the next years. According to the “World Cities Report 2016: Urbanization and Develop-
ment–Emerging Futures” [5] indeed, the 70% of world’s population will live inside cities
and conurbations within 2050, increasing up to 9 billion units. This awareness should
encourage reflections not only on the potential urban problems, threats, strengths and
opportunities, but also on all the residual non-urban spaces that will inevitably change
their structure facing this upcoming future scenario. Waiting for the outcomes of the
SNAI, however, it would be advantageous also to focus on case studies based on dif-
ferent features and premises, with the aim to sharpen the analytic tools required to the
upcoming scenario.
Some of the SNAI most significant premises to place restoration are the participation
of local communities, the self-management of the development projects, the fostering of
a local self-project capability, the improvement of the quality of life [6]. The development
processes based on these assumptions are realized in target areas where a local commu-
nity is engaged through years, but this, naturally, implies the presence of a community in
the territory to redevelop. A characteristic of many marginal Italian areas, nevertheless,
is just the lack of a cohesive community concentrated in a specific place. The SNAI
approach to local redevelopment, thus, cannot be considered as the only applicable to
all the marginal contexts.
The exploration of new case studies is needed to understand if a development app-
roach not based on local participation is possible. Such case studies should be able to
analyse the restoration process of a marginal area under the same conditions guaran-
teed by SNAI under the economic and expertise points of view, but different under the
social profile. We can suppose, indeed, that a place distinguished by an important cul-
tural, architectonical and historical heritage and a quality surrounding landscape, but
fragmented under the social point of view, would have different attractive points and
different needs to be restored.
The aim of this paper is to provide a description of a case study fitting with
this research needs, underlining what are the distinguishing characteristics of a rural
restoration processes lead not by institutions and in a deserted locality.
A fundamental intuition for this paper is that all these topics can be effectively
addressed observing non-urban or rural local restoration processes lead by private
citizens rather than public institutions.
Such kind of initiatives, indeed, have some specific characteristics that make them
interesting study objects [7]:
•The elaboration of territorial development ideas is less complex and articulated than
the Public Authorities’ one, and conducted with less cognitive means;
•The entrepreneurship governance approach is more often characterized by a top-down
approach rather than a participatory one;
•Following more strictly many marketing criteria, the enterprises involved in territorial
restoring processes as leader need to directly follow the market gait.
The case study analysed in this paper is the Umbrian hamlet of Postignano. An
hamlet totally owned by an entrepreneur since 1992, whose restoration process gives
important opportunities to address the topics named before.
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Attractiveness and Problems in a Rural Village Restoration 3
2 The Umbrian Case of Postignano
2.1 Case Study Description
Postignano is a medieval hamlet situated in Umbria, under the Municipality of Sellano.
This village, founded in the 13th century, thrived thanks to an economy based on herding
and iron files production. Due to this activity, it reached its maximum expansion in the
16th century, with a population of 400 inhabitants. The demographic thread remained
stable until the 20th century, when the basilar dynamics of the desertification phenomena
intervened as in many other villages of the Apennines [8]. The hamlet fell in total
desertification by the end of the ‘60s, when a sudden evacuation has been imposed
suspecting that an earthquake would have taken place soon after a slight landside. The
hamlet remained desert until 1992.
In that year, a venture lead by an architect started the acquisition of the whole village,
buying each estate from the heirs of the ancient owners. The idea of the architect was
to give a second life to this place restoring it entirely and reselling it after doing it. This
company still owns the hamlet, today, which is used as a widespread hotel for a half and
is intended to the retail sail for the other half. Some of the real estate that the hamlet is
composed by, indeed, have been already sold to buyers interested to own a house in a
picturesque setting, enjoying the meticulous restoration work done.
The restoration effort consisted in a real reconstruction work and was not intended as
a superficial operation. Nevertheless, the 1997 earthquake caused new heavy damages
to Postignano just few years after its acquisition, during the first years of ‘90s: a building
situated on the top of the village dropped triggering a chain collapse. Ten years have been
taken by legal proceedings and a new projecting phase, until when the work resumed,
between 2007 and 2008.
The nation in which Postignano came back to life, though, was deeply different from
that of 1997. In the meantime, in fact, affective socioeconomic changes took place. The
most important among them has been the 2008 global economic crisis. This event, as
a matter of fact, forced the new hamlet owners to widely rethink their action plans. If,
on a first time, the intent was to complete a mere architectural project to sell the entire
settlement – to an institution or a corporation that could be able to revitalize the locality –
after the economic crisis, when the restored hamlet had become very hard to sell, the
owners had to take care about many aspects about the life of the village, that are no
more connected to the simple architectural side. Owning a small town and developing
a long-term revitalization process is totally different than to complete an architectural
restoration to sell back the property letting other people to revitalize it. On first instance,
then, the project sustainability concerned only the architectural field: buildings had to
be rebuilt so that they lasted over time, resisting earthquakes being comfortable as much
as possible; in the new after-2008 scenario, instead, the restoring choices taken ended
with determining the new inhabitant’s community entry criteria.
What makes interesting the case of Postignano, then, is deep change happened in the
management of this place, which became a social engineering experiment from a simple
architectural operation.
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2.2 Methodology
To understand the choices made in the reinvention of the village, key-players were
interviewed: individuals who contributed substantially and directly to determining the
choices that made this settlement what it is today. The 15 subjects to interview in-depth
with semi-structured interviews made by videocall (due to COVID-19 pandemic) have
been chosen combining the rational sampling technique with the snowball-one, asking to
the first interviewee who were the key-subject to talk with. In this way, some key subjects
whose names recurred during the interviews were selected. They are the architect who
created the project as well as the founder of the “new Postignano” and owner of the
company that bought the village; the architect co-founder of the project and, today,
director of the hotel in the village; the communication manager of the village and a
former consultant for the promotion of the village who served the company for a few
years starting in 2010.
This methodological choice was made to give as much prominence as possible to
the interviewees’ point of view and to their network of relationships, according to the
personal life history and environmental historic comprehension methodological frame
[9,10]. In this way, in fact, were interviewed only people who they believe to be impor-
tant with respect to the project design and who they believe to be in continuity with
their own point of view, namely that of project managers. During the interviews, some
discrepancies emerged in the narration of the facts regarding the restoration and different
points of view, but all confirmed the incidence of the other interviewees in influencing
the course of work on the village. This survey process is articulated on the level of the
perception of space and time of the interviewees to compare their story with the tourist,
cultural, social and economic context described in the introduction. The aim is to under-
stand what the strengths and the weaknesses of the project are and what the territory of
Postignano is communicated through. These elements, indeed, could be able to make
understand better some aspect of the “return to villages” phenomenon.
Another branch of interviewees (10 people), on the other hand, is the one in which
all those who have bought a house in Postignano find themselves. Basically, what was
asked of them concerns the reasons for their choice and the intentions on how to use the
property in future years.
3 Results
The answers of the interviewees will be reworked below to highlight some issues of
particular interest for the purpose of analysing the recovery process of the village of
Postignano.
What Aspects of the Redevelopment Project Needed to Be Implemented to Make
It Sustainable in the Long Term?
Regarding this topic, all the interviewees articulated many opinions about it. Returning
exhaustively the positions of all, however few, would be impossible also due to the
complexity of the subject and the amount of statements made. If we want to clarify the
overall vision that the creators of the project have regarding this topic, however, we could
start by creating an index of the main issues that emerged from the interviews.
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Attractiveness and Problems in a Rural Village Restoration 5
On the theme of the social sustainability of the project, the interviewees expressed
their thoughts on the relationship with the local community and its level of entrepreneur-
ship; on the services offered by the village and its vitality in everyday life; on the dynam-
ics of short-break tourism; the lack of territorial coordination by the institutions and the
relationship with them; on the intention of not musealizing the village; on the protection
and maintenance of the territory; on the subject of population aging. Here it will not be
possible to report the complete statements of the interviewees commenting on them in
detail. Instead, some of the salient contents of the interviews will be reported in the form
of a list, which we will return to in the conclusions.
•Relationships between different communities. The social, economic and cultural
space of Postignano, today, is the result of the interaction between three different com-
munities distinguished by different time and spaces. The old Postignano community,
which built the village and created its main cultural asset; the present community com-
posed by tourists and by the new inhabitants (people who bought some of the renewed
apartments); the surrounding community, which lives in the enclosing territory.
On first instance, it can be observed that even if some efforts to involve the sur-
rounding community – that was connected to the history of the hamlet, in some
ways – in the regeneration process, today the hamlet is perceived as something quite
extraneous. After centuries of craftmanship and rural lifestyle, the hamlet hosts a
wealthy, high-educated and polyglottal enclave of new inhabitants. They are enjoying
the great work done on the architectural side aimed at giving value to the village
qualities, choosing a type of real estate that is quite countertrend respect to the local
mainstream, according to which more and more locals are choosing the near cities to
live.
The cultural activities intended for enliven the hamlet, moreover, are felt by the
people who live around Postignano as an additional buffer factor, sometimes.
This perception cleavage emerged during the interviews, but it doesn’t have to
be considered as the only way in which the hamlet is seen. It is an interesting and
recurring topic present in the interviews, that is reflected in some moments of hostility
by local elites, whose institutions have not always favored the project for Postignano.
•Sense of community and the role of the new community of Postignano.“You
cannot sell Postignano without a community” said the communication manager of
the village. Therefore, many strains of the owners of the hamlet are meant to create a
sense of living community inside it. Many public spaces have been refurbished with
particular care. The hamlet, in fact, is now fitted out with a theater, a library, a museum,
a square. The staff is always present, even in winter, when the hamlet is deserted, with
the explicit intention to give the impression that the hamlet is always populated to
potential residents who could decide to come during the low season. As told before,
in addition, also the cultural activities are projected to create a stimulating setting.
Listening to the new inhabitants interviews, all these initiatives seem to have
been effective. They, indeed, declare to feel a sense of community coming back to
the hamlet also thanks to these initiatives. In their narration it is a place in which
people can really met and know each other and in whom everyone is free to chose if
enjoy a more intimate routine rather than a more sociable one. The aspect of village
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6 M. Pizzi et al.
sociability emerges in the interviews as one of the main reasons of their choice to buy
an apartment in Postignano.
•Entrepreneurship and environmental maintenance around Postignano.Thesur-
rounding community constitutes, according with the board of the village, a potential
richness and a problem at the same time. The lack of entrepreneurship of the neigh-
boring population is a node to be solved to ensure a long life to the results of the
redevelopment of this village, which needs to be insert inside an economic network
to be completely lived. Furthermore, emerges in the stories of all the interviewees,
who note a high rate of aging, a low cultural level, the presence of few young people
and a certain reluctance to accept job offers within the village or to start businesses
that could collaborate there. “We need an integrated, long-term plan, in concert with
entrepreneurs, local and regional administrations, from various political and social
parts which creates serious opportunities for young people”. All the actors involved
in the local socioeconomic development, then, should work to create am economic
and social fabric to make the hamlet survive and to exploit the potential richness that
it is able to bring in the territory.
The locals disaffection through the territory would clarify also why the environmental
context is in bad conditions – from the point of view of the hamlet owners. Who is
currently managing the village explained, in the interviews, how in many occasions they
founded more interest in cultural and eco-friendly initiatives from foreign people rather
than from the locals, arguing that it is a problem not only for Postignano, but also for
the entire territorial context.
The Territorial Branding Dynamics in the Postignano Project
The first evidence that emerged with respect to this topic is that, thus far, “there is still no
integrated communication plan for Postignano”. The communications manager explains
how “the exercise of sitting around a table and answering the following questions has not
yet been done: what is Postignano? What do we want to communicate?”. This situation
appears connected to the underlying indecisions and a lack of a complete vision about the
implications of the new structure of the village, but it could also have economic causes.
“The investment in the website is strong, also because it costs to keep it up to date,” says
the co-founder. If the hypothesis on the causes of this delay in terms of communication
also consider evaluations on the management strategy, however, it is because already in
2010 by the executives “there was no idea of what to sell; sell the project? A product? The
rooms? The flats? The widespread hotel? There could not have been a communication
since there was not a product, yet: there were only renovated walls - so the former
consultant for the promotion of Postignano - they called us to promote it outside when
did not yet know how to do the interiors, how to loft, how subdivide, how to do”.
Before the opening of the village in 2013, in fact, it seems that the consultant was hired
without precise instructions on the promotion actions to be taken. “We made Postignano
presentations around the world, in Milan with presentations, speeches, press conferences,
different types of releases, newspapers. They asked us for help in promoting the village
in events like these, creating contacts with investors, decision makers, personalities from
the world of finance… Communication was a mix. We had to present Postignano as a
Author Proof
Attractiveness and Problems in a Rural Village Restoration 7
real estate opportunity in various ways, […] but we have never taken care of an organic
plan for them”.
Today, however, the need for an organized communication plan is felt. The idea of the
communications manager is that this should be articulated on several levels, involving
subjects also outside the village: “[On the part of the surrounding municipalities, tour
operators and local companies] there is a lack of updated, complete and clear sites,
adequate communications, publications, signs. All this is missing because people are
no longer fond of the territory, but also because there is no local public coordination,
but above all regional and national”. As for Postignano itself, the question to ask, says
the communication manager, is “How do I communicate a place like this?”. “From
an aesthetic point of view, it has been recovered, but the life inside has changed. You
cannot bring back the original life and the one you can bring back risks being artificial
and false. It is a real risk, to rebuild places like this and make something of them for
the exclusive use of the elite - the only ones who can enjoy a certain type of expense
and atmosphere. From a marketing point of view, the idea of a luxurious place they had
in the nineties could make sense at the time. The market, however, has changed in the
meantime. Today, tourists are looking for an experience. Experiential tourism is growing
as travelers seek a certain type of life. How do you make this natural and not artificial?
How do you put your life back, to restart a process connected with a centuries-old history
like this? […] Today, the Postignano project cannot be sold without a community […]
otherwise the product becomes a sort of Disneyland and the territory dies”. The founder
himself acknowledges that “All in all, Postignano remains an artificial village”, but - even
without an organic strategic plan - what the managers of Postignano are working on are
precisely the experiences shared with the inhabitants of the surrounding communities,
the recognizability of the village and its insertion into the territorial fabric through the
proposal of cultural events, the job offer and the inclusion programs of the younger
generations. It is no coincidence that the co-founder argues that “It is essential for us to
work so as not to be perceived by the population as an extraneous object”.
“These are social issues, but no less than tourism and marketing communication”
declares the communications manager. “These are issues of a social nature, but no less
than tourism and marketing communication” declares the communications manager. It
is important to make yourself recognizable on the web through the site, according to
everyone, “without which no one would find us” (cit. Founder) and through the activation
of social channels, but it would be equally important to intervene with signs in the area,
“which we plan to install”.
“We want Postignano to become a living reality. We know what we want to com-
municate, but we still don’t know exactly how” is the summary of the communication
manager.
The management of the village, therefore, recognized the need and the usefulness
of branding the village and the surrounding area, but at the same time it also focused
on the importance of creating a complex performative tourist proposal, which cannot be
done of images only, but which requires the restoration of a stable local community and
the resumption of a life lived within the village.
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8 M. Pizzi et al.
The Village Elements of Attraction
This section of the interviews display also includes the answers given by those who
bought an apartment in Postignano and spend part of the year there. The exposition
will be articulated by first presenting generic elements of attraction: ownership of the
village or the service proposal aimed at new residents; then reference will be made more
specifically to the community dimension.
The former consultant for the promotion of the village claims to have always insisted,
in his activity, on the aspect of “the high architectural quality of Postignano”. The co-
founder himself argues that this same element is fundamental: “respect for housing
traditions has been observed by furnishing the apartments and rooms with local furniture
used or redone in the same style as in the past, by installing underfloor heating systems
under the original trampling so as not to put the radiators, painting the walls as they did
at the time when it was abandoned… in short, taking care of many details connected to
the memory and history of the place”. One of the village main attractions, perhaps is its
architecture, also due to the anti-seismic safety. The architecture of the village is perhaps
one of its attractions also from the side of anti-seismic safety by which it is characterized.
The founder explains that “we have been able to carry out anti-seismic work impossible
to repeat in other contexts. We have secured fragile and ancient buildings by doing work
from their foundations upwards. This is an operation that would require the transfer of
entire families in order to be implemented in an inhabited area “. The money and the
efforts made have been rewarded, at least in some cases, in terms of image as one of the
buyers interviewed emblematically stated: “Knowing that the area was at risk, earthquake
safety was essential for me. I was convinced in October 2016, when I experienced the
strongest earthquake I’ve ever felt and not a single brick collapsed, I didn’t see a single
crack. It was then that I realized it was a safe place”.
“An important step was the opening of the restaurant” says the founder of the project.
“The culinary offer is linked to local productions and seasons” underlines the co-founder
and this seems to be of particular interest to buyers who declare themselves in love with
Italian food and the village restaurant. Along with the culinary specialties, artisanal ones
are also offered in small shops, displaying typical products made with local materials.
These two aspects are often presented, both by the founder and by the co-founder,
combined with the presence of native - or Umbrian - staff who make up 60% of the
active forces of the structure.
The topic of staff introduces that of the feeling of community that is intended to be
created within the village. The staff is also selected for their ability to relate to the public.
“Places are made not only of stones, but also of people - says the creator of the project
- if the people inside them know how to give something special, we are at a good point.
Anyone who comes to Postignano feels at home, feels welcomed, but not in a hotel
sense: I mean welcomed into a sort of community. I can’t explain this concept, maybe
it’s indefinable, but I think it helps to convey the idea”. Community is the word that even
those who have bought a house use to describe the feeling of welcome they feel when
returning to the village: “It is the right word to describe the ties we have established
there - says a couple of interviewees - both with the staff and with the other people who
bought a house in Postignano. In addition, there is often the opportunity to meet people
who come and go thanks to the hotel”. Another home buyer says: “People in Postignano
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Attractiveness and Problems in a Rural Village Restoration 9
find themselves in a community where there is a desire to be with others but with respect
for personal spaces, if you want to be alone, but if they don’t want to be alone. alone
there are possibilities to meet many interesting people, who talk about life, philosophy,
culture. There are exchanges of lives that are such a treasure of contact”. Another relates
an episode to explain what he means by community: “I’ll give you an example: when I
arrive in Postignano by car I always have a lot of things to bring, because we don’t come
often and I take a lot of things with me around the house. I always leave the car in the
parking lot in front of the church… It takes two minutes for all my things to be in front
of the door because everyone comes to help and it’s so nice that I don’t even have to
ask for anything: [imitates, with an Italian accent, greetings from people who call her to
welcome her and go say hello], I arrive and hop! They are all there. The warmth of this
community is really unique, fantastic”. The founder and co-founder are often present in
the village and involve guests by talking to them, proposing activities and spending time
with them. There are those who speak of “networks of friends that have started from
Postignano and reach the whole world, now, also remaining outside the village”. The
place is very much appreciated for the “Italian hospitality, for the energy (a word that
occurs often in the interviews, to describe the atmosphere of the hamlet), for cultural,
educational, health events, for the restaurant and the bar”. Someone goes so far as to talk
about long-term prospects: “I have moved my residence here and I will come to spend
my retirement years. It will be a perfect setting to continue to carry out my professional
projects and to bring some cultural proposals to the village”.
4 Conclusions
From what was told by the managers of the village redevelopment project and their
collaborators during the interviews, it is possible to conclude that the approach to its
management has had to evolve in the face of continuous changes: from the destruction of
the 1997 earthquake, to the advent of the internet, the 2008 crisis, the return of the 2016
seismic phenomenon that affected the reputation of the whole area. The main change in
the management style of the village involved the birth of a new awareness on the part of
the administrators, that of having to build a profound, multifaceted, performative tourist
offer, which offers an experience to the tourist who enters in Postignano, but also to
who buys an apartment inside. A normal real estate sale process would probably involve
focusing only on the transfer of ownership of a property from one owner to another, but,
in this case, in addition to the structures, the social aspects are also part of the transactions
founding architects of the project build from scratch.
All this implies a profound change for a project that was born as an “architectural
challenge” (cit. Founder) to be concluded with the sale of a luxury real estate asset to an
entity that should have taken on it entirely. According to the initial idea, in fact, the owner
of the village should not have taken care of the design of a new community. “You cannot
sell Postignano without a community” said finally the communication manager of the
village, but one of the peculiarities of this case is that the village is reborn without any
inhabitant and is restored according to criteria that design the future possible community
upstream. What is described here is the transitional identity of Postignano, the one that
must be understood to realize the actions of the village’s rebirth [4]. This is a situation
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10 M. Pizzi et al.
that will soon evolve depending on the work of those who run this place, but also on the
institutions and the surrounding local community [7]. In the passivity of the district, in
the lack of coordination by the institutions, in the excess of branding of the village, there
is a concrete possibility that the direction conceived for Postignano is that of the territory-
landscape-show [4], “In front of which the look passively disposes itself”, in which the
imagination of the place prevails over the life lived in it, as in a museum [4]. To avoid
this, it is necessary to act precisely on the “negotiation” and mutual inclusion between
the parties that Battaglini [11] indicates as a route for the sustainable development of a
territory.
The leaders of the village understand with different degrees of awareness that they
have to act on different fronts to create a “practiced landscape”, really lived despite an
open-air museum: involve the surrounding municipality in the life of the settlement,
foster links between this and that of new buyers, but also foster maximum cohesion
between the new inhabitants. Another front on which it is necessary to work, according
to the leaders of the village, is that of the relationship with local institutions, which
should contribute in terms of coordination between actors operating in the surrounding
area to favour its development, as well as work in the direction to improve the response
in case of large-scale emergencies.
The many aspects that make up the life of a practiced landscape, however, cannot
be communicated for promotional purposes through marketing operations that still aim
at transmitting flat, postcard-like images of the territory or, as they have been defined,
images of a “landscape- show”. From the interviews it was possible to record a cer-
tain degree of satisfaction from the new buyers, who found a positive correspondence
between the promotional images that had been proposed to them and the life they had the
opportunity to experience in the village. This happy correspondence, however, depends
on the survival of a single company that guarantees continuity to the life of the village
even in the months when no one lives there, which leads tourists to revive the life of the
settlement through the hotel business, which builds the entire cultural offer of the area. It
is a fragile balance, which will have to reinvent itself in order to last and be sustainable.
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