Centri minori tra rischi e tutela: prospettive per la pianificazione e la conservazione preventiva e programmata

The recent debate on the National Strategic Plan for Inner Areas 2021-2027 has reignited attention on policies for marginal territories, which the document describes as being in a state of “chronic decline”, requiring measures to boost social dignity rather than revitalization. While these statements have been interpreted as an institutional surrender to the phenomenon of abandonment, other initiatives – such as the CNEL appeal (June 26, 2025) and the National Villages Plan promoted by the Ministry of Culture and funded through the NRRP – reaffirm the intent to turn inner areas into engines of sustainable social and economic development, with more than 1,300 cultural enhancement projects and 1,800 SMEs involved. In this context, the need – widely supported within the restoration field – to assess the quality and coherence of interventions in relation to local risk factors (UN 2015; UNDRR 2022) becomes urgent. Current operations, however, still rely on extraordinary or sector-based measures (such as fiscal “Bonus” schemes) rather than on integrated strategies combining conservation, energy efficiency, and risk prevention. The architectural project thus remains central to addressing the complexity of small urban sites, often excluded from effective protection due to fragmented and outdated planning tools. Strengthening local planning instruments and improving the training of administrations and professionals appear essential to enable the systematic control, maintenance, and mitigation of risks. Within this framework, urban history and urban archaeology provide crucial tools for a diachronic and multiscalar understanding of transformation processes, supporting the definition of documents analogous to a “Building File” and of “Guidelines for Interventions”, indispensable for an informed and sustainable management of diffuse cultural heritage.