PRIN 2022 DeTREIT “Designin transition of rural environment from fragility of Italian terraces to their re-use” CUP (E53D23010460006)

he protection of the LANDSCAPE is a constitutional objective for Italy (ART.9) and the hilly areas and terraced slopes are a fundamental component of the traditional Italian landscape as well as an essential element of the historical and cultural heritage of Mediterranean peoples. The rural terraces consisting of dry stone walls (art recognized as a World Heritage by UNESCO 2018), are defined as cultural landscapes because the natural and human processes are integrated in them. The anthropic component is remarkable for the intangible patrimony that preserves both for the land use changes, for the substitution of biological communities and for the energy resources required for their self-sustaining. This special form of territory engineering has brought cultivation even in areas with difficult accessibility or where it was not possible to intervene with agricultural machines, but over time many terraces have been abandoned and regained by vegetation, factor that has increased the risks of fire and subsequent erosion also because of climate change. As a cultural landscape, a terrace is therefore much more than a retaining wall, the land it contains and supports, the crops, the water works and is equipped with a very high aesthetic landscape quality. Aware that the variety of Italian agricultural production constitutes multiple cultural identities, the research project aims to provide a systematic knowledge of the terracing system and the most appropriate techniques of prudent recovery of the same in a perspective of development of agricultural crops that they contain and protection of the stratification of skills and productive knowledge that they guard. More specifically, the PRIN aims to achieve the ENVIRONMENTAL, CULTURAL, SOCIO-ECONOMIC, INNOVATIVE objectives. The 2 OPERATIVE UNITS OF THE RESEARCH PROJECT are in emblematic areas and yet working on specific CASE STUDIES, in contexts where the terraces are cultivated with lemons, vines and particularly olive trees and for them define: common denominators, constructive and typological Ministero dell'Università e della Ricerca MUR - BANDO 2022 characteristics arising from the knowledge of the settled communities, productive potential, original and evolutionary cultural systems; mapping and evaluation of the conservation status of the terraces; symbolic and semantic typologies; GUIDELINES for the protection of dry stone walls and for the improvement of the production of valuable crops present; new itineraries in terraced landscapes for multi-sensory use of places. Socio-economic goals are the dissemination of knowledge with information and training meetings aimed to stimulate the impact of the results on the recipients and to develop new projects that enhance women entrepreneurs in agriculture and in the reception of agricultural and hiking tourism through the construction of routes and paths between typical crops.