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RESEARCH PRODUCT

SUSPENDED TERRITORIES AND WINDOWS OF OPPORTUNITIES AFTER CENTRAL ITALY EARTHQUAKE OF 2016

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Nowadays cities are experiencing an unprecedented rate of growth, most of peripheral rural regions are facing shrinking phenomena. While globalization promotes strong economic concentrations in a few urban centers, peripherical regions are negatively affected by decreasing population and impending impoverishment, due to the lack of policy and the failure to develop and maintain rural economies. Although natural disasters accelerate these trends, the shock created by these unexpected events may generate a “window of opportunity”, linked both to risk-reduction processes and to transition paths towards more desirable futures. Earthquakes, more than other natural disasters, destabilize local systems and reveal the vulnerability of the environment; these disasters lead to an introduction of “state of exception”, in which a whole set of temporal regimes is created to exit from the emergency management phase (short-and medium-term) and lead to recovery and reconstruction of the build environment (long-term). This review aims to discuss tendencies in post-disaster management in the central Apennines after 2016 earthquake, since this shrinking rural region is slowly leaving the emergency phase and it’s starting to plan the reconstruction in the medium-long term. According to the UNISDR Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the reconstruction phase is a critical opportunity to “Building Back Better”. In order to achieve this priority, we suggest new scenarios based on a multi-scalar approach and on ruralurban linkages and interactions. This is a new kind of chance for the rural areas to valuing the importance of the landscape and the environment. The creation of clusters of highly efficient multifunctional agriculture and production of common public goods it is seen as an opportunity to create future ecosystems and new types of cultural production.