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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Madonie Smart Villages Technological Sustainable Design for Sicilian Inner Rural Areas

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The EU is promoting the enhancement of marginal rural areas. In the Mediterranean area, in Sicily, there is the “Madonie” District, an inner rural area with 21 municipalities suffering of depopulation and lack of work despite to their natural and architectural potentials. The pandemic situation has pointed out the necessity of a better life quality that could be guarantee with the creation of smart villages, collaborating urban centers. The purpose of the research is to enhance these territories with technological sustainable design to enable urbanization and digital innovation and to their development. Rehabilitation must be guaranteed using technologically eco-efficient strategies and functional and innovative solutions to compare “Madonie District” municipalities with Italian and European smart villages. The research focuses on improving circular economy such as Industry 5.0 and Society 5.0 where economy takes benefits based on implementing digitalization and useful services to these weakest areas that could operate in close union. The goal of the research is to revitalize an area that has great potentials, but that has not yet implemented a smart network system. The collaboration between public and private Institutions leads to the realization of the proposed projects and the creation of guidelines/best practices are useful to create, devise and concretize a program of technological development in this area. This system can help exploiting the endemic resources from architectural, social, circular economy and cultural heritage point of view. In order to achieve the goals of sustainable development, the process of digitization and technological innovation is articulated through meticulous analysis and investigation of places, evaluation of problems encountered, and interpretation of solutions to be implemented. The final research protocol and the identification of best practices are useful to create a programme of development and social renewal. Stakeholders, investors and local companies guarantee the survival of rural communities and prepare them for Renaissance. These actions favour local culture combining tradition and technological and digital innovation. The scalability of this research represents a sustainable development and a “modus operandi” that can be implemented and transposed in other similar contexts.