The recovery of abandoned settlement heritage as a sustainable local economic development strategy: a wide area pilot project.

Within a wide mountainous area of the Province of Teramo (Italy), 127 small and medium sized historic settlements are in a state of near total abandonment. The recoverability of this heritage was defined in the drafting of an Inter-municipal Unit Strategic Plan of local economic development based on the potential for re-use of forgotten local resources. The aim is to promote re-anthropization of the area through gradual resettlement that assumes man as protagonist with the needs and aspirations of our time. In order to define an appropriate methodology of approach, a pilot project was developed in a sample area as an experimental prototype as demonstration of the feasibility of the idea of a global strategic plan. The strength of the project is in the research of the settlement capacity, for the sizing of plan, of the historical heritage in the transition from old to new modes of use.