The project
“B4R Branding4Resilience. Tourist infrastructure as a tool to enhance small villages by drawing resilient communities and new open habitats” is a research project of national interest (PRIN 2017 - Young Line) funded by the Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) with a three years duration (2020-2023). The project is coordinated by the Università Politecnica delle Marche and it involves as partners the Università degli Studi di Palermo, the Università degli Studi di Trento and the Politecnico di Torino.
B4R investigates the potential of branding in Italian small villages and inner areas. It proposes the transformation of minimal tourist infrastructures as an engine for the development of more structural and resilient territories and local communities. B4R has the double goal to contribute to the state of the art advancement in the different study fields and to propose operative branding actions and strategic visions on four focus areas. Branding here is meant as the engine to reactivate habitats and to draw resilient communities able to respond to contemporary challenges. Villages and towns are explored in relation with their natural infrastructures and their cultural landscapes and they are re-interpreted through the lens of architectural, urban and landscape design. The research aims at contributing significantly to the National Strategy of Inner Areas and to the Law for small villages in fragile territories, as well as to answer to the real needs and problems of local communities.
The four focus areas are located in the Italian regions of the four research units: Marche, Sicily, Trentino, Piedmont. In each region there are different focuses that relate to different place identities. Yet, the research units share a common methodological approach: operating on the transformation of the spatial conditions to reactivate these fragile territories through real projects focused on places and communities of people. Through the introduction of minimal tourist infrastructures and the activation of networks, relations and participatory processes (co-design), B4R aims to build a shared future vision (co-visioning) working on legacy as a memory of the past and heritage of tomorrow. In this process design is a crucial element, a multi-disciplinary, trans-scalar and multi-level tool, capable of activating new economies and new life cycles, promoting a higher quality of space and life for the inhabitants. Starting from ongoing projects, B4R seeks to work in the four focus areas to foster new polycentric settlement models. The goal is to transform these rural-urban contexts into attractive places for new residents and users and to propose a resilient model for local communities. Starting from relational and experiential tourism, the process should lead to enhancement and territorial development, and in general activate a new metabolism. Through its outputs ( an atlas, a virtual platform and a roadmap of strategic guidelines ), the project targets significant impacts on the involved territories and communities.
The team
Meet our Research Team
