How can digital technologies support shrinking landscapes in order to advance new development trajectories, while leveraging small towns’ heritage and local productions? What transformative urban design actions are needed at the local level to effect this digital transition?

These questions were explored in the “Smart Villages of Italy” practicum, offered in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning in Fall of 2022. The practicum course was instructed by Professor Brent D. Ryan together with DUSP Ph.D. Candidate and co-founder Liminal Carmelo Ignaccolo. The practicum occurred in partnership with Politecnico di Milano Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering (ABC) & Telecommunication Engineering Departments. The practicum was funded by MISTI-ITALY and the Progetto Rocca Foundation. 

Prior to the beginning of the semester, students and faculty members conducted 10 days of fieldwork activities. The group traveled to some of the most challenging and impoverished areas of interior Sicily- Favara, Vizzini, and Centuripe. Students investigated the role of art, public policies, and remote working as tools to promote new forms of development. Together with PoliMi, the class also scrutinized similar marginalized settlements in the Valtellina area of the Italian Alps, including Tirano and Teglio.

Students’ final projects, focused on diverse topics related to rural abandonment and depopulation, including the spatial metrics of abandonment in Sicily, a remote-working regional plan for Valtellina, small business digital outreach and analytics on CDR data, Valtellina opportunities for the upcoming winter Olympics, and design guidelines for tourism and food production in Sicily.

The Smart Villages practicum was the first time that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) organized an urban planning course on the theme of depopulation and widespread historical heritage in Italy. Students were exposed to new and unique contexts that bear witness to the cultural richness of Italy’s remote areas but also to the fragility of an economically and demographically impoverished territory.

Brent D. Ryan

Italy has the third oldest population in the world. As of 2020, 23% of the Italian population was aged 65 years and older, after Japan and Monaco. Therefore, understanding the spatial implications of demographic decline is of central importance, especially to small towns at risk of extinction. Through this practicum, we are interested in understanding what happens when technology (e.g., optic fiber, high-speed connectivity) meets physical remoteness and abandonment in heritage-rich settlements. 

Carmelo Ignaccolo