Abstract
In most mountain areas the socio-economic changes of the last sixty years have favored the concentration of the population in urban areas, resulting in a slow abandonment of inner and marginal area, or in development models without environmental sustainability criteria, based, for example, on the intensive touristic exploitation of the territory or on the industrialization of the mountain valley.
This contribution analyses two projects as case studies in the Province of Trento, in the north-eastern Italian Alps: “Vital Mountains” and “Revitalizing collective goods”. Both study areas are characterized by a tradition of community-based resource management and are close to touristic hotspots. The interventions under investigation have been funded by the local government at provincial level and aim at experimenting a vision on development based on the creation of community economies. In both interventions, academia had a role in co-shaping the process, through a transdisciplinary approach.
By adopting the theoretical approaches of neo-endogenous development, social innovation and the U theory of change, we aim to assess the two transdisciplinary interventions. Specifically, we aim to investigate:
* how change emerges, is enhanced and accelerates towards sustainable development models and what characterized leadership in the process
* how the concept of commons evolves and adapts to ongoing socio-economic changes and it is used in community-based hospitality experimentations
The methodology to assess the two interventions bases on self-reflection and social innovation evaluation applied to cross-case comparison. Primary data produced during the interventions is used for the assessment. This presents the results, the successes and weaknesses of two different processes developed through a participatory process involving the local population, the administrators and the economic operators. We compare communities’ peculiarities, the process of communities becoming the “new” strategic players of innovative and self-sustainable socioeconomic development, the lessons learned during the projects’ implementation, and the role of academia in the process.