The Belìce Valley as a Territorial Laboratory: from Public Policy Experimentation to a Large-area Administration Strategy

The issue of the creation and management of territorial assets is relevant and increasingly considered as a means of compensation to territorial disparities and for this reason supported by appropriate policy intervention actions. Italy has already been the recipient of interventions aimed at territorial cohesion for a number of years, and in Sicily, too, numerous intervention tools can be found, such as local action groups or the more recent experimentation with energy communities; both of these tools are considered strategic because, in addition to representing a step forward in fighting marginality, they could help the most marginal territories overcome current geopolitical contingencies, such as the slow post-pandemic recovery and recent war conflicts affecting the energy and agricultural production sectors. Our research focused on examining a Sicilian hinterland that, shaped over time by natural events and human actions, could benefit from the experimentation of energy communities in rural areas. Here, the approach proposed is that of a systematisation of intervention policies in a broader and multi-sectoral framework, e.g. in accordance with existing and future rural development policies. In fact, the result of our analysis offers a new perspective in which it is possible to frame the Belìce Valley through the Strategy for Inner Areas to address choices related to the socio-economic survival of its communities and for which we suggest that it could apply as a Project Area, as happened in other parts of Italy, recovering a place-based and equally strategic field of intervention, namely that of post-earthquake reconstruction in Sicily despite the half-century that has passed since the earthquake.