Plans and actions for the repopulation of small villages in the Italian scenario.

For decades now, the depopulation of inland areas and small towns has been a topic at the center of the debate at European level which also closely concerns the Italian context. From 1971 to 2015, most of the small Italian municipalities lost more than half of their residents (Calandra, 2019), a negative trend that recorded a further decline of 5% even in the following three years. This situation outlines a critical framework that places the abandonment of the smaller municipalities at the center of the issue, with consequent problems not only in economic terms but also above all concerning the loss of memories and traditions rooted principally in the older centers. Small villages constitute approximately 70% of all Italian municipalities and they occupy 54% of the surface area of the entire national territory (Istat 2022). Many of these centers fall into marginal areas that cannot be recovered with their own resources but only with external contributions (Pirolli 2008). In this scenario, in recent decades there have been various measures and actions aimed at repopulating the internal areas and recovering the small centers within them. Plans and actions ranging from the sale at symbolic prices of uninhabited houses in historic centers (1 euro houses), to the National Strategy for Internal Areas, from Law 158/2017 "Measures for the support and enhancement of small municipalities, to incentives provided by the Italian Regions and Municipalities aimed at repopulating small centres, up to the most recent Village Plan of the PNRR. Through the analysis of interventions and policies initiated by various levels of government, both national and local, the study aims to investigate the effectiveness of the various measures and actions initiated in the past and what prospects current plans outline in relation to the recovery and revitalization of Italian villages. In this framework, the work examines the experience of some small villages and the related actions undertaken aimed at repopulating their historic centres.