Challenging Social Desertification

In the face of the increasingly critical phenomenon of depopulation and marginalization in Italy’s inner areas, a thorough reflection is needed on the role of design as a tool capable of activating territorial regeneration processes. Twenty-five years after the introduction of action-research in territorial contexts, there is an urgent need to update tools, approaches, and objectives in light of the growing complexity of contemporary challenges — from demographic desertification to socio-economic and environmental transformations — that are having an increasingly dramatic impact on these territories. At the same time, the rise of digital culture has opened up new perspectives linked to a redefinition of the concepts of center and periphery, which may lead to the overcoming of the very notion of territorial marginality. Design, with its ability to listen, read, interpret, and narrate local knowledge, resources, and criticalities, can activate practices capable of counteracting the progressive depletion of human and cultural capital. Within this framework, we propose a reflection on the need to redefine design practices in light of the digital shift and the emergence of new forms of community — digital and atopic — capable of connecting people and skills across increasingly abstract, fluid, and shifting boundaries.