SHRINKING DYNAMICS OF ITALIAN SMALL TOWNS AND THEIR IMPACT ON TRADITIONAL LANDSCAPES. THE CASE OF PARMA APENNINES

The shrinkage of small towns is an unsustainable phenomenon spreading throughout Italy, which is also ordinarily connected to the gradual abandonment and impoverishment of the surrounding rural land. On this topic, a research work has been carried out in the University of Parma, with the aim of defining - at the national scale - some interpretative models for small shrinking towns on the basis of depopulation causes and effects. An original GIS database has been used as a support for collecting and processing all the geographical and statistical open-source data useful to describe the main shrinkage dynamics at a municipal level in a 25-year time frame. Hence this contribution finally focuses on the specific case of Parma Apennines and on the direct consequences of depopulation on its rural landscape. Regional and local governments are both engaged in finding convincing solutions to provide new opportunities for this deprived mountain area on the basis of a careful study of current trends.