• Main Author: Federica Corrado
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Firenze University Press 2016-11-01
• Series: Scienze del Territorio
• Online Access: https://oajournals.fupress.net/index.php/sdt/article/view/8533

If, in the past century, the concept of living the mountains has been put in relation to specific events related to forms of economy generated by an essentially urban matrix, today it takes on different forms, becoming a multifaceted and hybrid concept in which the traditional cognitive categories of urbanism, architecture and geography, confined to the rural world, should be re-thought mixing nature and culture, urbanity and rurality, fixity and change. New development trajectories are altering the traditional dynamics and determining paradoxes. Paradoxes in which the marginal areas become attractive in the logic of re-settlement and, at the same time, small and medium-sized urban areas embed real urban dynamic, so gaining also a different role on the alpine scene. In this framework, two experiences are described in this paper as an example of such ‘new’ territories of living. The first one concerns re-use paths in marginal mountain areas in the Pordenone area. The second refers instead to a social housing project in the urban centres of Susa Valley, pointed at experimenting such way of housing in a vast urban and urbanised territory through an innovative approach and using the local network of small municipalities as value added.