Inabita
🌐A bioregional initiative in central Italy's Fiastra Valley, working to strengthen collaborative relationships and shared identity between villages through cultural celebration and participatory planning. Born from the Borgofuturo festival, the initiative has evolved into "Qui ValdiFiastra"—a 15-project action plan addressing built infrastructure, culture, environmental education, and local production.
Bioregional Context
Nestled in the foothills of the Sibillini mountains in central Italy, the Fiastra valley is a region populated by several rural municipalities facing challenges common to Italy's "inner areas"—depopulation, infrastructure needs, and maintaining cultural identity while building economic resilience. The villages share a strong identity rooted to place but also face long-standing rivalries that have limited collaboration.
Background
The Fiastra valley lies in the Sibillini foothills in central Italy—roughly three hours from Rome—across several small municipalities. People describe a shared identity tied tightly to place, threaded through scattered hill villages.
Those communities sit in Italy’s “inner areas”: rural territories juggling ageing populations, infrastructure gaps, and economic pressure while trying to keep culture alive. Needs cluster in four strands: built infrastructure; culture; environmental education; and local production and craft.
Origins and Network
Since 2010, Ripe San Ginesio has hosted the biennial Borgofuturo festival. In 2020—the tenth edition—young organisers working with the municipality faced COVID-19 lockdowns instead of a usual programme.
They used the pause to look beyond one town: mapping needs and possibilities across the whole valley and asking how the festival could respond to both. They confirmed strong place-based identity—and also long-standing rivalries that had limited cooperation.
Activities
Cultural Celebration Across Villages
Borgofuturo was refocused on weaving relationships and a shared valley identity through celebration and planning. Rather than a single three-day event in one village, it ran across four weekends in four villages. Between weekends, participants joined collective walks on trails linking settlements—learning the land and each other. The format moved from one centralised festival to a distributed, connected experience: walking connections that make the valley legible as one place, not a set of competing hamlets. Organisers invited residents, mayors and officials, civil-society groups, and local firms. Each weekend took one of the four strands: built infrastructure; culture; environmental education; and local production and craft.
Participatory Planning and Visioning
Weekend programmes included facilitated workshops for shared visioning and for drafting concrete proposals in each thematic area. The process and outcomes are documented in *Borgofuturo+ A local project for inner areas.* A core group of festival organisers, with researchers, planners, architects, and environmental scientists, then formed Inabità, a cooperative for territorial planning and governance.
Action Plan Implementation
From Borgofuturo+, Inabità produced “Qui ValdiFiastra” (*Here is Fiastra Valley*)—fifteen projects funded via Next Generation EU, with municipalities co-implementing alongside civil society, businesses, and residents. The same four strands organise the portfolio; each project mixes sectors rather than treating them as separate tracks.
Vision and Legacy
Inabità remains a cooperative of researchers, planners, architects, and environmental scientists working through integrated, participatory methods. The emphasis is developmental: enabling different stewards to contribute fully while the valley’s own qualities emerge over time.
Planning continues with explicit attention to how people contribute together—a diversification of roles (likened to an ant colony) so each group works from its strengths. Process and outcome stay paired: bioregional governance is treated as ongoing learning, not a one-off plan.
Sources
| Type | Name | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Report | Bioregional Governance - European Case Studies & Framework | ↗ |