The legacies of the Alps. Landscapes, territories and architectures to reactivate

The traditional conceptual setting that considers the mountain environment as a marginal area with high landscape value – compared to the valley floor urban areas that are economically strong but less representative from the environmental point of view – should therefore be discussed once more through more articulated configurations that instead take into account the complexity of the settlement situations of the mountain valleys. All of these issues, furthermore, place themselves in the current economic situation that has put at risk the premises on which decades of territorial policies are based, but also back in play the vast architectural heritage that already exists in the valleys and it is underused The legacy of “low-density” territories can offer new opportunities: more competitive real estate compared to urban areas, availability of transformable construction objects, environmental and landscape quality; these are just some of the elements that may make the mountain context more operable and adaptable from the settlement point of view during a recession.