Slow mobility as a connection driver for fragile territories between coastline and inner areas

The right to a sustainable and inclusive mobility represents today a key issue of the debate on fragile territories, in a perspective of territorial rebalancing, environmental regeneration and socio-economic resilience, starting from a growing awareness of the complex links between depopulation, abandonment and divestment of the infrastructural heritage as well as the effects of the car-centric mobility model. In particular, the connections of the inner areas between the smaller centres involved in depopulation and the main nodes of the territories on the coast are possible today only with private vehicles. Furthermore, sectoral policies relating to large infrastructures have often increased the gap between “fast territories” and “slow territories”, without providing effective solutions to increase the quality of life of the inhabitants of the most fragile territories. This research activity is aimed at deepening this issue, facing, as a study area, territories with particular morphological and structural conditions, pointing out how the instances of territorial rebalancing, environmental regeneration and socio-economic resilience of fragile territories can find a possible solution in the planning of an intermodal and sustainable mobility system. In particular, in these conditions, slow mobility is characterized by high potential and, at the same time, criticalities, such as the potential system that links the Costa dei Trabucchi in Abruzzo to the inner areas of the Basso Sagro. The rugged feature and, at the same time the great landscape and cultural value of this territory have fostered the use of innovative tools for the analysis of connection networks. Cycling is an archetype of a “resilience path”, which arises from the phenomena of abandonment of the railway networks, reversing the vicious circle of abandonment. The slow routes become essential drivers of accessibility and sustainability if designed starting from the evaluation of slopes and travel times between the hill towns and the coast, both for daily transport and for tourist travel, which make the flows change rapidly and significantly with seasonality. San Vito Chietino and Lanciano nodes and the ridge that connects them have been studied integrating, in an interdisciplinary way, qualitative and quantitative-parametric methodologies. The integration of the approaches is indispensable for the evaluation of the complex system of relationships that cross the disused railway lines, with the related stations. This network can represent a possible development driver if it is able to effectively connect, through the reuse of the tracks of disused railways, the intermodal nodes of the new stations to the smaller centers, to the Via dei Trabucchi, to the networks that have connected the territory in the past, such as that of the Tratturi, whose main route runs along Lanciano and connected it to Crecchio, linked to the Cammino di San Giacomo. The slope that characterizes this territory is certainly an important aspect to be evaluated for the feasibility of the routes in this area, for which a three-dimensional NURBS model has been realized starting from geographical data. A combination of GIS and parametric design tools is applied to geographic data for in-depth network analysis. The expected results of the research and experimentation are related to the definition of guidelines fora multi-scalar and intermodal mobility system, which involves different types of mobility in relation to the context, trying to enhance the latent resources in terms of territory and landscape and at the same time, addressing accessibility issues, to foster a reactivation in terms of new opportunities and liveability of these territories.