Valorisation and enhancement of the territories and local communities

In the last twenty years, processes of metropolization have seen an uncontrollable increase, registering a rate of global urbanization that—according to the “World Urbanization Prospects 2018” of the United Nations—will reach almost 70% in 2050. These data, with a global vision, underline the dynamics of the growth of settlements and cities in quantitative, qualitative, historical and social evolution. In poor countries, this growth continues to take place following models of urban aggre-gation that has been unchanged over the years and inadequate to guarantee minimum conditions of health and sanitation. This situation continues to generate a proliferation of informal areas in conditions of extreme poverty and environmental vulnerability. According to a recent UN-Habitat report, which reports how more than a billion people are forced to live in informal settlements and estimates that this number will double by 2030, slums represent a phenomenon destined to define the near future of our metropolises, where about 18% of all housing units, numbering about 125 million, are made up of non-permanent structures and more than 30% of temporary dwellings will be in areas subject to noteworthy phenomena of environmental risks.