Can you imagine rebuilding a place heavily damaged by an earthquake without the involvement of its inhabitants? Certainly not!
The project aims to bring citizens point of view into the rebuilding design. The Accumoli and Ussita inhabitants will be involved in a participatory path to collect and transform visions, ideas into concrete proposals for an inclusive reconstruction, close to people needs and able to creates closer community bonds in designing the future of the territories.

Ussita, Marche Region and Accumoli, Lazio Region; Central Italy - Epicenter of the 2016 earthquake.

The main challenge for Ussita and Accumuli, two of the most affected municipalities, is to design an inclusive reconstruction that can activate the energies and resources of the citizens, reconciling the visions of different generations between past and future. The seismic event destroyed homes, infrastructures, meeting places and centres of the local economy, in a context of peripheral inner areas already characterized by high levels of depopulation and demographic ageing, chronic lack of public education and health services, aggregative and cultural events and transport. The territory considered is part of two National Parks, (Sibillini Mountains and Gran Grasso and Monti della Laga), an environmental heritage that can act as a stimulus for local development.

- Owners of properties (associates or individuals - resident and non-resident); adults who lived permanently or for short/seasonal periods in the destroyed villages.
- Inhabitants (associates or individuals) who, although not directly owning an asset, live on-site or lived there permanently before the earthquake, animating social and community spaces.
- Local entrepreneurs, bearers of trades and visions of local economic development (shepherds, ranchers, farmers, traders).
- Specific target groups that will be involved, within these macro-categories: children (from 6 to 18 years old); older people; women; people with disabilities, migrants.

The project follows these steps based on different activities:
- Need Assessment and Participatory Outreach to identify needs and obstacles in participatory reconstruction planning. Stakeholders and specific target groups will be involved through specific methodologies.
- Project Design: the process will be agreed with municipality and stakeholders. This phase includes support materials preparation (documents and information collection).
- Community Labs: workshops in which all participants will be able to express their point of view - about places to be preserved, to be redesigned and redeveloped – creating a new model of social, economic, environmental and cultural life. Different tools could be used like: neighbourhood walks, community mapping, village design statement, scenario workshop, pattern language, action planning etc. The methodologies will be adapted to the different target groups and technical support can be used. The outputs will be agreed on.
- Implementation design: main proposal will be transposed into concrete recovery projects and plans.
- Final event, in which the outputs will be presented and discussed.

The main achieve is a post-earthquake participatory recovery virtuous model creation, based on civic engagement and cooperation between local authority and citizens; both will be involved in decision making about rebuilding, common goods and services management. These paths will produce a design close to people, able to gather collective needs and wishes, a visions synthesis, and will facilitate a concrete restart. This model is based on proposals emerged from community labs that will be transposed into the urban planning tools, recovery projects and plans; proposals can be focused on public spaces, identity and community places, genius loci. It can be replicated in other Italy’s inner areas and this pilot pretends to be a standardised practice to insert in a perspective of policy change.

Citizens participating in the project will have the opportunity to be an active part in the official recovery planning program, also due to the agreement between AAIT and the Commissioner Structure aimed to facilitate opportunities for citizens active participation.
Several tools to give people needs and dreams voice for redesigning the community, will be in support to citizens and local authority, including:
-Sharing of information material on the organization, time schedule and governance system of the reconstruction.
-Spaces for online dialogue between local public administrations, institutions and citizens.
-Technical support composed by urban planners, architects for participatory co-planning processes.

The project team has 10 years of experience in facilitating community participatory paths, in the co-design of policies, goods and services. The team consolidated active listening methodologies in different areas of work: village genius loci, co-design and co-management of common goods and services, facilitation on master site plan development for schools rebuilding. The participatory paths were conducted in earthquake affected areas, where AAIT has been working since 2016, promoting spaces for participation and dialogue between citizens and institutions to support social and material regeneration. The framework agreement with the Chief Commissioner for Reconstruction strengthens the territorial presence of AAIT and this proposal is the result of the dialogue with local civic associations.

- Local focal point (personnel): 25000 EUR
- Technical consultants (architects, engineers): 10000 EUR
- Local Travel and accomodation: 2500 EUR
- Dissemination & events: 5000 EUR
- Printed material (cartography, maps, mind maps, informative brochures): 2000 EUR
- Own contribution: 9500 EUR

We would like to receive examples of participatory experiences in areas affected by disasters or natural risks exposed, common goods and service co-design cases to get in touch with and create a network for the dissemination of good practices.