A Community Cohousing in Roccaporena

Among the rocky and mountainous reliefs of the Valnerina moun- tain community, in the municipality of Cascia, the creation of a com- munity cohousing project in Roccaporena has enabled the emer- gence of new local and trans-local synergies. Here, two important needs (among others) converge: the need to regenerate and re-functionalise disused and abandoned buildings in the hamlet of Roccaporena and the need to find accessible spaces for artistic and cultural creation, which, at a national level, are cut off by inequalities and exclusionary dynamics, especially in urban centres. The Rockability1 project has activated a community cohousing project, which has enabled the creation of new ecosystems and trig- gered new biotopes (Gielen 2018). A small village within the territories of the Inner Areas has become a laboratory for social innovation on the margins, though it is not marginal, where communities of minors and adults, tourists and artists, can meet (Carrosio and Osti 2017). The invited artists, cultural innovators, and their respective networks have rebalanced the biotope by replacing what had been a local absence of an intentional and willing community, thereby trans- forming abandoned buildings through innovative cultural visions. Tenneggi has argued that, in order to activate the development of a territory, a cultural vision and the creation of a place’s own narrative are necessary so the re-signification of the places themselves arises socially and has a pedagogical and intimately educational function (Tenneggi 2018). The spaces of Roccaporena welcome artists who develop their work creatively to set up new models of reception and links between communities. Thus, the community cohousing has become a con- tainer for an unprecedented habitat in a renewed local and trans-lo- cal community. The local inhabitants are stimulated while a sense of affection and affiliation to the place is established in the new alloch- thonous inhabitants. This union has been able to generate social and cultural vitality while producing new forms of ecological and eco- nomic sustainability and rebalancing institutional voids. These fragilities can be overcome to create an incentive that counteracts polarisation, i.e., those territorial phenomena that lead to depopulation and the abandonment of fragile areas, leaving local populations impoverished and without public infrastructure, as well as the polarisation of social cultural, and real estate resources. How can all this happen? And how can these projects take root without be- coming a temporary fixture?