Urban, rural and intermediate territories have been facing the impact of the pandemic. After the first shock in March 2020, local governments have been challenged by unprecedented issues, both related with the pressure on the healthcare systems and the impact on the local economies. Many sectors of the economy are still facing severe difficulties, and some of them are frequently relevant for small towns: tourism and retail, just to cite two examples.
Some observers claimed that smaller cities will benefit from a new ‘post-pandemic’ organization of labor, as urban residents would leave the large cities and move to small towns thanks to the possibility of working remotely. While we are all struggling with the pandemics, many of these impacts are still to be verified. But more specifically: what is the scenario seen from the non urban areas and the small cities?
I note that the non-urban territories are almost always scrutinized standing from an urban point of view: a consequence is, e.g., that they are usually defined with privative adjectives, such as: marginal, inner, peripheral, etc. Frequently, urban people (scholars, professionals, but even writers and reporters) “come down” to the non-urban areas in order to study where we live and this contributes to a narrative and to some extent also to the elaboration of policy options.
In my presentation (and in my current research in general), I would like to contribute to the policy debate with a narrative in which the voices from the villages and the small cities, in which so many Europeans live, is represented by someone who is not living (working, being educated, etc.) in a big city. I will try to propose this different angle with some examples and short case stories from Italian regions, small cities and “peripheries”.
Mots clés : smaller cities|local economy|regional policy|pandemics|peripheries
A104372DI