UN PROGRAMMA PER LA VALORIZZAZIONE DI GRAVINA IN PUGLIA, CONSIDERAZIONI IN CORSO D’OPERA TRA IDENTITÀ E PAESAGGIO; L’identità culturale come motore dei processi di valorizzazione, Conclusioni ed auspici.

The report is the result of active research on urban restoration at the Department of Architecture, Construction, and Design of the Polytechnic University of Bari and draws inspiration from the Framework Agreement signed with the Municipality of Gravina in Puglia in 2015, which established a program to recognize urban identity values and promote strategies for the reconnection and recovery of historic districts. Among the topics of investigation, the relationship between the city and its territorial and landscape context, and the issue of urban evolution, are particularly important. Approximately ten years after the study began, the municipal administration has successfully implemented several convergent interventions on the theme outlined in the program agreed upon with the Polytechnic University of Bari. The population decline in the first half of the twentieth century and its rapid increase after World War II led to the abandonment of historic neighborhoods and, within a few years, the creation of new dormitory neighborhoods, distant from the original core and increasingly pushed outward, necessary to accommodate all those who worked in the nearby countryside or in the surrounding industries. The urban structure was thus split into two disjointed sectors, "home" and "work," completely denying the existence of the ravine that for centuries had been the site of social life, resulting in the creation of stark dichotomies. Only recently have attempts been made to reunite a territory that was already fragmented, yet extremely compact in its physical quality. One of the most striking examples of this situation is the Piaggio district. The ancient core of the city, nestled against the slope of the karst inlet, abandoned since the mid-1950s, today represents both a degraded core and a potential urban center. Its central location and its role as a tangible part of the natural habitat inspire a certain fascination in observers, who recognize its inestimable historical, identity-building, and landscape value.