TWIN, Trekking Walking Inclusion
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Project Description
TWIN project has the ambition to define a replicable territorial model for the benefit of marginal and fragile territories crossed by slow lines, combining itinerant tourism along cycling and walking paths, social inclusion and building recovery. It is an initiative of the research group TWIN of the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies of Politecnico di Milano and it is a winning project of the Call Polisocial Award 2019. A first experimentation has already been tested: the TWIN Hut n.1.
Geographical Scope
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Urban or rural issues
Physical or other transformations
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Description of the project
Summary
TWIN, an acronym for Trekking Walking, Cycling for Inclusion, is a project that speaks for binomials: slow tourism and social inclusion, slow lines and recovery of disused buildings, infrastructure and services. It aims to develop a model of territorial regeneration in fragile areas, creating co-benefits. The project has chosen as a test field the area of Apennines on the border between Liguria, Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany that is a crossroads of slow lines: the national path Sentiero Italia – CAI and three important and ancient religious paths as Via degli Abati, Via Francigena and Via Matildica del Volto Santo. Although depressed and undervalued, these territories conceal considerable environmental and cultural wealth.
TWIN aims to trigger sports tourist flows able to regenerate fragile territories and to offer employment to people in need of social inclusion, such as disabled, unemployed, prisoners, drug addicts etc. Along the paths there are numerous unused buildings or areas that, hosting new accomodation facilities, will become a laboratory of an innovative and inclusive employment model. The final objective is to create an intervention solidary and replicable, based on the cooperation between research, public policies, local population and cooperatives to create a solidarity-based chain.
TWIN is a research project winner of the Polisocial Award 2019, the social responsibility program of the Politecnico di Milano, financed with funds “5 per Mille” that the Italian taxpayer has decided to donate to research. The first phase of the project had a duration of 18 months and thanks to the economic contribution of the Italian Alpine Club (CAI) TWIN has completed a concrete field experimentation located in the municipality of Berceto, in the Emilia Romagna mountain region, opening a tourist accommodation service managed by a disabled young man, the TWIN Hut n.1, which it ended the first season with great success. The Hut will be reopened in summer 2022.
Key objectives for sustainability
The contribution that TWIN wants to make is precise and territorial, theoretical and operational, and proposes concrete, short-term objectives, placing itself at the regenerative level, but also strengthening resilience, starting with resource-based actions with low environmental impact and low initial investment.
A key role is played by slow tourism that, if well planned, is sustainable since it respects the environment and is ethically and socially positive for communities. Hiking or cycling along slow lines has no environmental impact, on the contrary is an activity that enhances natural contexts and local economies.
TWIN supports slow tourism and it has built an accommodation facility located in a strategic point for paths, respecting the terms of sustainability and non-invasiveness of the territory. Following the example of the minimal architecture of bivouacs, the TWIN Hut has been designed with a modular and flexible system, precisely for the recovery of disused spaces, and to avoid the aggravation of soil consumption. Sustainability lies in the recovery and refunctionalization of unused spaces. The Hut No.1 was built as a stand-alone structure because it was not possible to carry out a recovery operation, but the basic idea is to recover spaces, in order not to consume land. And it is precisely for that Hut no. 1 is removable! It is a small intervention capable of fitting into the context while guaranteeing respect for the local communities, the peculiarities of the places and the delicate environmental balances that characterise them. The structure has been built by inmates in the carpentry workshop of Monza prison, with reclaimed timber that comes from areas affected by the ‘Vaia’ Storm, an extreme weather event that in 2018 cut down 16 million trees in four different northern Italian regions. The reuse of this raw material is part of a resource recovery cycle and can also support communities.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
TWIN is realizing accommodation facilities for hikers or cycletourists structuring small structures in strategic areas to offer not only a place functional to the trip but also the opportunity to stop in extraordinary places that are normally abandoned.
Starting from slow tourism, we want to offer a new aesthetic experience able to tell the territory through a new perspective. The TWIN module can be located inside an existing building, or outside as an independent structure with its own cover. In any case, the location will become a narrative space, able to tell the beauty of the places and the cultures. The storytelling project takes place through a plurality of languages that exploit art and design along the horizontal and vertical surfaces available, and the elements that the context offers. In detail, the modul is a light micro-intervention measured on the gestures of people and the playful dimension of living spaces. Its dimensions recover some characteristics of the small high mountain bivouacs, able to summarize in a minimal space the intimate dimension of living and the community dimension of being together. It is based on the use of low-tech construction techniques and high replicability from any simple enterprises.
In this way it is possible to involve local craftsmen and carpenters in its realization, possibly also providing for the employment of fragile people in the workshops: a process that adds unique cultural, technical and aesthetic value to the materials. The design of the TWIN module, finally, introduces within its spaces some devices for play and relaxation: elastic nets to use as hammocks or rope nets instead of stairs, developing the playful dimension that these spaces can express. The result is a use of spaces minimal but not apathetic. In the first phase of the project has activated the first TWIN Hut n.1, and the tourists judged it as functional, cozy and aesthetically coherent with the aim of the project.
Key objectives for inclusion
The very name of the project - TWIN, Trekking, Walking, Cycling for Inclusion - explains the will to involve social and human fragility particularly present in marginal areas, where labour and social policies are weaker. This is why social inclusion is one of the most important principles of the project, that wants to be supportive along the entire planning line: from structure construction to service management. The structure itself, in fact, is made of wood and it is built inside institutions for the rehabilitation of prisoners, useful to their reintegration into society, in the case of the first experimentation for the TWIN Hut n.1 we have involved the Monza's prison. Even the wood is part of the vision since it comes from areas affected by an extreme storm called “Vaia” that in 2018 has felled 16 million trees in four different Italian northern regions. The use of this timber has been a form of support to affected local economies and communities.
The service that has been launched within it aims to offer itself as a job opportunity and social inclusion for three different forms of fragility: people affected by disability, people who are unable to re-enter the world of work and fragile people due to difficult personal backgrounds, such as former prisoners or women victims of violence. Working at a reception service is an opportunity both formative and motivational and starts a path of integration that will be able to drive even further processes of social inclusion. The TWIN Hut n.1 has been managed by a young man with cognitive disability.
TWIN involves social and human fragilities in one of the few areas in expansion and with more potential in the long term, which is slow tourism. The idea is to intensify the practices that combine slow tourism and social inclusion, replicating the project in other contexts, in order to start a new season of structural policies, inclusive, to revitalise marginal and fragile territories through slow tourism.
Results in relation to category
The category we applied for is prioritising the places and people that need it the most. In its first phase of experimentation TWIN works in the context of the medium altitude Italian mountain, that is a rural context of fragility and territorial marginality. Excluded from traditional tourism, these areas are places affected by fragility of the local economies, health system, welfare, digital divide and accessibility. These contexts need support for the resurgence of the basic economy.
The development of local economies supported by forms of slow tourism could thus offer an opportunity for ransom from fragility and also an opportunity for the involvement and social inclusion of fragile communities and people. It is a way to fight the processes of depopulation and to encourage territorial regeneration. With this project we start a re-centralising process of rural places with high naturalistic and cultural values. Working on these areas is therefore a fundamental perspective for a widespread rebirth.
In concrete terms, through the collaboration between institutions and people of the territory we have opened a touristic accomodation in a small village at 1000 amls, providing support to the only economic activity survived on site and offering the opportunity to those travelling to stop and live the place. With this solidarity chain we involved a small marginalised municipality and social services, employing a person with cognitive disabilities. We have partnered with a social cooperative, which will also work for the reopening of the TWIN Hut n.1 next season. The institutional relationship between the Monza prison was consolidated. On a wider scale, there has been a great impact on the frequentation of the trails, which can now count on dedicated accommodation that was previously lacking. Many tourists ask to stay in this facility, even out of season, confirming the functionality of the project.
How Citizens benefit
The TWIN project has its roots in the involvement of local communities and actors. The activation of the TWIN Hut n.1 was made thanks to the availability and participation shown by the local community, which helped to find the space and the right conditions to open the service. TWIN in fact intends to focus on areas that need to revive the local economy, by activating a network of collaboration between institutions, citizens and civil society.
Firstly, local (and also supra-local) institutions have been involved; two private persons provided their own properties where to locate the Hut; social services identified the fragility profile to be involved in the management of the accomodation facility (a young man with cognitive disability, inhabitant of the nearby village); the Cooperative took on charge the management of the reception service; the accommodation structure has brought indirect benefits to the bar located in the area; local craftsmen worked on the assembly of the structure; walkers and cyclists, came into contact with a virtuous process and they learnt how a certain tourism project can produce benefits for the territory.
To sum up, the TWIN model supports tourist inflows throughout the area giving benefits to the general population, offering a network of cooperation, new job offers, greater awareness of local resources and adequate tools to economically and socially regenerate fragile territories. The biggest benefits, however, will be in the long term and in the replicability of the model somewhere else along other slow lines crossing marginal and fragile areas. The idea is that through replicability each small reality can be enhanced, which is not possible individually. The TWIN Huts and the resources present in the various locations will be like pearls, which cannot stand out on their own, but through a thread, a necklace that unites them, they manage to show themselves as part of a system.
Physical or other transformations
Innovative character
The innovation of the TWIN project lies in the combination of slow tourism and social inclusion. It offers itself as an innovative programme to spread a model of territorial regeneration which clearly defines what slow tourism can and should be as a sustainability project. It is a work that starts from the cultural level, involving citizens and fragile people from the bottom. In a world where the human dimension is crushed by the economic dimension, putting people back at the centre is an innovative act.
A further innovative aspect is the replicability of the project. The setting of simple and reliable processes, materials and workmanship accessible allows the TWIN model an effective replicability which is a fundamental value to exchange the weaknesses with opportunities. The combination of slow tourism, social inclusion and replicability could make a great contribution to support policies for slow tourism, thanks to the last element of innovation, the scale: TWIN works on slow lines that cover different regions, provinces and municipalities, with the aim of spreading regenerative processes on the territory. In Italy there are no policies for the infrastructure of a network of walking paths, except for the Atlas of the Paths written in 2016 by the Ministry of Heritage and Cultural Activities and Tourism which however has not been declined in concrete policies. Therefore, TWIN intends to enhance the wealth of Italian paths, supporting a networking approach between the various actors of the territory. This model can also be adapted at the service of cycling tourism which, unlike hiking, winds mostly in plain territory, characterised by a different type of marginality and fragility. Italy has for five years a National System of Tourist Cycle Routes, which is leading to the construction of cycling infrastructure without however building a holistic project of territory able to address the development of local economies and culture's offer.
Learning transferred to other parties
The TWIN project aims to be an example for widespread replicability, a potential that is represented by the success achieved by establishing a network of collaboration with various Italian institutional and territorial actors. TWIN has set up a partnership with the Italian Alpine Club (CAI), cofinancer of the project, the Italian Cycling Federation (FCI), the European Association Vie Francigene (AEVF) and the Consortium of Social SolidarityOscar Romero, which has always dealt with innovative projects of social inclusion.
Besides the project partners, the collaboration network involves municipalities, associations and cooperatives. These three actors are present everywhere, therefore the good practice of TWIN can be a suggestion for a replicable successful collaboration based on the new winning between slow tourism and social inclusion. After the first phase of experimentation in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, the idea can be promoted in other contexts crossed by slow lines, part of the Atlas of the Paths of Italy and/or part of the National Cycle Tourism System. The replication of the project can take place on the initiative of local institutions with local cooperatives and producers, through simple collaboration agreements.
To this end, TWIN has set up a communication project that is an integral part of the research and experimentation project: a website, videos, publication (articles and a book in drafting phase) are tools through which give visibility to the model in order to make it a structural policy.
