Costruzioni di ‘identità’. I cinquant’anni della comunità belicina

The territory is a living being of high complexity: the result of synergistic co-evolutionary processes between human settlements and the environment. Therefore, it represents the field where different actors can develop a sense of identity, of belonging and of recognition with their own place: spatial identity. Spatial identity is also defined by the representation provided for our regions, and it changes over time. In 1968, the Belice Valley (Sicily) was damaged by a violent earthquake and this event has radically transformed the region and its communities. Fifty years after the event, the paper analyzes this region according to three different narratives: - physical-material characteristics; - a local perspective as an area of identification and belonging; - strategies and scenarios assumed by planning instruments. These three different levels of interpretation allow us to identify a spatial area based on the coherence of the complex dynamics, on the demand for citizenship and on the ‘imposition’ of rules and behaviors that the supra-local management strategies have initiated after the earthquake. The meeting of these three narratives, within a broad and structured planning framework, could in the future produce a common vision of identity and development, bearing in mind the local specificities and autonomy of each municipality.