Sviluppo locale e Community-University Partnership. Una sperimentazione nella Valle del Simeto

The article tells about the CoPED Summer School (Community Planning and Ecological Design) held in Sicily, in the Simeto Valley, in June 2015. The School is one of the steps of the building process of the Simeto River Agreement, which started in 2002 and has been conducted in a community-university partnership framework by Italian action researchers with local representatives. Furthermore, the Simeto Valley has been elected recently as one of the "pilot areas" in the National Strategy for Inner Areas promoted by the Department for Economic Development. The main aim of the school has been to determine the projects to be developed in the National Strategy for Inner Areas. The article outlines both the achieved results and the methodological aspects of this experience. It especially highlights the value of service learning as pedagogical method, and the potential of the U. S. engaged university model that could be implemented in the Italian university system.