Inland areas between description and transformation. The case of the disused quarries on the island of Favignana

Abstract

The Municipality of Favignana is registered in the List of Municipalities of the ‘Inland Areas’ drawn up by the ‘Agenzia per la Coesione Territoriale’1. It is an island in Sicily and belongs to the inter-municipal pole of the city of Trapani. Its municipal territory is spread over the three islands of the Egadi archipelago and therefore also includes the islands of Levanzo and Marettimo. It is classified under category ‘E’ indicating ‘peripheral territory’. As is the case for many of the Italian islands included in the same census, the Egadi archipelago lives its meaning of periphery both in terms of geographical position and, above all, condition. External to the territory of Sicily, and separated from it by the sea, it is in fact an area that has undergone a gradual process of marginalisation over the years, the result of a growing depopulation of its indigenous population, its ageing and the quantitative and qualitative inadequacy of essential services. The drop in births and the demographic index has also resulted in the weakening of the educational offer, forcing the few young people of school age to emigrate to the Trapani inter-municipal pole to access school services. The same applies to health services and dependence on tanker service for water supply. This particular condition of marginality is also linked to its distance from the mainland, which also makes the connections, to date guaranteed exclusively by sea, unstable, favouring the everincreasing abandonment of the archipelago by its inhabitants. This ongoing process produces a phenomenon of marginalisation that does not guarantee a fair distribution of the wealth accumulated during the summer season, limiting a sustainable and cohesive growth of its social fabric. Within this context, therefore, the riches of its historical and environmental heritage and its material culture have long been compromised and traversed by phenomena of physical degradation that respond to an overall impoverishment, both cultural and social, of its territory. The research illustrated in this essay has as its objective the valorisation of its territorial resources within the strategic framework of a landscape and environmental reconversion of its heritage of disused quarries.