The rebirth of non-urban areas, the appennine as a lab of new relations with cities

Alessia Zabatino, an economist of culture and PhD in Spatial Planning and Public Policy, deals with human and territorial development. She has worked as planner of the National Strategy for Internal Areas, as coordinator of the territorial rooting areas of the NGO ActionAid Italia, as strategic and programming consultant for PAs and foundations. She is part of the coordination group of the Forum Inequalities Diversity and is a consultant for the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation. She has written several contributions on the theme of territorial, educational and power inequalities.

Alessandra Zagli is a community development and facilitation expert with ten years of experience in designing and implementing empowerment and collective intelligence processes within communities and organizations in different settings, using a combination of ICT tools and approaches mainly stemming from the social service design field. After a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy of Language and a Bachelor’s degree in Development Economics at the University of Florence, she joined LAMA Agency as a partner in 2009. She has experience in the design and implementation of innovative non-formal education programmes and in particular, in educational games, team learning, new media and open source technologies for education. She has led co-designing and prototyping events and programmes, crowd-sourcing processes, design thinking for social innovation and systemic design methods and paths. She has coordinated several European Projects in European Countries and the Middle East. She was the community manager for the “OpenMaker” project, financed by the European Research programme Horizon2020, and the “OD&M” project, financed by the European Union Erasmus+, KA2, Knowledge alliance programme.

His first steps in politics saw him participate in the birth of La Margherita in Marradi; it was during this period that he got to know and get close to Matteo Renzi, with whom he would share many battles. In 2003, elected municipal councillor, he also served as secretary of the local La Margherita and as deputy mayor. Re-elected as opposition councillor, he became secretary of the local PD (Democratic Party) and, together with numerous administrators in Romagna and Tuscany, carried out many battles for the territory, gaining more and more space both in the Mugello area and at provincial level. He participated in the birth of the Officine Marradi association. In 2013, he resigned as secretary of the PD of Marradi to run for mayor, also supported by the centre-left parties, with the civic list 'Per Marradi siamo pronti' (For Marradi we are ready).

Marina Lauri is an expert in local development policies and head of the activities that ANCI Toscana carries out in support of mountain municipalities and non-urban areas. She coordinated the assistance work to the Tuscany Region for the drafting of preliminary strategies for Tuscany's non-urban areas for the new 2021-2027 programming cycle. A graduate in Law, she was mayor of the municipality of Cutigliano (Pistoia). In addition to her role in ANCI Toscana, she is also President of the GAL MontagnAppennino.