For centuries the sea has been a collective resource for Mediterranean coastal communities, and the coastal and marine heritage a shared cultural asset: the fishing, commerce or sailing resources that provided a primary source of economic and cultural development, deeply shaped the lifestyle and the identity of coastal inhabitants and impressed tangible traces in landscape and architecture. Since the post-World War II, these activities have been overlaid by the gradual development of the tourist industry, and while from the identity point of view the culture enshrined in the intangible heritage of rituals and language, although no longer used in everyday work-related life, has been preserved evolving into new declinations of meanings, the architectural heritage, deprived of its original functions, has gradually lost its sense of being and is now largely awaiting a re-signification. The most prevalent paradigm for the enhancement of the coastal and marine architectural heritage is actually its reuse in terms of tourist receptivity. However, the recent pandemic and the ongoing climate change effects, which are particularly impactful on coastal areas, have shown that an approach that continues to focus its planning reflections on tourism as a monoculture, risks causing the loss of both the environmental quality and the cultural recognizability of the landscape, which are precisely those elements that ensure the quality of life and well-being of the permanent inhabitants and constitute the main attractors for the most careful visitors. Therefore, it is definitely worth observing what happens in coastal areas precisely during that period when reduced anthropogenic pressure allows the environment to regenerate and the inhabitants to return to the normality of daily activities. Indeed, this is the time when the real effects of the tourism can be measured in terms of community services, landscape enhancement, improvement of quality of life and environmental protection. In this latency time between the impact of tourist flows and the medium-term effects, collectively re-inhabiting the disused coastal heritage through the activation of micro-projects that allow its temporary reuse, becomes an opportunity for the community to reflect on the role that the sea has had, has and should have in its life. Through the experience of the Tunèa project, implemented by the author on the San Pietro Island, in Sardinia, this contribution reflects on how the “out of season” suspended time can be an opportunity for coastal communities to elaborate a new shared thought on the collective reuse of the coastal heritage, through the reactivation of that intimate relationship of interdependence between humans and sea, from which a sustainable coastal development cannot prescind.
FUORI STAGIONE. Il progetto Tunèa e la ri-connessione tra la comunità di Carloforte (Sardegna) e la tonnara dismessa
Maria Pina Usai
2023-01-01
Abstract
For centuries the sea has been a collective resource for Mediterranean coastal communities, and the coastal and marine heritage a shared cultural asset: the fishing, commerce or sailing resources that provided a primary source of economic and cultural development, deeply shaped the lifestyle and the identity of coastal inhabitants and impressed tangible traces in landscape and architecture. Since the post-World War II, these activities have been overlaid by the gradual development of the tourist industry, and while from the identity point of view the culture enshrined in the intangible heritage of rituals and language, although no longer used in everyday work-related life, has been preserved evolving into new declinations of meanings, the architectural heritage, deprived of its original functions, has gradually lost its sense of being and is now largely awaiting a re-signification. The most prevalent paradigm for the enhancement of the coastal and marine architectural heritage is actually its reuse in terms of tourist receptivity. However, the recent pandemic and the ongoing climate change effects, which are particularly impactful on coastal areas, have shown that an approach that continues to focus its planning reflections on tourism as a monoculture, risks causing the loss of both the environmental quality and the cultural recognizability of the landscape, which are precisely those elements that ensure the quality of life and well-being of the permanent inhabitants and constitute the main attractors for the most careful visitors. Therefore, it is definitely worth observing what happens in coastal areas precisely during that period when reduced anthropogenic pressure allows the environment to regenerate and the inhabitants to return to the normality of daily activities. Indeed, this is the time when the real effects of the tourism can be measured in terms of community services, landscape enhancement, improvement of quality of life and environmental protection. In this latency time between the impact of tourist flows and the medium-term effects, collectively re-inhabiting the disused coastal heritage through the activation of micro-projects that allow its temporary reuse, becomes an opportunity for the community to reflect on the role that the sea has had, has and should have in its life. Through the experience of the Tunèa project, implemented by the author on the San Pietro Island, in Sardinia, this contribution reflects on how the “out of season” suspended time can be an opportunity for coastal communities to elaborate a new shared thought on the collective reuse of the coastal heritage, through the reactivation of that intimate relationship of interdependence between humans and sea, from which a sustainable coastal development cannot prescind.
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