THE 2016 CENTRAL ITALY EARTHQUAKE. WAITING FOR RECONSTRUCTION

The 2016 Central Italy earthquake affected a portion of the sub-Apennine territory that spans 4 regions, 10 provinces, 138 municipalities, and encompasses a total territory of approximately 8,000 square kilometres. A population of 600,000 people was involved, with a high number of lost lives, injured, and people displaced. According to the history of natural disasters in Italy, reconstruction is emerging as a delayed process that only in recent months seems to have started; a top-down process that has greatly burdened communities. In a scenario of great landscape value, communities already subject to depopulation and economic depletion still experience, eight years later, a condition of crisis dictated by the delay in reconstruction and the lack of policies to keep these communities alive in the long period from the disaster until the reconstruction is completed. Small temporary settlements, built in the aftermath of the earthquake, are the new urban system in which only part of the population has decided to settle, rather than abandon their territories, as others have done. Observing the impacts of a highly destructive earthquake on communities in the so-called "inland areas" it is necessary to grasp how the impoverishment of a community's intangible values (social relations, quality of living, etc.) can be even more serious than the loss of the buildings.