The Italian way of planned retreat. Coastal settlements retreat as a multi-purpose strategy: the case of Lecce

Abstract

After introducing the main adaptive strategies for coastal areas, the contribution focuses on the planned retreat (or managed retreat) strategy and reconceptualizes its possible application in the Italian context.

The planned retreat strategy reduces exposure to hazards by moving assets, activities, and people to safe areas. For this reason, it is considered the ‘last option’ among the internationally codified adaptive strategies when protecting is too costly and adapting buildings and infrastructures is infeasible. It has an opposite approach compared to strategies that aim to resist (protect), it substantially differs from strategies that aim to implement resilience (advance, accommodation, ecosystem-based adaptation), and it requires spatial planning choices that go to transform rather than modify the status quo.

Our first assumption is that the planned retreat is a strategy not strictly related to environmental risks and climate change. Even though all the strategies may have other purposes, coastal defence and adaptation always have an unavoidable linkage with specific hazard scenarios. Instead, the planned retreat can be an opportunity for a radical transformation regarding spatial justice, landscape restoration, and environmental conservation. The planned retreat can also be seen as a redemption opportunity when rethinking past socio-spatial wrongdoings. This interpretation of planned retreat presupposes the collective admission of past failures and the ratification of new civic pacts. In this sense, we could see it as a social adaptation strategy based on new socio-ecological responsiveness and on the awareness of the possible collective gains that can descend from it.

The second hypothesis is that there is a specificity of the planned retreat in Italy. Italian coasts are among the geographic contexts most transformed during the last century. The conquest of the sea is relatively recent in the history of Italy due mainly to balnearization following the economic boom. Italian coasts today are highly inhabited territories with a high degree of urbanization. Unlike other world regions where coastal retreat essentially aims to reduce exposure to environmental risks, in Italy planned retreat is a multi-purpose strategy aimed at addressing several issues that go beyond climate change and environmental risks: low accessibility to sea and difficulties in promoting sustainable coastal mobility; public land reduction due to coastal erosion and anthropic activities; landscape and environmental degradation; the presence of thousands of unauthorized constructions in contrast with the provisions of the past and current urban planning schemes.

The last part of the paper presents how the objectives mentioned above have been translated into the General Urban Plan (PUG) of the municipality of Lecce, where ecological, social and climate issues related to the sea level rise level have been blended to improve and reorganize the existing unauthorized coastal settlements.