Phase 2.3: Urban transformation of new aggregation areas

Once the Union government is formed, it's up to him to decide where to establish the meeting places. The space to be used is the one between one country and another, which is currently no man's land: neither one nor the other, and therefore neither of the two.

Four destinations, each in its own space rather than a little everywhere:

• Sport e tempo libero: impianti sportivi, piazze, parchi, piste ciclabili, locali, cinema, spazi per i grandi eventi.
• Industria: trasformazione dei prodotti della terra e del mare, terracotta e oggettistica, produzione di mobili.
• Artigianato: autofficine, carrozzerie, autolavaggi, tappezzerie, marmerie, gommisti, infissi, vetrerie, metalmeccanica, panifici, caseifici.
• Commercio: centro commerciale, ingrosso, mobilifici, concessionarie, mercato ittico, centro ortofrutticolo.

This is in addition to the recovery of historic buildings, to be used as reception and conference rooms, cultural centers, libraries, media libraries, entertainment spaces.

Why the areas in between. It's not a fallback due to lack of space: it's the only place that doesn't belong to either of the two countries, and therefore can belong to both. A facility built inside a country remains 'of that country', and the neighboring country wants one of its own, which is how the two half-empty copies are born. In between, on the other hand, whoever goes there is not going to someone else's home.

And here is the risk to be mentioned immediately, because it is what has ruined half a century of public works: a meeting place where you cannot arrive is not a meeting place, it is a parking lot in the open countryside. If you can only get there by car, the young people, the elderly and anyone who does not have a car are left out, i.e. precisely the people for whom those places are built. That's why phase 3 is not a separate chapter: it's the condition for this to work. A gathering area is chosen along with the line that passes through it, not before.

And before building something new, you look at what already exists. In 2009, this passage was imagined as a series of buildings to be raised; today the territory is full of empty volumes (disused warehouses, merged schools, stations, farms), and the free land is a resource that is not replenished. The simplest rule is also the most effective: new construction is only done when it has been verified that there is nothing to reuse. The recovery of Masseria Tagliatelle in Lecce, where a 16th-century building has become a community space, proves that it is possible, and also proves the other half of the thing: it started to serve when those who use it arrived, not when the construction site was finished.

And the areas in between, meanwhile, have started to be traversed. In the Terra d'Arneo, work has been underway for years on a network of cycle paths that cross the countryside between the towns, connecting farms, coastal areas and historic centers along rural roads that already existed. It is the opposite of a work: nothing is built, what exists is made passable. And it is the most economical proof of all this chapter: the space between two towns stops being a void at the exact moment when someone passes through.

**The criterion is always the same: concentrate instead of scatter. Not to balance the accounts, but because people meet where there is something, and they do not meet anywhere if every town has its own half-empty copy of the same thing.**