Ostana: ritorno a sviluppi consapevoli

In the 1970s, territorial dynamics reduced to poverty the small village of Ostana, located in the province of Cuneo at 1,300 mt above sea level, while all around ski resorts and apartment blocks were being built. 
However, over the following decades, Ostana was able to reinvent itself building on its decaying yet unspoiled architecture, working towards an ambitious project of widespread restoration wherein public and private sectors are not in constant opposition but rather act in synergy to develop a genuine and highly distinctive landscape without the static nature of a ‘museum village', and where public projects interlace with numerous private renewal interventions. A prudent policy aimed at encouraging resettlement, led new families with children to choose Ostana as their work and dwelling place, thus raising the number of inhabitants to more than forty, bucking the depopulation trend which had resulted in Ostana having only five residents in the Seventies.
Important initiatives were carried out in Ostana, such as the drafting by the Polytechnic University of Turin - Department of Design and Architecture -, of the Manuale delle linee guida e degli indirizzi tecnici per gli interventi di recupero ed ex novo (Technical guidelines and directives for restoration and renewal projects), approved by the Council, necessary to ensure the uniformity of renovation projects and respect for the genius loci. The landowners' association Ritorno ai prati was also founded with a view to promoting a form of land management that preserves and improves its agricultural, landscape and environmental values, with a special focus on the protection of biodiversity, as well as on an organic and
biodynamic farming which does not make use of substances derived from chemical synthesis.
A pilot project commissioned by the local government and carried out over the last five years, led to the promotion of sheep grazing on small estates around the village in order to contain invasive woodland plants.
However, more than any individual action and initiative, the rebirth of Ostana can count upon a seemingly infinite resource: the sense of community that has been kept alive and stimulated by local administrators also thanks to collective work opportunities. And so, after more than forty years without births, a child was born from a couple residing in the village, becoming the new and wonderful symbol of the rebirth of Ostana.