“Hortus Lizori” (focus on 4, 11 and 17 SDGs)
“Hortus Lizori” as best practice to enhance rural areas and to achieve 11 and 17 SDG implementation through 4 SDG.
How to identifying higher educational solutions to encourage the sustainable evolution and development of rural areas, burgs and hamlets, as a response to SDGs 11 and 17.
Concept Note:
UN statistics show that 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, and it is expected to increase to 68% by 2050 (DESA/POP/2022/TR/NO.3, World Urbanization Prospects 2018). This means a gradual and continuing shift of human population from rural to urban areas adding another 2.5 billion people to urban areas.
To prevent rural depopulation, the Antonio Meneghetti Scientific and Humanistic Research Foundation supports projects aimed at identifying solutions that will encourage the sustainable evolution and development of rural areas, burgs and hamlets, as a response to SDG 11.
Besides their valorization, rural areas should be considered because in cases of emergency and pandemics, they have demonstrated their value as more protected place with more manageable security dimensions.
Since 2013, the Meneghetti Foundation has been promoting cultural, artistic and scientific and Summer University Session activities in the village of Lizori, a medieval village in Umbria, Italy, focused on preservation of its cultural heritage (target 11.4) as an example for other projects around the world. Among these activities, summer university sessions are organized every year. The medieval village becomes a large classroom where students and professors, live, study and teach. Lizori represents a new model for environmental higher education and fostering educational activities in rural areas. This is an example of the enhancement of rural areas through educational and university projects.
The Foundation jointly with the Italian University of Perugia, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has organized a workshop “Hortus Lizori” for European doctoral level schools of design using the focus of Lizori as an example for possible replication in other rural areas. This has already happened in Brazil, Latvia and Ukraine. The workshop involved more than 30 Universities in the disciplines of the project and landscape representation from various European universities (4 SDG).
Through its activity, the Foundation fosters the transmission by SDGs to the next generation of the values rooted in the cultural and rural heritage that can offer solutions relevant in today’s context while protecting this heritage from loss.
We support the regions, municipalities and the citizenry through educational, cultural and artistic projects aimed at identifying solutions that encourage activities that foster the sustainable development of hamlets and small villages in rural areas as the expression of an ethical society and a response to the target 11.a.
We would like to demonstrate how this university project is being conducted and share the results with other universities, professors and doctoral students in architecture and engineering, municipalities and social entrepreneurs (SDGs 17)
The Project “Hortus Lizori”
The project started in 2021 and is divided into four steps.
Step 1 (completed): organization of the workshop for PhD students from different Italian and European universities (ICAR17/15). More than 30 Universities were involved. Output: projects by PhD students to enhance rural areas starting from Lizori case study.
Step 2 (completed): communication of first results and organization of an exhibition of the outcomes of the international workshop of doctoral students’ projects.
Step 3 (completed): publication of the 350-pages book “Hortus Lizori,” which collects the researches, insights provided by academics’ research and description of doctoral students’ project proposals, contributions from administrative authorities, and explanation of the pedagogical approach used. This third step covers not only SDG 11, but also target 17.16 and 17.17.
4 steps (ongoing): dissemination of the results of the “Hortus Lizori project” to other architecture and engineering universities, design professionals, landscape architects and engineers, and doctoral students in the same disciplines; dissemination of the results to different multi-stakeholders who can support these projects such as cultural stakeholders, entrepreneurs, and administrative bodies. (lizori@fondazionemeneghetti.ch)
Some of the Summer University school organized in the rural medieval restored village Lizori.
The entire recovery of the hamlet was undertaken and accomplished, returning a true historical/architectural jewel to the public use, that soon became an international art, cultural and education lab. Under the sign of timeless, humanistic values.
Lizori, was a destroyed rural village and now it is a place of accomplished environmental and civic ecology, home to a number of international associations, bodies and institutions, operating in various fields, from education to research, from art to science.
