Local developement plan Leader Plus
Enhancing the quality of life: an economic and social developement strategy for the mountain-Oltrepò Pavese.
The Leader Plus developement plan was presented by LAG Alto Oltrepò in March 2002 to regional selections and was among the best six plans by Lombardy groups.
On June 28th 2002 Regione Lombardia approved and funded the plan and made it fully operative by the decree n. 9299 of June 9 2003, approving the further changes and integrations added to the initial program.
Our LAG's programme, focused on improving the quality of life in marginal areas, is the only one on a region-wide and maybe even nation-wide that faces social and economical problems that have been cause of social-economical decline in Oltrepo for a long time.
Planned actions will be implemented in period lasting from 2003 to 2008. The Local Develpement Plan aims to reactivate all those essential functions of living the territory: working, moving, communicating, cohabitating in a stable, cohesive local community.
Cultural limits have to be broken, and developement processes are heavily slowing down because of breaking in the net of services for both enterprises and families. This collapse in the services system in mainly due to demographic factors, since such a wide but broken up and depopulating territory lacks the critical mass supposed to finance it.
Considering the expectations of new generations, it's hard to accept the kind of living that even bigger communes offer if the mobility system, both public and private, doesn't allow to quickly reach urban life-styles, meeting opportunities both for work and amusement.
The problem of isolation, both physical and social, and of offering the same opportunities of the metropolitan areas is what we have to face to promote developement strategies that must not only focus on economical support, but also start innovations for a system that can increment its capabilities of self-reproducing.
The programme has 4 defined objectives:
- to work with net economy;
- to break the isolation, moving on the territory, shortening distances, reducing the space for communicating;
- to support families: towards a widespread network of home-assistance services
- to preserve the places and the memory: not to waste what history leaves us, to take up the narration, to exploit the environmental local heritage.
"Quality of life" was an almost mandatory choice because, better than anything else, it includes the whole range of problems affecting our local communities: work, services, moving facilities, exchange and social communication.
1. To work with net economy.
When used correctly, new technologies can really compress time and space.
As indicated in the planned actions prospect, a massive use of online communications is expected in every area.
2. To break isolation.
Space can be compressed, distance can be more easy tolerated if people can move quickly and effectively not only along the classic long-distance radial routes but even within the area and along routed made by the most vital need and social opportunities.
Hence the idea of creating fleets of monovolume cars that run on demand across
3. To support families.
An high quality environment and the support of a persistent solidariety network grants people a quality of life similar to the urban one.
Besides work and mobility, a network of services supporting families with their elderly persons reduces significally the sense of desease and loneliness.
4. To preserve the places and the memory.
The action of recovering the identity of local communities has to be made together with a careful acquisition of knowledge, with the utilization of local resources, with the elaboration and conservation of stories of men that marked the life and the places of the Oltrepo mountain community.
The utilization of traditions, the care and the safeguard of this environment of such a great naturalistic value are part of those actions of crucial importance because they keep the ability of generating civil, social and economical values on which local developement strategies can be based.
