A reversal of the depopulation trend achieved by promoting the demographic regeneration of the reference communities according to the four dimensions of being born, staying, returning, arriving. These are the criteria underlying the Comune Vivo prize, in its first edition, promoted by the Fondazione con il Sud in collaboration with Anci. Four municipalities won the recognition: Portomaggiore, in the province of Ferrara (awarded for the North category); Collevecchio, in the province of Rieti (awarded for the Center category); Santa Maria del Cedro, in the province of Cosenza (awarded for the South category) and Castiadas, in the province of Cagliari, which received recognition with the mention ‘Municipality alive with the fioccò for the positive trend on newborns. The award ceremony was held yesterday in Rome, during a dedicated space at the PA 2026 Forum. The selection of candidate municipalities was started starting from available public data, processed as part of the collaboration of the Foundation with the South with the department of Social Sciences of the Federico II University of Naples. The objective was not to detect a static condition, but the ‘direction’ of change over time.
“The initiative represents an important signal: it recognizes and valorises those small municipalities which, despite structural difficulties, are reversing the trend of depopulation”, commented the vice-president of Anci Marialuisa Forte, mayor of Campobasso. For Stefano Consiglio, president of the Foundation with the South, “depopulation concerns the whole country, but it is particularly significant in the South: by 2080, we risk being 8 million fewer. There are no magic recipes and there is no single solution, but we need to work on all dimensions of regeneration to make the South, and Italy, a place where it is possible to imagine a future.”