Spopolamento differenziato nell’area del Verbano-Cusio-Ossola: cause, effetti socio-territoriali e prospettive di ripopolamento

[Autom. eng. transl.] In the last 150 years the territory of the current province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola has profoundly changed its demographic structure, increasing the resident population by over 50%. However, the trend was very inhomogeneous, characterizing the areas affected by the greater industrial development and registering the depopulation, still in progress, of the mountain ones, caused instead by geographical marginality, scarce accessibility and lack of economic resources. In some cases, the geopolitical causes linked to the presence have been favorably determinant of the state border that fed customs and smuggling activities. Today the stabilization of the few communities remaining to guard the mountain areas can be proposed again with the enhancement of old and new resources, such as tourism and the management of protected areas, generating new jobs and partly offsetting the progressive reduction of those related to industry that, for decades , until the second post-war period, it had supported the economy and demographic evolution.