In the Heart of Southern Salento, a New Model of Territorial Regeneration, a new and innovative model of territorial regeneration is taking root in the heart of southern Salento—one based on co-design and the active participation of local communities. The experience of the Multifunctional Agricultural Park of the Paduli, a 5,500-hectare area stretching from Muro Leccese to Surano, and from San Cassiano to Supersano, stands today as one of Italy’s most emblematic examples of a rural smart city, capable of combining environmental sustainability, community welfare, and a culture of design.

Unlike hyper-connected metropolises, smartness here is embedded in the landscape, in agricultural know-how, in the capacity for networking, and in redefining the relationship between people and the environment. This is not a “smart city” in the digital sense of the term, but rather an intelligent territory—because it is co-designed: conceived, built, and transformed collectively.

Co-designing the Land: An Architectural Act

In this context, architecture transcends its traditional role as construction and becomes a tool of mediation between nature and culture. The regeneration of the Paduli is not only physical or infrastructural, but also social and symbolic. Each project—be it a community garden, a social oven, or a zero-kilometer school canteen—is an architecture of relationship. And as such, it is the result of co-design that centers around residents, real needs, and the memory of place.

The Park itself was not conceived through a top-down process but rather through a long, inclusive journey that began in 2003. Cultural associations such as LUA and Abitare i Paduli worked together with citizens, farmers, architects, educators, and local administrators. This dialogic approach gave rise to a living, changing, and open space, much like resilient cities.

Welfare and Landscape: Two Architectures of Care

The school canteens, agricultural workshops, and social cooperatives born from the Santi Paduli project (Santa Fucina and Benedetti Paduli) represent models of welfare rooted in the land—and at the same time, they care for the land.

There is a deep kinship between the agricultural act and the architectural gesture: both require attentiveness, intentionality, and the ability to read the context. Both are grounded in an ethic of responsibility. And in both, the community dimension makes the difference.

From Built Territory to Lived Territory

The Salento that resists depopulation and mass tourism does not do so through grand projects, but through small daily acts that restore meaning to lived space. Like the production of regenerative organic olive oil, collective wheat cultivation, or harvest festivals that blend work, music, and shared experience. Or the return of young professionals who choose to apply skills acquired elsewhere to imagine a new, inclusive, and creative agriculture.

These practices shape landscape—not only physical but cultural, human, and political. They form a kind of diffused architecture, capable of containing the urgencies of our time (ecology, inclusion, memory) within a territory that becomes a living laboratory.

A Replicable Model?

Santi Paduli is not a recipe, but a process. What makes it valuable beyond Salento is its methodology of co-design, based on:

  • Listening to the territory

  • Cross-sector alliances between public institutions, the social private sector, and active citizens

  • Valuing both tangible and intangible heritage

  • Participatory design as an ordinary practice

In an age of ecological and social crisis, rethinking the architectures of everyday life—starting from the margins, from small towns, from resilient communities—can offer new visions even for urban centers.
Because, ultimately, the true smart city is one that knows how to care for the future, without forgetting its roots.