There is a strong idea that runs through Il A high-altitude future. Mountains, inland areas, and suburbs., the new book by Andrea Ferrazzi, Director of Confindustria Belluno Dolomiti, published by RubbettinoItaly is divided not only by geographical borders between North and South, cities and provinces, plains and mountains, but by a deeper cultural divide. On one side are the territories of trust, on the other those of nostalgia. An invisible line, yet one capable of shaping destiny more than any physical infrastructure. Ferrazzi states this with almost disarming clarity. Where nostalgia dominates—that of an idealized past, evoked as if still alive—time slows to the point of stopping. Communities tend to withdraw into themselves, social energy dissipates, and change is perceived as a threat rather than an opportunity. This is the paradox of many declining regions: they fear the future more than the decline itself.
A new future for mountain communities, but still to be built
Where trust grows, even minimally, the opposite happens. Communities open up, ideas circulate, people arrive and stay. Businesses are born. The future is not an unwelcome guest, but a horizon to be built. It is precisely in the most peripheral areas, often perceived as immobile, that the author glimpses what he calls "laboratories of the possible”: places that don't preserve the past, but reinvent themselves. Ferrazzi constructs this thesis by alternating two approaches: on the one hand, data and analysis of inland areas, demographic flows, and socioeconomic dynamics; on the other, a narrative that dismantles the stereotype of the mountains as beautiful places to visit, but unsuitable for living. The real difference, he argues, is not geography but mentality. Not altitude, but attitude.
New Territories of Trust: Innovation and Cohesion
It is here that the category of "territories of trust" reveals its full interpretative power. It puts communities back at the center: their ability to generate cohesion, innovation, and openness. Their ability to become attractive ecosystems, where the future finds allies rather than resistance. The exact opposite of the "territories of nostalgia," which continue to stare in the rearview mirror, prisoners of a past transformed into myth. With clear, essential writing, free of Alpine rhetoric, Ferrazzi addresses the contradictions without indulging in sentimentality. His thesis is clear: the Italian mountains still have a chance, but this chance depends first and foremost on a cultural infrastructure—trust—more decisive, and often more powerful, than material infrastructure.
An invitation addressed to administrators, businesses, families and communities
To stop calling themselves "peripheries" and start acting like avant-garde. To move beyond understandable but sterile nostalgia and embrace a new way of inhabiting and designing the landscape. Mountain air may be thinner, sure, but it's also clearer and more liberating. In a country often caught between fear of decline and the rhetoric of immutability, Ferrazzi's book becomes a small antidote. It reminds us that the future doesn't happen on its own: it's built. Even, and perhaps especially, at high altitude!
The future at high altitude It will be available in bookstores and digital stores from the beginning of January.
