Implementation of a common operational mechanism (COM) for the reception of activities in mediterranean rural areas
Confronted for many years by a movement of rural exodus and by the aging of their population, the rural Mediterranean municipalities have become increasingly fragile due to a demographic decline, accompanied by a diminution of services and commercial enterprises, which all lead to a loss of their identity. However, the mobility of the professionals, the information and communication technologies (ICT), the new model of professional and family organisation, the mutation of the economy and of work, the concern for a sustainable development and the search for a better quality of life in view of the urban nuisances permits the rural Mediterranean territories to inverse the tendency above and to find new ways of local development. In effect the architectural, cultural and environmental heritage and the space at their disposal are the new factors of attraction, provided of course that they propose a certain number of services in response to the needs of «the model of urban life» which is becoming general. In this actual environment which is taking shaped, the project partners propose in the territories implicated the implementation of a «Common Operational Mechanism (C.O.M.) of reception activities in the Mediterranean countryside» (Philoxenia). This mechanism foresees the financial, technical and cultural support of persons wishing to install themselves in the target zones, to create their own micro-projects and also to contribute to vitality of their rural territories.