A potential example of sustainability in the Italian rural landscape: the Valle di Comino biodistrict in southern Lazio

The Valle di Comino (Lazio, Italy), recognized as an internal area within the National Strategy for Internal Areas, has been experiencing systemic fragility for several decades both in the demographic, with a constant decrease in the population, and economic, with a sharp decrease in the number of young farmers and a low rate of tourist accommodation, areas. In response to this marginality, partly due to the lack of the planners’ long-term outlook, a new development process has begun in this area based on the intrinsic richness of the rural landscape. The authors analyse the new development processes of the countryside of the Valle di Comino starting from the establishment of the agri-food biodistrict involving as many as nineteen municipalities, representing for this territory, the real engine of sustainable development with a marked identity imprint linked to the quality of the historical rural landscapes.