Reti integrate di comunità per la sperimentazione di nuove forme di democrazia di comunità

In response to the strong crisis of representative democracy, an active citizenship movement has been formed which is experimenting throughout Italy innovative community forms, new ways of living and cooperative solidarity systems opposite to the main social trends of our times. The experimentation of social management of territories is the result of the most recent experiences of application of negotiating tools, capable of triggering multiscalar paths and generating integrated networks of communities. An example of such experiences are River Agreements, which attempt to experiment forms of direct democracy. The pa-per presents two experiences that, born from the bottom and triggered by confl ictive situations generated by ‘NIMBY’ issues, fi nd their strength in the path of community empowerment and actually turn critical issues into opportunities for growth. In both cases th e ability to create networks and the framework of re-search-action in which they develop represent the strengths of the building path of the River Agreement. The fi rst experience concerns the Simeto River Agreement, born from an anti-incinerator campaign acti-vated in 2002. The second concerns the Ombrone River Agreement, promoted by a small local committee born in 2012. Such experiences, through River Agreements, can modify and aff ect governance models and produce concrete social impacts, if they succeed in creating a dense network of horizontal and vertical synergies from the local to the vast area scale