Scenarios of Territorial Transformation of an Italian Alpine Area: The Province of Belluno

The Italian Alpine region is characterised by a social and economic structure that has its main source of wealth in the cross-border traffic roads. The only region that does not have a mountain motorway pass is Veneto, whose northern border is represented by the province of Belluno, a real cul-de-sac between Trentino Alto Adige and Friuli Venezia Giulia regions. In spite of this "communication obstruction" towards Europe, the territory of the province of Belluno has developed in time a strong manufacturing industry such as the eyewear district, which is a worldwide excellence. However, globalisation processes are progressively undermining the economic model developed in this province due to the absence of a road transport infrastructure allowing it to rapidly connect to Europe and its markets. Several strategies were proposed in the past and others have been presented nowadays, with the goal of developing the social and economic system as well as improving the accessibility to the territories in the province of Belluno. This study considers the main development proposals presented to date, from which it is possible to deduce the characteristics of the transport scenarios "projects". These may be submitted to the environmental evaluation through the AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) method. For this contribution several projects (railways and roads) have been analysed, among which also the hypothesis to build an important road infrastructure with direct access to the North, in Austria. The AHP evaluation approach is in this research a crucial contribution to decision-making, for choosing the best strategies to adopt in favour of the territory, which is the most performing "project scenario" for the social and economic development of the Belluno province.