Placemaking With Zip Lines

Wolfe shows how the Italian towns of Castelmezzano and neighboring Pietrapertosa continue to demonstrable their time-honored cooperation with their mountain settings with the "Flight of the Angel" zip wire.

Wolf asks, "While residents once exclusively lived off of the land, how can the Castelmezzano and Pietrapertosa modernize their economies and simultaneously stay respectful of history and aesthetics?"

The Flight of the Angel website provides a partial answer, marrying new human activity with the ongoing setting: "[A] new concept allows use of creative environmental heritage answering a new need and a new understanding of leisure and recreation, tended increasingly to new experiences and to seek new emotions."

Wolfe concludes:

[T]o achieve other progressive retrofits in the way we live, use our land and travel, we should take seriously the innovative quality of "zip wire thinking."

Thanks to Chuck Wolfe