Support a sustainable transition

TranStat is a European-funded project involving Italy, France, Switzerland, Austria, and Slovenia, aimed at helping mountain resort communities transition toward sustainable models. Mountain communities across the Alps face an existential threat: climate change is making traditional ski tourism increasingly unviable. Regione Lombardia, as one of the project participants, shared with us the challenge: help mountain resort communities transition toward sustainable models in response to climate change and its effects on ski and winter tourism.

I led the design team supporting Regione Lombardia throughout the three-year project. The approach centered on participatory design and community activation through 6 carefully sequenced co-design workshops across 3 phases: understanding, envisioning, and planning. I guided the team in engaging 60+ diverse participants including local citizens, business owners, municipal officials, and environmental groups. We used future envisioning techniques to help communities imagine multiple possible futures and facilitated the collaborative development of actionable transition strategies.

Each workshop built upon the previous one, creating momentum and deepening community engagement. The team used visual tools and storytelling to make abstract futures tangible, helping participants move from anxiety about change to agency in shaping it.

The insights and methodologies developed through these workshops are being synthesized into a methodology manual that other Alpine regions can adopt and adapt. Communities that began the process with skepticism ended with concrete action plans and renewed optimism about their future.

Climate adaptation proved to be about more than new business models—it’s about community identity, intergenerational responsibility, and collective imagination. The designer’s role in such transformation processes is to create spaces where communities can discover their own path forward, rather than imposing external solutions.