Towards a climate proof redevelopment of Naples waterfront

This work proposes a reflection on one of the emerging themes of spatial planning: the redevelopment of waterfronts, outlining, in its approach, the need for extreme sensibility to the impacts of climate change.The analysis introduces a temporal reconstruction of the practices and principles that have oriented the city and its relationship with water, as well as the management in government activities of the territory, related with this relationship.Starting from the case study represented by the waterfront of Naples, the work aims to define an exportable and replicable approach. The final goal is to implement a requalification able to re-updating the relationship between waterfront and territory and, at the same time, to consider the issue of climate change in relation to the impacts produced in these areas. This new approach can generate redevelopment and become an opportunity to regain a lost relationship between urban fabric and sea. Furthermore it’s an opportunity for an overall economic and managerial reorganization of the urban- metropolitan areas. The work, aware of the complexity of the theme, present the case of Naples as emblematic of the contemporary challenge for innovative planning based on an integrated and climate proof approach, able to combine synergistically the reality of the city, the coast and the sea in a framework of territorial sustainability and climate resilience

Soils’ tales, recycling beyond death. The Parco Cimiteriale di Poggioreale towards possible extensions

This paper presents the results of a research carried out in Belgium, France, Holland and United States about the destiny – foreseeable or possible – of heterotopias, a huge 19th and 20th centuries architectonic and cultural estate heritage.The twentieth-century city was built through the addition of different settlements, which were strongly functionally defined and laid out. The heterotopias of deviation were built among the elements composing a “city of enclosures”. The earth, beginning and ending of each thing, is saturated: even its underground is saturated and its layers have absorbed dross and wastes of all kinds. In metropolitan territories, there is a continuous production of waste. To the larger and larger production of waste an answer is given by previsions that tend to consider re-cycling phases of different kind, flexible and long-lasting times and procedures, possibly first temporary and then permanent.This research has helped defining a project proposed as an alternative to the II Stralcio Funzionale of the P.U.A. for the cemetery system of Poggioreale in Naples. The proposed alternative consists in extending the Parco Cimiteriale di Poggioreale into the former psychiatric asylum Leonardo Bianchi in Naples. By adopting densifying, recycling, mixing functions as main criteria for a project related to a huge legacy of both material and immaterial kind of heritage, the “T’era Park” proposal aims to enhance the “notes from underground”

Recycling disused railways. Towards a new integration between mountains and cities in the Bergamo territory

Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the "Seriana" and "Brembana" valleys territories were affected by the construction of two railway lines which ensured a strong interaction with Bergamo and supported the economic and social development of the city. After decades of intense activity, these mobility services have been interrupted and the railway structures abandoned, producing two extensive "linear voids" in the territory and in the local economic system. A different role for this abandoned infrastructure emerged in the 1980s after the increase in private mobility and the rise of new institutional debate about alternative transport models. This contribution aims at presenting the case of the Bergamo Valleys Railways and will deal with both the reuse of a particular category of unused spaces and with the international debate from which the concept of greenway emerged as a possible approach for the enhancement of the disused railways. The case is significant both for its aptitude to show a strong synergy between mobility systems and territories, and in witnessing an approach to the "recycle" of disused railways typical for the Italian context

The intelligibility of the drawing: still on the territorial machine

The territorial machine is conceived as a drawing that represents a geographical system regulated by the forces of nature: the currents of water, the path of the icy winter wind and the spring breeze. The machine is the repository of history consisting of permanence and immanence, as well as reminiscences of architecture’s past. It allows us to recognize and value places, and to understand their signs and relationships, without the authority or formality expressed by considering them through the specifications determined by the scale-based representations based on the sequence of the design outputs. The reproduction of the lines, in proportion, of the drawings that intend to observe every single part as related and connoting all the others is considered as an unfolding, a reading of a set of tracings, of facts that are repositories of knowledge, coming from territorial, morphological and architectural experiences that are different, yet still similar. This takes place in the tables of a topographical manual in which the geometric-graphic categories of the countryside, the meaning of the agricultural and agrarian program, and the historical urban settlement that responds to the forming structure are represented, as well as the natural hydraulic works and the temporary architectural constructions. The territorial machine is a text, a place of inscription, of prescription, of erosion of the signs and therefore of values for which the community itself is responsible

Green cities for a better future? – A case study from an alpine region: the Town of Trento

In a world where, by 2050, 70% of the population will be living in cities, a “New Urban Agenda” is considered crucial in order to form more sustainable, inclusive and resilient cities. This means cities which are liveable both from the natural and human-environment points of view and where citizens are involved in the realization and management of an attractive urban environment of high quality. Given the process of urbanization occurring in many towns of the Alpine Region, managers and planners need to know the new order of priorities in needs and values expressed by citizens with regard to urban forests and those in nearby areas. This paper illustrates a case study of the town of Trento, in the north-eastern Italian Alps, a typical medium-sized alpine town which, despite recent urbanization, is still in close connection to woodlands. The research has been carried out by means of a questionnaire aimed at investigating the relationship between citizens and their forests. In particular, the points of investigation were the main functions attributed to the forests and visitors’ preferences of forest features. The results show that urbanization and socio-economic changes, with the introduction of an urban lifestyle, are producing a radical transformation in people’s behaviour and attitudes with regard to forests. A survey of this type may be a useful tool in the hands of planners and managers in order to help shape a sustainable urban development

Reconsideration of hydraulic devices towards a mutual adjustment into the adaptive processes for contemporary city

At this historic moment, marked by environmental, economic, social and not least ethical crisis, the contemporary city is affected by the co-existence and the interaction of a set of risk conditions, amplified by ongoing climate change even more. At the national and international level, one of the increased emerging critical issues is the urban water management, both in terms of resource scarcity and hydraulic and hydrogeological soils fragility. Then, of course, there are the need and the urgency to promote integrated actions related to resilient urban regeneration (Holling & Gunderson, 2002; Walker et al., 2004; Folke et al., 2010; Miller et al., 2010; Davoudi, 2012, 2013), starting both identity-making data and endogenous spatial characteristic. Moreover, this process will have to be tackled within the framework of a more general reinterpretation about the idea of urban metabolism (Wolman, 1965; Duvigneaud e Denayer-De Smet, 1977; Acebillo, 2013; Balducci, Fedeli, Curci, 2017), that acquires the resources and chains reconsideration as a representative priority. This contribution is intended to represent a possible line of thought about the role that green and blue infrastructures can take, or they are already taking, in some virtuous cases within the rewriting process of contemporary urban physiology. This procedure starting from the recognition of a potential structure able to reinterpret the urban materials, to enhance the new resources and to rephrase the intersection, opposition and overlapping links peculiar to the heterogeneity of urban landscapes

LANDSUPPORT, a decision support system for territorial government

The objective of LANDSUPPORT is the construction of a smart geoSpatial Decision Support System (S-DSS) , providing a powerful set of decision supporting tools – that will be open and freely accessible through the web – devoted to (i) support sustainable agriculture/forestry, (ii) evaluate their interaction and trade-off with other land uses, including spatial planning and (iii) support the achievement of selected land policies of both EU and UN agenda, with special emphasis to the key, “achieving a land degradation-neutral world” and climate change mitigation goals. By doing that, LANDSUPPORT will reconcile urban regeneration policy ambitions with operational reality addressing the often overlooked support for planning/management actions at the very local scale. In fact, only by this approach incorporating the local dimension it is possible to produce DSS tools to simultaneously fulfil all high demand ing specific challenges such as the evaluation of “land use trade-offs“, “incentivising real actions / behaviour / investments” contributing to “sustainable management of land resource” and considering societal needs. This is exactly what the high performing LANDSUPPORT integrated scientific approach promise to do, unlike the aggregated Territorial Modelling Platform already in use for the ex-ante evaluation of EC policies

Archaeological heritage and anthropized contexts: limits and opportunities

The highly stratified nature of Mediterranean cities, if on the one hand contrib­utes to the construction of an image with remarkable historical and artistic val­ues, on the other it makes their reading and understanding more complex. The relationship between archaeology and the context, especially urban, has many variables and problems related both to the mode of use of the user/citizen as well as the need for transformation and growth of the city itself. Archaeological heritage is not a sort of “reserve” that is separated from the context. On the contrary, it is necessary to work to reduce the gap that often exists between everyday reality and the reality of the asset, the result of years of isolation policies.This contribution, from the research-project experiences matured by the author, proposes an hypothesis of “enriched” path in which cultural heritage, in particu­lar archaeological, are put to system with the context of belonging. The sustainable use of cultural resources and the concept of “selecting” the most significant goods in relation to the path to be realized, are the main ideas of the proposed considerations as well as Accessibility, comfort and safety concepts of the visit are the strategic points of a fruition project to be devel­oped starting from the user’s needs and in com­pliance with the environmental and technological compatibility of the asset to be protected

Landscape requalification of landfills: an open issue between legal and technical aspects

The functional requalification of a modern landfill over the aftercare phase represents a landscape challenge since, in addition to technical and legal problems (also common to other waste management plants), long-term emissions must be taken into account. In fact, if for plants such as incinerators or composting after the operational phase an environmental recovery can be considered full, safe and healthy usable for the society in a relatively short period of time (1-5 years), for landfills the achievement of a sustainable and stable state of waste may require, a time much longer than that of the post-closure phase even for modern landfills (30 years). This state known as “final storage” refers to the quality reached by emissions and waste in chemical, biological and geological terms when all active control measures can be safely removed and it represents the necessary condition to guarantee the landfill requalification and its return back to the community with a new planned use as natural, recreational, didactic and social ones. Also, principles of landscape planning such as the specific legislation, the costs analysis and the territory analysis must be considered

The impact of climate change on local water management strategies. Learning from Rotterdam and Copenhagen

Cities around the world, as highly anthropized areas, are negatively suffering the impact of climate change. The awareness of intergovernmental and national institutions, has allowed the development in recent decades of policies and strategies for the reduction of climate-changing gas emissions in the environment, through the implementation of adaptation and mitigation actions, in order to implement local actions aimed at managing the different problems arising from the effects of climate change in the cities. The characteristics of the urban environment amplify the effects of climate change, sometimes with disastrous consequences, especially on people. Among the phenomena that have most direct effects on the population, extreme rainfall and pluvial flooding put the safety of people at risk. Water management has thus become one of the most addressed topics in local adaptation policies and strategies. The objective is to investigate policies, strategies and plans for adapting to climate change by the cities of Copenhagen and Rotterdam, in order to understand the implementation processes and identify environmental climate adaptive design actions as best practices to be replicated in others urban contexts relating to the water management issues, to define an urban system of spreaded actions on the surface of cities to make them climate proof