Community and City. Naples, Bagnoli: former Nato area

La observación de la complejidad de la realidad urbana, a través de una nueva sensibilidad por el medio ambiente, la naturaleza y la tierra, está gradualmente cambiando el sentido y el valor de algunas prácticas arquitectónicas y urbanas, tanto en el ámbito académico como en el institucional/político. De esta manera, se puede definir un nuevo tipo de paisaje urbano: el paisaje productivo; cuyo componente principal está representado por la tierra y el su valor multifuncional. Un intento de la idea fue puesto a prueba en la zona Nato en el oeste de Nápoles (Italia). Esta área fue ocupada por el ejército de los Estados Unidos durante 50 años. En 2013, el área fue finalmente liberada y, mediante un acuerdo con la ciudad de Nápoles (en la persona del alcalde Luigi de Magistris) y la fondación Banco di Napoli, lo que fue una vez un lugar donde se han decidido guerras, es ahora convertido en un lugar donde se crea la paz y la colectivización. El plano de un parque de naturaleza agrícola deriva de una demanda pública y de la participación activa de los ciudadanos que han promovido uso y administración de esta área. La realización de este proyecto para la ciudad de Nápoles es un ejemplo de cómo los intereses de los ciudadanos, las instituciones y los profesionales se pueden poner de acuerdo. De esta manera, los principios inspiradores de la "demostración de interés" se puede resumir en la siguiente manera: la identificación de un segmento de la población joven como el primer destinatario de la rehabilitación de la zona; la externalización de la función social del proyecto al fin de ser implementado en términos de: "recuperación de la cohesión social", "conformación de un habitat urbano autogestido de la comunidad de usuarios y residentes", "activación de procesos espontáneos entre los usuarios", "participación directa de los ciudadanos", soporte de las instituciones públicas y adopción del principio de la sostenibilidad ambiental.The observation of urban reality complexity, through a new sensibility towards the environment, the nature and the earth, is slowly changing the sense and the value of some practices of architectural and urban acting, not only in the academia, but also in the institutional/politic field. In this way, it is possible to define a new kind of urban land-scape, the productive landscape, whose main component is represented by the land and by its multi-functional value. A experimentation of the concept has been applied to the ex Nato area in west Naples (Italy). The area was occupied by the U.S. Army for 50 years. In 2013, it was finally freed, and through an agreement with the Municipality of Naples (in the person of the Mayor Luigi de Magistris) and the Banco di Napoli Foundation, what once was a place where wars were decided, today it becomes a place to build peace and sociality. The project of an agricultural natural park stems from a public demand and from the active participation of citizens that promoted the use and management of this area. The realization of this project for the Municipality of Naples is an example of how the interests of citizens, institutions and professionals can meet. Therefore, the guiding principles of Naples municipality “interest” can be summarized as follows: the identification of a young segment of the population as the first recipient of the area reuse, the expression of the social function of the project to be implemented in order of a recovery of social cohesion, a conformation of an urban self-governing community of users and residents, activation of spontaneous processes among the users, direct participation of the citizens, support of public institutions, adoption of environmental sustainability

Bagnoli: A City Project

For its values, the Bagnoli-Coroglio area (in the western part of Naples) represents a greatly significant place for the city and its community. The story of its transformation, from the cessation of the industrial activity until today, is very complex; it has lasted for about 20 years and has had a great influence on the social structure of a district that places great dreams and hopes in its regeneration. The desire for a free beach and a public park for the city is indeed still waiting to be realized. But today we are at a turning point. This contribution, that briefly reviews the main stages of this story, aims to highlight the entire process of the construction of the environmental redevelopment and rehabilitation project of the area, presenting it as an interweaving example of architecture, urban visions, urban planning, environmental restrictions, politics, legal events, but also an example of strong popular participation for the construction of a "City Project"

Error-analysis and comparison to analytical models of numerical waveforms produced by the NRAR Collaboration

The Numerical-Relativity-Analytical-Relativity (NRAR) collaboration is a joint effort between members of the numerical relativity, analytical relativity and gravitational-wave data analysis communities. The goal of the NRAR collaboration is to produce numerical-relativity simulations of compact binaries and use them to develop accurate analytical templates for the LIGO/Virgo Collaboration to use in detecting gravitational-wave signals and extracting astrophysical information from them. We describe the results of the first stage of the NRAR project, which focused on producing an initial set of numerical waveforms from binary black holes with moderate mass ratios and spins, as well as one non-spinning binary configuration which has a mass ratio of 10. All of the numerical waveforms are analysed in a uniform and consistent manner, with numerical errors evaluated using an analysis code created by members of the NRAR collaboration. We compare previously-calibrated, non-precessing analytical waveforms, notably the effective-one-body (EOB) and phenomenological template families, to the newly-produced numerical waveforms. We find that when the binary's total mass is ~100-200 solar masses, current EOB and phenomenological models of spinning, non-precessing binary waveforms have overlaps above 99% (for advanced LIGO) with all of the non-precessing-binary numerical waveforms with mass ratios <= 4, when maximizing over binary parameters. This implies that the loss of event rate due to modelling error is below 3%. Moreover, the non-spinning EOB waveforms previously calibrated to five non-spinning waveforms with mass ratio smaller than 6 have overlaps above 99.7% with the numerical waveform with a mass ratio of 10, without even maximizing on the binary parameters.Comment: 51 pages, 10 figures; published versio

Anatomy of a post-starburst minor merger: a multi-wavelength WFC3 study of NGC 4150

(Abridged) We present a spatially-resolved near-UV/optical study of NGC 4150, using the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on board the Hubble Space Telescope. Previous studies of this early-type galaxy (ETG) indicate that it has a large reservoir of molecular gas, exhibits a kinematically decoupled core (likely indication of recent merging) and strong, central H_B absorption (indicative of young stars). The core of NGC 4150 shows ubiquitous near-UV emission and remarkable dusty substructure. Our analysis shows this galaxy to lie in the near-UV green valley, and its pixel-by-pixel photometry exhibits a narrow range of near-UV/optical colours that are similar to those of nearby E+A (post-starburst) galaxies. We parametrise the properties of the recent star formation (age, mass fraction, metallicity and internal dust content) in the NGC 4150 pixels by comparing the observed near-UV/optical photometry to stellar models. The typical age of the recent star formation (RSF) is around 0.9 Gyrs, consistent with the similarity of the near-UV colours to post-starburst systems, while the morphological structure of the young component supports the proposed merger scenario. The RSF metallicity, representative of the metallicity of the gas fuelling star formation, is around 0.3 - 0.5 Zsun. Assuming that this galaxy is a merger and that the gas is sourced mainly from the infalling companion, these metallicities plausibly indicate the gas-phase metallicity (GPM) of the accreted satellite. Comparison to the local mass-GPM relation suggests (crudely) that the mass of the accreted system is around 3x10^8 Msun, making NGC 4150 a 1:20 minor merger. A summation of the pixel RSF mass fractions indicates that the RSF contributes about 2-3 percent of the stellar mass. This work reaffirms our hypothesis that minor mergers play a significant role in the evolution of ETGs at late epochs.Comment: 28 pages, 2 tables, accepted for publication in Ap