Beyond a ‘side street story’? Naples from spontaneous centrality to entropic polycentricism, towards a ‘crisis city’

Abstract

Recent urbanization trends in the Mediterranean region have stimulated a debate on the relationship between the form and the functions of cities, in turn revealing a relatively high degree of urban sustainability and resilience to external shocks. Beginning with compact and dense forms, over the last thirty years Mediterranean cities have undergone a path of scattered expansion. This process reflects, in many cases, deregulated urban growth rather than decentralization processes driven by planning strategies aiming at polycentrism. Economic recession in southern European countries has influenced these patterns considerably by reducing competitiveness and depressing the economic performance of entire urban systems. An interpretive key to investigating the new forms of urban expansion in Mediterranean Europe is proposed here by introducing the ‘crisis city’ archetype, discussed in the light of the post-war development path of Naples, Italy. The complexity of the territorial processes that drive urban expansion and changes was analysed, focusing on the socio-spatial structure, economic configuration and entropic morphologies that qualify Naples as the exemplification of a ‘crisis city’. Spontaneity, planning deregulation, criminality, and the informal economy—all found in Naples—are symptoms of a ‘locked’ system, incapable of progressing towards mature urban models. Abandoning the traditional monocentric frame vividly represented in the 1950 movie Napoli milionaria (released in English as ‘Side Street Story’), the consolidation of a scattered and entropic morphology in between compactness and dispersion reflects a development deficit that depresses the competitiveness potential of the city. We interpreted the transition of Naples in the light of a ‘Mediterranean continuum’ in which a locked and informal model, far from both wealthier western European cities and more mature southern alternatives, limits urban competitiveness.