Campania Region Metropolitan Area. Planning Tools to Redevelop the Aversana Conurbation

Abstract

The substantial modifications of cities and regions in recent history have raised important questions regarding their formation and organization. Such questions render it imperative to reread their form and structure, especially because they are so different from those inherited from the modern movement in architecture and urban planning. Contemporary cities and territories undergo processes of transformation of their urban organization in morphological terms as well as in terms of the social, political, economic and symbolic relationships determined by their constitution. These new urban models have caused traditional physical planning to be ineffective, with the consequential loss of identity of cities and regions. To a considerable extent, this phenomenon can be attributed to a lack of differentiation with their surrounding contexts, historically considered to be complementary to the city (also in a cultural sense). New rationalities govern such processes and as a result, new planning tools will be needed to address the new demand for territory. After outlining some distinctive features of metropolitan areas, this article proposes to identify homogeneous functional sub-areas within a broader metropolitan area. Such sub-areas could be instrumental in defining a structural plan that can act as an interface among the strategies of the Metropolitan Territorial Plan, the sub-regional area, and the planning/operational choices made by local municipal urban plans. The article presents the case-study of the Aversana area to the north of Naples, framed within the more complex planning of metropolitan areas. The proposal is coordinated also with Kipar’s plan set forth in the Regi Felix [1] project for the environmental recovery of the Regi Lagni which is the north border towards Casertana conurbation.