SPArTaCHus. Sustainable City-Port Areas Towards Circular Hubs

SPArTaCHus interprets City-Port Areas as promoters of circular and sustainable prosperity in equilibrium with nature. Being transitional landscapes, City-Port Areas both face ever-changing challenges from e.g., port activities, and offer a rich socio-cultural environment. Understanding the complex dynamics of City-Port Areas informs a path toward circularity, that can reconnect people, spaces, flows, economies, and ecologies. Recently, in Europe and beyond, both research and practice have been showing that wastescapes understood as a system of underused or abandoned territories crossed by resource flows have potentials for the implementation of circular and sustainable growth. SPArTaCHus aims to unravel these potentials, by developing scenarios for a circular and sustainable regeneration of City-Port Areas of the Metropolitan Area of Naples (MAN), focusing on wastescapes, progressively dismissed strips of industrial units and infrastructures adjacent to harbors. By implementing a ‘research by design’ approach, SPArTaCHus develops solutions and strategies for exploring new synergies among energy production, waste reduction/elimination, short supply chain of resources, spatial and environmental recovery, to enhance the quality of life for all. Further, it aims at posing the scientific bases for arising awareness of the importance of regenerating wastescapes in City-Port Areas for the circular metabolism of the wider territory. By producing a ‘Circularity Catalogue’, this project offers a systematic guide for inspiring private investors, designers, citizens, and decision makers to implement pioneer circular hubs and incubators of innovation for living and prospering toward a holistic sustainability. Expected impacts of SPArTaCHus would be to boost stronger communities’ abilities to understand and implement circularity. To this aim, collaborative design activities, involving different stakeholders, will be facilitated.