A Survey on Community Resilience

In narrating the recent past of the eastern area of Naples by using the metaphor of panarchy, the essay reports on how theories on socio-ecological resilience adapt to the recent demands of environmental justice coming from planning theories and practices. In so doing, it investigates how to revisit qualitative surveying theories and metodologies by Kevin Lynch to adapt them to regenerative paths based on partecipation. The challenge is to experiment how to turn the environmental decline of a neglected industrial area into an opportunity to use resilience as a strategy to interact with local communities. The survey was tested by forming and managing a group of students from the Faculty of Architecture of University “Federico II” of Naples. Now that the appointed agencies for regeneration tend to disregard their control tasks, and public policies are subordinated to regulations suggested by economic interests, the idea was to give back universities the role of advocates they had during the 60’s as “architectural clinics” by defending our contemporary fragile metropolitan territories from the pressure of the recession that the financial crisis is jeopardizing. In adapting the qualitative survey by Lynch to specific methodological needs, the practice tries offering an alternative way to deal with environmental monitoring methods, avoiding the more and more sophisticated and "engineered" metodologies that requires massive use of funds and researchers, to satisfy the urgency of tools relatively light, faster and less expensive. This qualitative approach could be also useful to make our students aware of the importance to consider resilience as the new way to engage with territories from below.