Resilience and Intercultural City. New instruments for Urban Regeneration

In cities’ centres, such as in the periphery and in the rural areas, vulnerability is due to both endogenous phenomena, shaped by processes of urban degradation and social problems, which are often a response to unmet needs, and exogenous ones of different nature. In this context, immigration exercises a direct influence on the territory, because modifies its physical and functional structure, and also an indirect influence, expressing needs to which the city has to respond (Russo Krauss, 2005). The complexity of the immigration phenomenon, generated by different needs, requires new cognitive instruments and a dynamic, flexible approach, inspired by the possibility of changing established socio-cultural values that have heretofore been immutable. The research starts from the necessity to define controlling variables of the dynamics sparked by immigration, at the aim to begin a regeneration process based on the integration among populations, cultures, religions. The research proposes a knowledge-oriented methodology based on the concept of “resilience”, seen as the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity and feedbacks” (Walker, Holling et al. 2004). The study focuses on the city of Naples, that at the beginning of 2009 numbered about 39.000 immigrants (residents, regular not residents, irregulars), representing about the 3% of the residents, and in particular on its historical centre, for the most fight it puts out against transformations. In this context, the analysis of the different attributes that act on urban resilience acquires different meanings, and because of the multidimensionality of the immigration phenomenon and for the effect of increasing of the variables bearing on the relation user-space. The research ongoing is applied to three districts located in the historical centre of Naples with different density of immigrants and different socio/cultural characteristics. In these districts “signs” of immigration are more or less evident due to their different “resilience”. For each quarter the research analyses the main changes occurred in the last thirty years and the controlling variables with the relating thresholds of resilience with the aim to define resilience indicators. These indicators are a strategic instrument for an urban sustainable regeneration based on the enhancement or reduction of the urban system resilience and on the adapting and transforming approach.