Climate change as a lever for place-based regeneration policies. The case of Naples, Italy

Despite national governments and cities are urged to put strategies for mitigation and adaptation on their agenda, in Italy climate change struggles to get into the priorities of urban policies, and is even less present in collective imaginations and claims. This is due to a mix of political, social and ecological factors, including the willingness to deny strategic value to environmental policies and to invest in compensation rather than prevention of the related risks. To the fragmented plans and policies for climate change management corresponds an equally mild demand for actions by the general public. The paper argues that the scarce public perception of climate impacts on urban environments is largely due to the global rhetoric by institutions and media that has ended to de-politicize the issue, pushing it away from the public discourse. Bringing the climate back to the centre means, on the contrary, sharing descriptions and actions that allow exploring climate effects in relation to local contexts. Starting from results of previous researches, the paper explains how climate change could work as a lever for overcoming the global rhetoric. The current transition in Naples emphasizes how deconstructing the technocratic discourse on climate helps enhancing sustainable development and community resilience. Situating climate change policies in the directions of both the new urban and the strategic metropolitan plan is a way of promoting shared processes of spatial regeneration.