A Citizen-Led Spatial Information System for Collaborative (Post-)pandemic Urban Strategies: The Ponticelli Experience, Naples (Italy)

The strong socio-spatial implications of the covid-19 pandemic and the physical distancing measures have emphasised the fundamental role played by socio-digital networks in sharing and urbanising information. Worldwide, the emergence of shared survival needs led to the self-organisation of local communities in care infrastructures for mutual aid, psychological support, sharing experiences and storytelling, often based on crowd-sourcing and crowd-mapping platforms. From the (post-)pandemic urban planning perspective, the growth of this phenomenon has implied the call for spatial research to reconsider ICTs and collaborative spatial information systems as strategic tools to support vulnerable communities and public engagement in collective matters. This contribution aims to define an open-source database to be used and implemented by citizens and social operators to provision territorial care systems and mutual aid initiatives. The adopted methodological approach proposes a citizen-led spatial information system, where updated information, perceptions and preferences can be spatialised and collected, building a crowd-sourced and sharable system of territorial knowledge, useful for collective actions and the development of sustainable and effective strategies in emergency conditions. The obtained results refer to data about mutualism in public space, collected during the pandemic period in the Ponticelli district, the eastern periphery of Naples, Italy. They are to be framed within the broader on-going European HERA research project “PuSH: Public Space in European Social Housing”. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.