Planning Wastescapes Through Collaborative Processes

The chapter is focused on collaborative processes through which the functions and spatial hierarchies of public or public use areas are redefined. The field of action is: on the one hand the urban metabolism, interpreted as a study of the life cycle of the city, including wastescapes; on the other, collaborative processes, aimed at defining the uses of tailored, place-based, and collective services. In this sense, the research moves from the analysis of places born for public use, but abandoned over time or never actually completed; disused places waiting to reenter the urban metabolism. Among those, there are also Italian “planning standards,” publicly designed in compliance with the quantities defined by law, and often partially used or not properly managed. The proposal of new uses and services for these contexts is based on criteria of flexibility, not fixed once and for all, not predetermined in time, but in progress in order to overcome the limits of the implementation of policies and programs of the past. These integrated processes can activate a dialogue between public institutions, privates, local associations and citizens’ groups. The research also intends to cross-reference the issue of spatial inequalities in access to spaces and services, with the evolution of the public actor from provider to service enabler, in a wider redefinition of welfare and welfare spaces concept, as an effect of global economic and financial crisis. The question needs non-sectoral responses, which take into account environmental, social, spatial issues. Welfare can no longer be provided as a self-sufficiency device: contextual services, for everyone, can be realized by recapitalizing wastescapes, co-creating “planning standards” through the recovery of degraded local contexts, collectively investing in the use and care of public, and open services. The paper will focus on: (a) the case of the former NATO area in Naples (in Bagnoli neighborhood) which is the subject of a Plan for urban renewal, adopted by the Municipality of Naples in 2020. The area, owned by a public company whose purpose is the assistance of children in the disadvantaged segment (Fondazione Campania Welfare), has been redesigned as a public facility on a metropolitan scale, within a public consultation process between the ownership, the Municipality of Naples and several local stakeholders (third sector organizations, citizens, cultural associations, etc.). As an effect of this collaborative process, the reuse of the area started before the adoption of the Plan; (b) the case of Horizon2020 research REPAiR in which the issue of circular economy applied to the recovery of wastescapes for public purposes has been investigated in living labs, working on waste perception and awareness as key factors for regenerating wastelands. The co-creation process partly resumed a strategy foreseen in 2013 by the Campania Region in the Plan of waste prevention, for the implementation of Integrated Centres for the reuse of durable goods, originally excluded by the Regional Waste Law.