Strategies of landscape restoration and city naturalizing

Abstract

The international attention for climate change has marked a turn for urban planning, and demands for a radical change of direction. It is necessary to adopt an active approach aiming to an ecological urban reform that identifies natural alterations of urban settlements and works for the restoration of natural balance. Assuming such an approach is an even more difficult challenge in urban areas, where urbanization processes frequently modified natural cycles, erasing the bonds with natural environment.Recognizing the importance of the water cycle for the life of urban ecosystems entails leaving water disposal methods aside and working hard to bring the hydrographical system of urbanized areas back to the surface, allowing the retrieval of the whole complex of ecosystem services related to environment mosaics in which water is present.The research is concerned with the eastern plain of Naples - originally a marshland, progressively urbanized for industrial purposes during the XIX and XX centuries, nowadays degraded after the closure of most of the factories - where environmental decline can be interpreted as an opportunity for testing water-centered strategies of landscape restoration and naturalizing in urban contexts.