The multicultural territory of domitian coast: Housing condition and real estate market

In Italy, which has traditionally been a country of emigration since the unification of Italy, in the last thirty years there has been an intense increase in the flow of immigrants, resulting in economic, social and spatial problems. If the housing conditions represents one of the main indicators to measure the degree of social integration, in Italy a particularly weak segment in the housing demand is represented precisely by immigrants to whom the most degraded and inadequate sector of the housing stock is often destined. A phenomenon of particular note is represented by the settlement choices in the hinterland of large urban areas where there is a high percentage of foreign population (both official and unofficial). This is what happened in the Campania region, in the territory that starts from Caserta to get to Salerno, passing through the metropolitan city of Naples. In this same area the housing discomfort reaches the highest intensity. The province of Caserta, one of the provinces with the highest percentage of immigrants, saw a veritable “multicultural territory” take shape along the Domitian coast. The building and housing situation of the coast, especially in the municipalities of Castel Volturno and Mondragone, is articulated on both sides of the Domitian state highway along which flow, almost serially, houses very similar to each other, all equally square which alternate small commercial activities, some hotels and the remains of what should have been other housing structures. Starting from the 90s, migrants arriving on the Italian territory recognized in the Domitian coast a new center of attraction and it was determined a real change in the form of foreign settlement, which changed from seasonal to permanent. The massive presence of foreign populations generated a “process of refunctionalization” of some places, in the total absence of instruments of government of a territory become in effect “multicultural”. If the housing condition and, more generally, the collective living conditions of the immigrants are particularly problematic along the Domitian coast, the observation of the real estate market and its dynamics leads further to confirm this assumption.