La cultura come motore della rigenerazione urbana circolare

Recent experiences of regeneration of physical space and, in particular, of places considered as ‘waste of the city’, have highlighted the active role of communities. The reuse of these places is linked to their recognition as ‘common goods’, meaning not only a new management method but also the whole range of identity values in which a community recognises itself and which allow it to define itself as such. The emerging character of these practices has strong implications of a social and cultural nature that translate into physical actions on the built environment: ‘care’ actions based on collaboration and sharing, through which communities, in a self-organised form, design, equip and manage different parts of the urban context, re-introducing them into the ‘life cycle’ of the city. The recognition of these urban assets as «common goods» (Bonesio, 2017; Karpoff, 2020; Maddalena, 2014; Magnaghi, 2012; Ostrom, 1990, 2000, 2009; Ostrom et al., 1994; Piscopo, 2014; Rose, 2020; Sacconi, Ottone, 2015; Schlager, 2002) requires a hybrid approach capable of strengthening the process of social empowerment and making it lasting through actions on the built environment. Assuming the Circular Economy approach (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2015; Foundation, 2013; Sukhdev et al., 2018) as theoretical and operational framework, degraded and abandoned spaces are no longer to be considered as urban waste, but as an opportunity for experimentation and potential for the development of settlement systems. The experimentation is carried out on the case study of Ercolano, a Vesuvian municipality that is an example of an Urban Productive Landscape, characterised by a cultural heritage of considerable importance due to the presence of archaeological excavations, but at the same time subject to the pressures of a strongly declining economy and growing physical and social degradation. The methodology consists of characterising the settlement system through the identification of four sub-systems (physical, social, economic/productive, cultural) for each of which were analysed the performance levels offered and the «waste conditions» (Bosone, 2019b). The analysis of community needs, the knowledge of the dynamics of change, the recognition of local and universal values of the landscape, the identification of resources to be maintained and regenerated, the comparison with similar experiences are the elements that substantiate a hybrid methodology (Onesti, 2017; Onesti and Bosone, 2017) for a «circular regeneration» (Bosone, 2019a) of the Urban Productive Landscape. The result is part of a wider experimentation that identifies Ercolano, Pompei and Torre Annunziata as the ‘poles’ of a dense network of relationships involving all the other municipalities of the Vesuvian coastal area and consists in the development of a regeneration strategy based on the principle of Circular Economy that can be replicated in other contexts and can guide and support decision-making processes for the definition of development strategies. The contribution emphasizes also the necessity to support decision-making processes through evaluation tools able to monitor the progresses of the project’s actuation, offering the possibility to evaluate the results obtained and make changes to the process if necessary. In this perspective, the creation of new synergies for the regeneration of the physical system becomes an opportunity to recompose the ability to preserve specific identities by building new values, linking the quality of the built environment with the productivity and innovativeness of local communities, regenerating tangible and intangible values of the «cultural heritage as common good» (Becattini, 2015; Bosone, 2019b; Bosone et al., 2019; Carmosino, 2013; Cerquetti et al., 2019; Cerreta, Di Girasole, 2020; Council of Europe, 2009; European Commission, 2014, 2015; Feliciati, 2016; Fusco Girard, Nocca, 2017; Garzillo et al., 2018; Gravagnuolo et al., 2021; Hess, 2008; Pinton, Zagato, 2017; Santagata et al., 2011).