Urbact 3 – Growth by reconversion Project sheet

Part 2: Project partner Casoria (Italy) 2.1. Profile of the initial partner Casoria is the biggest municipality in northern Naples area. Casoria was at first a village in the middle of a big fertile flatland near the metropolis, which had been the capitol city of Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The first settlement was an agricultural centre, which became an industrial city after the Second World War, hosting a huge industrial presence. Its industrial development, which made Casoria the main industrial hub in southern Italy, caused the population to increase by four times from 1951 to 1991. Nonetheless, most of the industries have closed now, leaving abandoned all the sites and buildings located in the first old city belt. As industries left, the population decreased, worsening the densification of the metropolitan area of Naples in the ’70 and ’80. Casoria’s industrial history represents an important heritage which is though difficult to be managed. First, a big infrastructural system, born to support those settlements, is still present: highways, motorways, railway tracks and also an area of Capodichino International Airport. Now, this system cuts the territory in separate areas and road traffic has decreased but never stopped, due mostly to the impressive demographic explosion of northwest cities, like Giugliano, which are connected to Naples through the Provincial Way no.1 (SP1). Casoria nowadays has 77,968 inhabitants (November 2014), confirming a decreasing trend since its maximum reached in 1998 (83,576). It is the fifth city in Naples Metropolitan City (established in April 8, 2015) and the biggest in the north, as already said. The whole City has over 3,2 million inhabitants living in 92 cities (including Ischia, Procida and Capri islands): as many others metropolitan areas, cities are strictly linked without a clear cut between one and the other.

Città di Casoria

Provincia di Napoli

Piazza Cirillo, 1 – 80026 Casoria (Na) tel. +390817053306 fax +390817053298 [email protected]

2.2. Local challenges in relation to growth by reconversion Casoria is one of the municipalities belonging to the first outer ring of the city of Naples. Since its industrialization period after the war, and at least until the end of the ‘70s, it was a major industrial centre, hosting important steel and chemical industries. The presence of production facilities (and the consequent need for employees) coupled with the easy access from the neighbouring towns and the city of Naples (essentially by historic Sannitica road, which has been intensely used until a very recent time), leading to a remarkable housing and demographic boom, which made the town to become one of the most densely urbanized area in the entire Province of Naples1. However, in the last two decades production activities stopped, abandoning the factories and leaving large dismissed areas. From the 80’s, when the manufacturing sector was already in crisis, this area develops a production related to large commercial distribution and entertainment in the area of the so-called “road of Americans2”, in the first outer ring road of Naples. Nowadays the service sector is also experiencing a crisis, well-represented by the closure of the first American-like mall of metropolitan area of 1

The presence of more than 78,000 inhabitants continues to determine a population density equal to 6,537 inhabitants / square km, far superior to that of the Province of Naples, which recorded a value of 2,606 inhabitants / square km. 2 It is called like this because it leeds to Naples NATO settlements.

Città di Casoria

Provincia di Napoli

Piazza Cirillo, 1 – 80026 Casoria (Na) tel. +390817053306 fax +390817053298 [email protected]

Naples: the Eurostanda (then Euromarket) of Casoria. As was the case for the disposal of heavy industry in the 80’s, this phenomenon is probably a forerunner of wider national trend: the retail facilities area of Casoria appears to be increasingly inadequate3. On the other hand, the competition with the most modern shopping malls built in the municipalities of outer metropolitan city (in order of construction: The Gates of Naples in Afragola, the Vulcano Buono in Nola, the Centro Campania and McArthur-Glenn Outlet in Caserta) reduced the appeal of existing structures, decreasing its catchment area and giving rise to a further reason for the crisis of the industry, which was already struggling because of the general economic situation. The crisis of the production system was amplified by the difficulties of settlement and environmental systems. A trend of urban irrationality worsened production competitiveness and determined severe consequences for the environment that in turn amplified the heavy legacy of post-war industrialization. The city and the historical territory are crushed by a dense and "parasitic" construction, structurally holding on to existing structures4. Most of edification made since the war to the present day have in common a low urban quality: open public spaces are missing or marginalized, squares and streets are at best reduced to pure “run-through” roadway. There are no green areas equipped for sports, adapted to be really lived by population. Many buildings, especially in the multi-storey buildings boom of ‘50 and ‘60, present traces of premature age and structural deterioration (a condition also linked to the use of concrete in frame structures which does not conform to current seismic standards). Disposal and underuse of areas and products, left deteriorating without maintenance, represent a phenomenon every day more evident. While the debate on dismissed industrial areas continued, getting the attention of the public opinion almost exclusively for decades, new "territorial caries" (disposal, abandonment, age of the assets and relative underemployment) have eroded the spaces of the modern Casoria, whose urban fabric is no longer continuous indeed as it might appear in a cold, planimetric vision. In these cavities a very dense weaving of micro-disposals can be found: unused apartments, shops closed because of the crisis, laboratories which are no longer suitable for actual standards of craftsmanship. Many production activities, almost all the most important ones, have been abandoned; the trend of the resident population, for the first time in decades, shows a decrease of residents: four thousand inhabitants in the last fifteen years have left the city. The inhabitants leave because Casoria is a city where life is not sufficiently good: traffic congestion, lack of work, low quality settlements, poor quality housing (old buildings abandoned or 3

It appears that commercial structures within the urban area prevail, which are less extensive and characterized by a more complex fragmentation of the commercial offering, being also linked to their specific context and to the preservation of the traditions and the local culture. On the other hand large commercial areas outside the urban area are energy intensive users and have a very high impact on the environment, together with high management costs. 4 The concept of “parasitic urbanization” is used as elsewhere in the meaning attributed by Robert A. Beuregard (2006) to the relationship between inner city and suburb in the contemporary American urbanization.

Città di Casoria

Provincia di Napoli

Piazza Cirillo, 1 – 80026 Casoria (Na) tel. +390817053306 fax +390817053298 [email protected]

badly "restored"; a modern high density city made of multi-storey concrete buildings inadequate to current seismic and energy standards; the urban sprawl, with houses often built without any permission). Moreover infrastructures (roads, equipment) are very undersized (currently barely reaches 10% of the standard required by law5) and, even when present, obsolete and/or irrationally arranged. There is no public green and the few residual cultivated fields are surrounded by large unused empty areas or greater infrastructures (highway, expressways, railways).

2.3. Strategies and actions already implemented to tackle the policy challenge

2.3.1. A new Masterplan for Casoria - 2013 During 2013 the City Council, to counter the current trend of crisis, promoted the drawing up of the new municipal development plan (P.U.C.- Municipal Urban Masterplan). This tool has led to the drafting and approval of a Structure Plan, within the municipal area, and a first Operational Plan, concerning peripheral areas where we planned the establishment of a big public park: a sort of urban forest of 3 sq km, with gardens and public buildings blocks, that will change the image and the role of Casoria in the next decade, restoring ecological continuity and public use of the environment.

5

The existing public services and facilities amounted to 290,116 square meters, about 10% of the requirements to be respected before 2023 (4 sqm/inhabitant).

Città di Casoria

Provincia di Napoli

Piazza Cirillo, 1 – 80026 Casoria (Na) tel. +390817053306 fax +390817053298 [email protected]

The first step of the Operational Plan in 2013 is designing the park, in order to “infiltrate” it progressively in urban system. This choice has a certain symbolic value, entailing a new vision (starting renovation from green and not by buildings). Moreover it represents a real necessity for this territory, thanks to the recovery of space to be used for equipment and services in order to reach the minimum standard levels set by national and regional authorities. The park will incorporate works from the integrated ERDF program "P.I.U. Europa", that is to say a series of public works funded by the European Union that will be completed in 2015. This projects had started the process regeneration of some public areas. The network of public spaces redefined thanks to the integrated program will connect the suburban area of the “forest” with the historic settlements, which will be involved too in a complex operation of urban renewal, as specified in the detailed plan (scale of single building). Regarding the modern city, the plan provides a series of rules aiming at recovering unbuilt spaces, regenerating local public networks, improving energy performance and increasing seismic safety of buildings. Such policies, articulated in relation to the environment, will be examined in depth in the short term (in order to get the approval of an additional Operational Plan), so that they can be declined in relation to further details that will emerge. The participation of population will be crucial in the definition of choices to be made regarding the interventions to transform the existing structures (which are certainly not easy to maintain. These interventions presents more difficulties than a new building project, therefore they have to be felt by citizenship, basing on concrete financial resources and being favoured by a strong social consensus.

Città di Casoria

Provincia di Napoli

Piazza Cirillo, 1 – 80026 Casoria (Na) tel. +390817053306 fax +390817053298 [email protected]

Città di Casoria

Provincia di Napoli

Piazza Cirillo, 1 – 80026 Casoria (Na) tel. +390817053306 fax +390817053298 [email protected]

2.3.2 The Great Park - The Operational Plan of the PUC to build the infrastructure park of Casoria. The city has few equipped green areas and residues of agricultural land, while abounds in permeable areas near the main infrastructure axes. The Masterplan identifies the "agriculture mosaic" and "infrastructure belt" as the privileged areas to build a complex system, allowing the Great Urban Park to integrate the equipment necessary to the achievement of urban structure rebalancing of the expansion areas, currently almost entirely destined to residency and for industrial and commercial purposes. Therefore the strategy is promoting the implementation of a widespread redevelopment aiming to the realization of a new series of ecological and environmental facilities and equipment, using the Great Park to link all the interventions and at the same time defining the urban margins, that today appear as fringes of an insignificant residue of edification. The park also inserts itself into a structure on a metropolitan scale, prefiguring the construction of ecological continuity with the park of the HST Station of Afragola, the urban eco-system of East Naples and the equipped Park along the National Road 162 disposed by the Metropolitan City of Naples. The Operational Plan is divided into Planning Minimum Units, with different characters: 

Areas for agricultural use, which gather and integrate the existing residual agricultural soils in a system which would be of great importance for the urban identity of the city, which was born with a strong agricultural inclination;  Areas used as public green spaces, in order to reach and hopefully go beyond the minimum standard levels required by law;  Areas designated to accommodate public facilities, whose severe deficit in the areas of twentieth century urban expansion have to be bridged.  areas of integration of residential areas subject to “sanctioned” building (conditional amnesty for work done without planning permission) internal to the Great Park. For the realization of these units, the Operative Plan created technical sheets aiming at orienting individual interventions and to recompose the general framework drawn in the Plan.

Città di Casoria

Provincia di Napoli

Piazza Cirillo, 1 – 80026 Casoria (Na) tel. +390817053306 fax +390817053298 [email protected]

2.3.3. Reform of the first urban ring For the areas of the "first crown", coinciding with the urban sprawl until the mid-sixties of the twentieth century, a complex operation of urban restructuring is expected. These areas are generally dense urban parts, grown as a result of expansion of pre-existing historical settlement and / or along the main road between towns. Their main function today is residential, with the presence of commercial and craft activities on the ground floors of multi-storey buildings. The infrastructure level is low in particular when compared with the high building density and population. The area has a growing number of vacant apartments and unused shops on ground floors. The Plan aims to decompress the building volume, promoting the upgrading of the remaining housing stock and balancing the ratio of housing function, public facilities and private service industries. As part of the vision for Casoria, it becomes important the theme of a progressive spinoff of historic settlements and modern expansions. In this regard, the Structure Plan promotes the establishment of not-to-be-built belts near the edge of the historic centre through incentives for the relocation of volume and services from the twentieth-century crown to another urban context with specific compatibility, for example brownfield areas.

Città di Casoria

Provincia di Napoli

Piazza Cirillo, 1 – 80026 Casoria (Na) tel. +390817053306 fax +390817053298 [email protected]

2.3.4. Conversion of brownfield sites For brownfield sites and those to be disposed of, located in urban core, the Plan outlines a role as a trigger for a more organic urban regeneration. It is not ruled out the introduction of a residential amount, providing that, at least, half of areas is equipped for infrastructure and services, and onethird of any residence is allocated to social housing and/or used for decompression of the first urban

Città di Casoria

Provincia di Napoli

Piazza Cirillo, 1 – 80026 Casoria (Na) tel. +390817053306 fax +390817053298 [email protected]

crown settlement. The introduction of temporary public uses will be very significant in pending processes of remediation (if compatible and synergistic with them), in order to put in contact, in practice and in the short term, citizens with large denied enclosures that remain in the urban mesh, even the most central ones.

2.3.5. Productive development The Plan provides for the strengthening of the existing production core - mainly intended for commercial, managerial and manufacturing activities - placed in the middle part of the township, along the “road of Americans”. The “district” is now characterized by a discontinuous settlement morphology, consisting of micro-industrial fields mixed with residual open spaces. The enclosures have large sealed areas, intended for storage and/or parking. The system of public urbanization is deficient regarding the services and equipment of the secondary type. This context includes an unplanned residential sprawl, with multi-storey buildings and rarely shops on the ground floors. The Plan promotes the consolidation and integration of the existing urban production core, in order to strengthen its role as manufacturing centre in the provincial context. The restructuring of the settlement system is based on the improvement of accessibility both for goods and people, also through local public transport, and the qualification of the common services to enterprises and workers. It also promotes environmental balance through measures aimed at reducing waterproof surfaces and monitoring of environmental standards of the settlements in order to obtain an “industrial symbiosis” closed loop (“no-waste cycle”).

Città di Casoria

Provincia di Napoli

Piazza Cirillo, 1 – 80026 Casoria (Na) tel. +390817053306 fax +390817053298 [email protected]

2.3.6. Casoria, next step: Sbs_Lab The challenges Casoria is facing are serious: 1) first, to implement concrete policies for the realization even step by step of the “park” of the Operating Plan in the course of final approval, including through public temporary uses. This challenge is also crucial since the concrete realization of parts of the park will instil greater confidence to local people. This will put into operation a virtuous circle because it will be the local community itself to “invent” and “practice” the public uses of the new park, as soon as it will be possible; 2) second, to act in order to operationally define, step by step also in this case, the project of transformation of residential and productive urban areas of Casoria, in order to allow a “different growth” of local economy and an overall regeneration of urban and natural environment. It is necessary to communicate and arrange urban restructuring interventions in the plan, reaching solutions to increase social inclusion and local identity. Both challenges require a non-stop planning activity, accompanied by concerted choices with private operators and by the active participation of citizens to the implementation of land use decisions, so innovative for South of Italy as objectively complex. In this respect, the City Council has started the establishment of a permanent participatory planning Laboratory, called "Casoria step-by-step", indicating the need for patient and continuous programming tasks and also the opportunity to put in practice field activities like this, thinking to city planning as “done by foot” as Bernando Secchi was suggesting, that is to say walking in the real space of the city. The workshop also aims to establish the instrument of "participatory-planning", provided for by Regional Law 13/2008, which is planning the territory with the neighbouring municipalities and

Città di Casoria

Provincia di Napoli

Piazza Cirillo, 1 – 80026 Casoria (Na) tel. +390817053306 fax +390817053298 [email protected]

other public bodies involved with the constant participation of citizens. Cooperative planning is very important as it allows Casoria, as to other neighbouring municipalities, to address problems and opportunity at the right size, outside of each other municipal boundaries. It is reasonable to think that, from the structural plans of each municipality, we succeed to build a coordination framework for a "cluster" of six / seven administrative municipalities in the north crown of Naples, which should be homogeneous for social and physical characteristics and with a total population of 250,000 / 300,000 inh. The Sbs_Lab comes from previous experience of the Laboratory of urban planning set up by the city in 2013 and from the technical assistance staff to the ERDF project P.I.U. Europa of Casoria, which both largely converge in it. This synergy was also born from the opportunity of strongly tying urban planning and management ERDF aids, as specifically requested by the European Union. The laboratory will be launched, with a special act of deliberation, by next June and it will consist of not only the personnel of the Municipality of Casoria and contractors and consultants selected but by partners such as:     

The Department of Architecture of the University of Naples Federico II, with whom it has recently signed a scientific collaboration agreement. The Metropolitan Area of Naples (NUT3) The Campania Region (NUT2) Owners of brownfields to reconvert; Representatives of local associations and professionals.

2.4. The scope of the Integrated Plan of Action The main task of the Laboratory Casoria Step-by-Step is making sure that the ideas of the urban plan will gradually translate into reality. The chance of Urbact III is, for Casoria and Lab_SbS, the way to exchange knowledge with European partners and experts and to expand ways and opportunities of discussion with citizens and local stakeholders. The concerted and participatory processes also aim at defining realistic scenarios without sacrificing the visionary nature that assumptions of urban and environment regeneration must have in order to place themselves in a context like that of the northern outskirts of Naples, going beyond simple “maintenance or survival of the existing”. Our objective is building a local action plan that could be useful to maximize the results of the funds allocated by the European Union in the next CSF 2013-2020, contributing to building a virtuous identification of new ways of programming and local planning, participation and social inclusion, and, at least, of our European identity.

Città di Casoria

Provincia di Napoli

Piazza Cirillo, 1 – 80026 Casoria (Na) tel. +390817053306 fax +390817053298 [email protected]