Public space and identity in decayed peri-urban areas. The Quarto Canal Basin North of Naples

Subjected to strong anthropic pressure, peri-urban areas are rapidly being transformed. Some of them are likely to be affected by outstanding decay. The agricultural use of soils, which had outlined the territory, gradually drops off, and built areas appear as major or minor blots, which do not dialogue with each other. Public space is no longer everyone’s space, but rather nobody’s space. This is the picture of the loss of any kind of identity, collective memory and of any idea of city, territory or landscape. The loss of identity causes an increase of decay. A case study of these phenomena is represented by the area North-West of the metropolis of Naples. This territory has lost its agricultural landscape identity and has not achieved a new one, becoming thus a refused landscape. The Quarto Canal Basin has been the subject for a design of new scenarios that focus on the regaining and the re-design of public space.