The Great Urban Transformation: From Risanamento to the Metropolitan City (19th-21st cc.)

The chapter attempts to reconstruct the dynamics of Naples’ urban transformation between the end of the 19th century and the first two decades of the new millennium. Starting from a reinterpretation of the phenomena associated with the cause–effect relationships between natural and anthropogenic disasters and urban renewal plans (from reconstruction plans after pandemics, war or earthquake to metropolitan strategy programmes), the two polysemic terms ‘crisis’ and ‘rebirth’ are adopted by the author as key concepts to identify the elements of continuity and rupture that have determined the formal and functional characterisation of the city in the long term, and to analyse the homologation or innovation processes triggered in the city and its surroundings in relation to the possible reference models (from the sanitary city to the smart city), the technical/professional knowledge (from the sanitary engineer to the planner and urban designer), the political and economic actors and the social and cultural demands of the urban community.