Engaging in collaborative teaching experiments in planning and design: co-creation for the shrinking City-Port Areas of Naples

Abstract

City-Port Areas (CPA), traditionally considered synergic centres for trade, commerce, living and tourism, are nowadays under pressure due to urbanisation activities, overtourism, climate change, and other intertwined conditions of risk (natural and anthropogenic). It is possible to identify fragmented and shrinking territories in CPA - wastescapes - that foreshadow opportunities for sustainable, circular and socially inclusive urban regeneration. Regenerating wastescapes in the CPA calls for a collaborative approach that can give voice to all stakeholders, through different methods. Two of them have been explored in two didactic activities analysed in this paper. The transition towards a sustainable and just environment requires interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches involving different skills, while ensuring the development of innovations that can be formulated in Urban Living Lab settings (ULL). In the first place, this paper analyses the use of images and visions as a co-design tool that can facilitate the understanding of urban phenomena, while ensuring public participation in the processes of co-designing possible future scenarios. Secondly, it unpacks the gamification process that, even if not innovative per se and not free of limitation, when experimented in the didactic experiences, seems to be a stimulating method to engage the discussion among students, enhance their preparedness and awareness to cope with societal and sociotechnical transitions, while opening up to the local communities. Combining theories of sustainable urban regeneration with innovative teaching practices such as co-creation methods and serious gaming, research by design through students’ experimentations, aims to explore new perspectives to address the challenges of sustainable change in CPA and to raise students' awareness of complex issues such as the circular economy, resource management and urban resilience.