Landscape as Urban Infrastructure: Integrated Regeneration Strategies in Castellammare di Stabia, from the Coastal Edge to the Hillside Park System

Abstract

Contemporary urban planning, particularly in a complex metropolitan context such as Naples, marked by high density and significant morphological and social complexity, must be grounded in an integrated approach capable of interpreting the city as a constantly evolving organism. The historical stratification, the rich landscape, and the presence of marginal areas awaiting reactivation make Castellammare di Stabia an ideal testing ground for new visions of urban development, where the balance between conservation and innovation becomes the interpretative key to every design choice. From this perspective, the PUC (Municipal Urban Plan) emerges as both an urban and cultural interpretative act: a document capable of shaping a collective narrative, involving administrators, citizens, professionals, and investors. Castellammare di Stabia's territorial identity is inextricably linked to water in all its manifestations. Since antiquity, the Stabian territory has taken shape as an integrated urban and thermal system, where the presence of numerous springs—some known since Roman times—has nurtured a tradition of care, hospitality, and cultural production, deeply influencing the city's urban layout, functions, and morphology. However, during the twentieth century, the loss of centrality of the thermal system, combined with industrial decline and uncoordinated urban expansion, led to a progressive identity and functional crisis. In this context, the coastal strip underwent both physical and symbolic marginalization, despite its strategic value as a threshold between the city and the Gulf of Naples. The recent revival of urban and landscape planning in the city has identified the coast—and more broadly the theme of water—as the generative nucleus of a new season of design, capable of reconnecting past and future, heritage and transformation