Cross-scale analyses for costal areas management: the case study of the Sorrentine Peninsula

Abstract

The paper presents first results of the project "Place-based Regeneration Strategies and Participatory Processes", a research collaboration between the CNR-IRISS Institute and the Department of Architecture of the University of Naples "Federico II", aimed at exploring the topic of coastal areas resilience on the case study of the Sorrento Peninsula, a meaningful example of the integration between development needs and instances of protecting built landscape. The research interest goes to the patterns generated by sets of selected iconemi (Turri, 1998) that could be combined as landscape sub-systems through a number of components, rather than be deepened as single element of the site identity. The study uses cross-scaling approach as conceptual device in order to explore coastal landscape as sum of different patterns and iconemi; it also aims at understanding landscape diversity (also referred to the local eco-social system and its constraints), looking at the specific configuration of the place, its vulnerability, and its exposure at risk. The research has especially focused on the topic of safe accessibility, enhancing the opportunity of recovering agricultural paths as secondary roads network, for improving the integrated management of the territory and of cultural landscape. The study identifies these pathways both as iconema of the Sorrento coastal environment, and both as component of the agricultural ecosystem by which improve land use management and risk reduction. Paths, indeed, have been interpreted as the most effective tool for governing land use change locally, enhancing the role of slope crops in terms of economic values of natural and agricultural areas, and also as key opportunity for risk reduction, increasing paths recovery as part of wider adaptive strategy in case of fire events.