ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE OF THE URBAN FORM.

THE INTRINSEC SUSTAINAIBILITY OF ANCIENT CITIES

MARINA RIGILLO *

Key words: Culture + Nature, ecology of urban form, LCA Design

Abstract

The paper deals with the experience of a four-year research at the University of Naples

“Federico II” focused on environmental performances of urban space in small towns and

villages of Southern Italy. The study proposes a knowledge-oriented methodology aimed at

enhancing the significance of the urban form in terms of relationships between natural and built

environment, empirically demonstrating the existence of a (somehow implicit) ecological design

approach of the primary urban patterns that characterizes “urban signatures” in terms of pattern

itself, building shape, use of materials, construction technologies. The research wants to point

out the value of the original construction process and it aims at highlighting the coherence

between city form and the natural environment notably focused on the sustainable use of local

resources (vegetation, soil and water) corresponding to ecological cycles and fit on human

activities.

Introduction

Ancient towns and villages in Southern Italy are a meaningful example of ecological design in

which the urban form is strongly oriented by the site and by the availability of natural resources.

They intermediate the relationship between natural and built environment and supply dwelling

performances coherently with local context. Harmonization of nature and architecture in many

historic towns shows this positive integration and represents an important topic in terms of

urban management and urban planning. Ancient villages, especially, present urban patters

deeply linked to topography and to the natural environment, thus also urban signatures are

designed in such a way to give environmental benefits to the whole built-up area in terms of

improving microclimate, managing rain fall water and controlling environmental risk. Moreover

* Senior Researcher at the Faculty of Architecture (DICATA), University of Naples

Federico II, Italy

urban signatures are featured by a common constructive approach aimed at a sustainable use of

local resources, as some sort of “instinctive care” to Life Cycle of building materials (Rigillo et

al., 2007, 2009).

This kind of implicit sustainability of urban space is now treated by the impact of modern

transformation of historic assets - even by the aim of rehabilitation or maintenance - in which

the misunderstanding of primary, sustainable building processes could upset ecological balance

and site identity. The common and acceptable instance of updating services and performances of

historic urban space by modern dwelling functions – such as accessibility by car, improving

infrastructure and nets, developing commerce, etc. - ought to be compared to the original state

of the site and ought be adequate to local, specific carrying capacity.

The aptitude at reaching a balance between human needs and environmental features is a real

value of the historic built asset that have to be understood and enhanced through a specific

knowledge.

The study focuses on a set of case studies chosen among the ancient settlements of Southern

Italy: village and small towns where the former constructive characteristics are still

recognizable. These kind of places, deserted by their inhabitants during the decades of 60’s and

70’s due the lack of development of rural areas, are still featured by a number of urban

signatures that allows to understand the former relationship between the natural and built

environments. Moreover, low demography consistency acts positively in order to preserving

original urban pattern, reducing soil consumption and maintaining the constructive marks of the

built up area.

The ratio of the choice of such little settlements also concerns the quality of the settlement itself.

Italian landscape, specially, is strongly featured by the human work, not a wild nature rather a

domesticated space, representation of a stratify processes coming out from generation to

generation through a sequence of communicative spaces that represents the life and the culture

of local community (Turri, 1979)

These places couldn’t be counted as vernacular architecture – that establish a sort of unicum (i.e.

the ancient neighborhood of “Sassi” in Matera - Basilicata Region) – and they are not planned

cities, because they are not the product of some political will or application of planning rules.

These sites represent a sort of “organic” cities (Kostof, 1991) in the sense of being a

progressive, adaptive urban process strongly oriented by the natural constraints. Starting from

the empirical analysis of the site, the research has shown the existence of effective planning

rules deeply connected to the natural environment that characterize coherently the whole

cityscape. This kind of coherence could be perceived through a number of urban marks that – at

different planning and design scales – define the site identity in terms of relationship between

humans and their natural and artificial habitat.

What is stated by the observation of the case studies is that the form of the city is not unforeseen

though not responding to geometrical rules or structures of urban plant typical of the city of

foundation. Exist a sort of rationality of the building process that fixes the form of the

settlement and creates the good integration in the landscape. This integration is made by the

inhabitants through a continuous learning of the natural cycles and dynamics that allow to adjust

– progressively - the design of the city spaces in a very adaptive way, thus the urban

performances are fit to the natural environment.

Starting from the empirical examination, the study points out that the urban form and the urban

organization ensure the good performance of some ecological functions (i.e. storm drains,

microclimate, soil erosion, etc.) that are essential for the urban life quality.

The study postulates the hypothesis that such urban process could be decoded as an “ecological

succession” where the human community acts as a biocenosis that progressively modifies the

local environment, since reaching a sustainable balance, that could be compared to a sort of

climax condition, revealed by the good integration of the human needs with the natural features.

This point of view stresses the hypothesis of a former, ecological behaviour that drove human

community toward ecological forms and artefacts (the human habitat, at least) in a sense of

being part of the natural system: not only a simple, passive adaptation, rather a mutual exchange

by natural and built constraints, revealed by the coherence of the marks of the cityscape: the

urban pattern, the form of the urban blocks, the buildings’ typologies, the structure and the

pattern of building’s façades , the criteria of constructive technologies, the quality of materials.

Furthermore, acting as ecosystem, the city performs through a set of basic functions -

production, conservation and exchange – that regard both natural resources and the urban

dynamic itself, including social relationship and the economic flow that are specific of the

human gender.

According to this remarks, the conceptual framework of the study starts by the postulation that

humans are part of ecosystems and – second - that the form of the built environment indicates

the capacity of the human at integrating their needs in to the natural cycles. Starting from such

considerations, some important references of the paper are the studies in the field of the Urban

Ecology (Alberti M. 2007, 2008; Grimm N. et al. 2000; Sukopp H. 2002) that define part of the

background of the research hypothesis in order to consider, “a city as an ecosystem,

characterized by its history, its structure and function, including both biotic and abiotic

components, and the cycling and conversion of energy and materials”(Sukopp H., 2002).

Moreover the idea that the urban settlement acts as an hybrid emerging from human behaviour

and ecological processes (Alberti 2008) enforce the hypothesis of including the form and the

consistency of the built environment as further issue of the scientific discussion about the

interaction between humans and nature. The hypothesis ground, indeed, is also based on the

remark that for a very long time human action and biophysical processes did not create any

discontinuities, but – on the contrary – provided a set of coherent marks for the city

environment that featured urban space in a way of enhancing both ecological performances and

the other functions of the urban space (Alberti, 2008). This kind of features are very

characteristic of pre-industrial cities, where the relationship between culture and nature was

already strong and the intrinsic value of the environment was well understood by the

inhabitants. It was appreciate not because its economic value – environment as goods – rather as

value itself, part of the common life in that place: its beauty, its healthiness, its identity and

vitality (Perna 2002).

The value of the natural environment was part of the whole city use, so that the urban

performances were coherently balanced both on human’s behaviour and on the carrying

capacity of the site. From this point of view the study aims at stressing the significance of the

perception of urban form as indicator of the deep interaction between humans and environment,

enhancing the coherence of the construction processes at different scales. As cities in time are

always recognizable by a set of physical elements – monuments, church, palaces - that have

represented their historic and economic background, the comprehension of the former

construction processes of the cities facilitate the understanding of their environmental value, the

deep link between the community and the site, the reason of decoding urban form as a sort of

ecological memory of the place (Andersson, 2006).

According to this, one more postulation of the study is that such recognition provides new

opportunities in terms of knowledge, assessment and planning of those sites, and it could

enhance a real sustainability of the future development of the cities. Besides the study considers

the environmental value of the urban space as inner – and effective – experience of

sustainability that have to be communicate correctly. The importance of this kind of knowledge

is clearly demonstrated because the number of towns and villages of Southern Italy (but this is a

very clear mark of most of the Mediterranean landscape) that is not well regulated by the

present legislation in terms of safeguarding the former relationship between built and natural

environment. By this side the study finds some reference in the field of urban rehabilitation and

maintenance (Fiore and De Joanna, 2002), specially dealing with the methodological approach

to a knowledge oriented pathway for defining tools for rehabilitation and maintenance of the

urban spaces. Furthermore the contribution highlight the logical interaction between the

maintenance of some urban marks and the urban dimensional performances, specially regarding

the performance of Sense. From that literature the study has found its distinct perspective in the

framework of up-dating local urban code through specific and sustainable indicators and rules.

Finally, a very important suggestion comes from the research on the city’s identity and its urban

marks (Fiore, 1998) because it has represented the first impulse at investigating the reason of

such integrated products in terms of construction technologies, appearance, and environment.

Proposed Methodology

The study proposes a knowledge-oriented methodology for assessing the environmental values

of the urban form, enhancing its environmental performances and improving construction

processes and technologies for the urban rehabilitation and maintenance.

According to these remarks, the study tries to carry out a scan methodology for describing the

constructive code that shapes such organic cities in order to point out the former rules and the

logical connections with the natural environment. The purpose of the study is to assess a

methodology for describing urban space in detail, in a way of emphasizing the coherence

between the urban pattern, urban signatures and some key constructive technologies.

The study is based on a qualitative approach that started by the visual recognition of a number

of historic cities and villages within the Salerno Province. The study stresses the importance of

visual perception as a very distinctive tool of the architectural way of knowing through the

direct experience of the site and its features. Moreover, the research postulates the need of

investigating the form itself (its geometry, its rhythm, its material consistency) and compares

the patterns selected with the information related to the ecology of the site and to its history.

By this side the main patterns adopted for the studies concern specific configuration issues such

as the form of the city border, the ratio of the urban blocks, the pattern of urban section.

The study recognizes some urban marks for each of the case studies, a set of built elements that

act as a sort of construction “invariants” (De Fusco, 1973) that characterize the site and the city

identity.

These kinds of invariants refer to:

1. urban sub-systems (the ratio between street wide and building height, the geometric

rhythm of building façades , the ratio of the land use inside the urban border)

2. construction systems (roof’s typologies, surface’s treatments – paving and façades )

3. construction technologies (façades ’ plastering, streets’ paving, roofs’ covering)

Starting from this point, the study tries to analyse the ratio of the geometrical relationship and

the construction technologies that describe such urban elements. At different scales, the research

focuses on the relationship between the urban form and the natural opportunities and constraints

that define locally the specificity of that site.

The proposed methodology presents three recognition levels:

Context Scan. This phase is aimed at pointing out the relationship between the form of the

urban settlement and its natural context at a wide scale. Starting from the analysis of the

characteristics of the urban space, the study aims at collecting information about the natural

environment, in a way of explicating the reason of local urban form and patterns. The study

focuses on the main pattern of the built up area: the characteristic of the urban border in its

relationship between inside/ outside city; the infrastructure nets; the full/ empty relationship in

the spatial organization; the connectivity of the urban open spaces.

Urban settlement is deemed as a system through an holistic approach aimed at considering the

relationship between the human product (the city itself) and the natural environment that is all

around. Some tools have been used for analysing the urban pattern at wide scale: site

topography, land cover, land use, hydrology (storm drains, streams, canals, etc.) geological

setting. Each layer is placed on the city plan and has been compared with city’s typological

sections.

Application to the case study: The village of Sieti

From this analysis some information came out. In the case study of Sieti, a mountain village of

the Giffoni Municipality, the urban form shows significant differences between the Northern

and Southern fronts: building height and façades ’ rhythm are conformed to the need of

protecting the built up area from coldest and prevalent winds coming from North, while the

Southern fronts present open façades with a very different geometrical pattern. The Northern

front is enclosed and looks like a city outside the walls, as responding to the request of

protecting the village from sliding and prevalent winds: no streets or square break the

compactness of the building sequence. The urban pattern corresponds coherently to the

geological setting and topography: located on a natural saddle, urban form is quite a perfect

ellipse that keeps the right distances of the mountain slopes all around the built up area. Besides,

the urban pattern supports effectively local hydrology because streets and passages correspond

to the runoff lines: it creates an integrated system for getting storm rain out of the built up area

quickly and it delivers water in the stream below. The urban land cover, wide gardens and

allotments distributed inside the urban blocks, provide a quota of permeable soil for mitigating

urban microclimate and reducing storm drain.

From this recognition a number of environmental performances are carried out as result from

the interaction between human needs and natural environment. The main performances are the

protection from prevalent winds, the protection and prevention of land sliding, the prevention of

soil erosion, the respect for the water natural cycle, the implementation of ventilation and

sanitary regulation of the built up area.

Urban Scan, this level is mostly oriented at collecting information at city scale. The purpose is

to assess the inner coherence of the relationship of the urban components deemed as discrete set

of parts, and afterwards the study aims at comparing that information with the characteristics of

the local environment.

According to this, the analysis is focuses on the configuration of the built up area and specially

on the form and the aggregation of the urban blocks, the disposition of buildings’ volumes, the

typological section of the urban blocks, the roof’s typology, the façades ’ design: geometrical

patterns, the full/ empty rhythm, the perception of surfaces’ treatment. These kinds of data are

compared with the quality of some environmental features: prevalent wind and isolation,

hydrology, soil science, land cover, biodiversity.

Application to the case study: the Village of Sieti

The application of this methodology to the case study of Sieti provides a set of information

concerning the confirmation of the environmental performances previously highlighted and

some added performances regarding the quality of the built environment. Even at city scale,

indeed, the differences between Northern and Southern fronts are immediately perceived: urban

blocks presents enforced corner northward, toward the mountain slope, in a way of using

building shape for breaking slides and/ or runoff capacity, reducing its volume and velocity.

The perception of city space is a sort of fortified space in which building surfaces act in a way

of safeguarding street space and the compactness of the Northern front has enhanced by the grey

color of façades , perfectly inserted in landscape as well.

Vertical dimension is prevalent and the view of urban space corresponds to a deep and linear

perspective that enhances internal fronts, their surface, colour and texture. The whole urban

space responds to the instance of stressing the perception of inclusiveness and protection, as

well as the direct comprehension of former community life style totally focused on agriculture.

The street’s sections put in evidence that street width varies from 2 – 3 meters, while building

height varies in a range of 9-12 meters according to different uses of the building, ordered on

four levels: storeroom at the ground-floor, residential use at first and second level and garrets at

the top.

The dwelling hierarchy is clearly represented by the façades ’ rhythm and by the design of the

windows. Moreover façade’s recognition shows the care for the energy efficiency of the

building, specially concerning the regulation of the internal temperature of the residential

floors: storerooms at the ground floor and garrets on the top isolate the other floors by

reclimbing dampness and rain seepage, and they mitigate outside temperature in winter and

summer. Different windows’ typologies and geometric rhythm of Northern and Southern

façades show the capacity of optimize sun light and isolation and the need of protecting the

back front from the coldest winds.

The relationship between form and function is well represented by the basement windows

featured by narrow and sloping cut that allows the inside ventilation of the ground floor where

the foodstuff are stored. Similarly the roofs’ typology, two pitch roof made by bent and flat

tiles, offers the sameness of city landscape.

The ratio of street width and building height has reason in the primary interest of former

inhabitants in getting storm water away quickly: the gentle slope of the roof convoyed rainwater

in the middle of the street from where - thanks to the double direction gradient of the ballast –

storm water reach the cropland first and then flows in the stream below. Former roof’s typology

does not present any roof gutter and pluvial because of the absence of draining net, and also the

street paving was semi permeable, made by big pebbles and stones coming from the dredging

of the stream, thus the action made by pebbles and stone reduces runoff erosive capacity acting

on its volume and velocity. Some more strategies for decreasing run-off erosive capacity

concern the configuration of the building corners enforced by short buttress able to resist to

runoff erosion thanks to its plastered round form. By this recognition some environmental

performances come out: the energy efficiency of the built up area; the mitigation of the urban

microclimate; the maintenance of the natural water cycle; the maintenance of the stream.

Construction scan, the third level of recognition is focused on the construction features of the

built up area. The aim is to assess the relationship between the construction technologies and the

availability of local resources. The purpose of the step is to investigate the site specifically,

highlighting the link of existing technological systems with the availability of materials and

resources.

The main tool for this recognition is the Life Cycle Analysis of those constructive elements

chosen as local marks, key signatures of site identity. The proposed methodology starts by

resolving the life cycle of urban elements in four main phases (pre-production, production, life

service, cast off) according to the building process. So the pre-production phase corresponds to

material supplying, production relates to the yard design, life use concerns building

maintenance and refurbishment and the cast off deals with built components disassembly. The

choice of LCA as a key tool for scanning the construction level is given by the opportunity of

recognizing the availability of construction resources within the city wide context and by the

opening of understanding how the local community has used such resources in a sustainable

way. Through the constructive scan it is possible to appreciate the grounds of technological

design approach, always appropriate in terms of economy of works, material transport,

resources consumption. Developed locally, in fact, the former construction process was featured

by strategies of Life Cycle Design aimed at preserving the natural cycles and reducing the

quantity of non renewable resources to collect. By this point of use the qualitative analysis of

some construction elements shows a sustainable design approach in terms of resources’ use,

yard organization, transport organization, recycling and reuse of construction materials,

extension of life service of construction elements and sub-systems.

This step closes the process of knowledge acquiring for the reason that connect this kind of

information to the wide site contest: geological setting, land cover, hydrology.

Application to a case study: the village of Sieti

Through the analysis of the cross sections typologies, the study provides an outline of the urban

elements that cooperates to identify the key elements of the Sieti street space: paving, portals,

stairs, windows, building surfaces, roof slope. Special significance is given to the use of

plastering on vertical surfaces: the unusual grey color of the building frontage reflects the local

method of plastering without any stucco or paint, leaving the surfaces transpiring and

facilitating the insertion of the built up area in natural landscape, blending visually with the

native calcareous rocks. Six cm plaster coating is laid on Sieti buildings acting as a thick skin on

the outside wall, protecting from the aggression of physical agents and adapting the thickness of

the plaster at the differences of the surface degradation process according to the different

exposure of the façades of the buildings. The plastering technique reveals the availability of

know how among the work force and the viability of maintenance works in terms of costs, time

and labour.

The importance of plaster is also enhanced by its use for façade decoration, for remarking

building floors, for framing windows and balconies and for treating plaster as a substitute for

more expensive materials such as marble or decorative stone. Therefore, the use of plaster layers

for building angled buttress or make building corners round can be considered as a strategy that

reduces environmental risk in the built space as these elements are catalysts for breaking storm

water flows, decreasing run-off erosion and steering water towards the natural drainage of the

stream below.

The analysis the plaster LCA was specially focused on pre-production and life service phases.

Generally plaster pre-production is based on the huge availability of water, gravel and inert

materials (lime and sand, at least). Starting by that notion, the analysis of Sieti plaster reveals

the considerable human capacity of using local resources in a sustainable way, choosing firstly

renewable resources (water plenty) quarrying from the river (lime quarrying), secondly cast off

material such as waste arising from local calcareous quarries. Both materials cause the grey

colouring of plaster.

Regarding the life service, the thickness of plaster layer shows a good knowledge of plaster life

span and the natural cycle process. In fact the degradation effect on building surface is almost

equivalent to the cycle of periodic stream cleaning: thus the plaster thickness is designed for

roughly lasting a decade.

Notes before conclusions

According to these remarks the study has structured its theoretical apparatus that has

represented a very clear guide of the work from the beginning. The constructive scan enforces

the assumption of the inner sustainability of ancient towns and it puts in evidence the

relationship between built and natural environment.

Despite the strength of the logical criteria that have driven the study, there are a number of

weakness in the structure and in its application to case studies. In fact the methodology is not

yet fully tested as the experience done regards only four case studies chosen within the Province

of Salerno (Sieti, Badia, Cava de’ Tirreni, Vietri). Fewness of case studies is the weakness point

of the research since it needs more investigation on site for comparing data and validating the

hypothesis of a former ecological behaviour in city construction.

More weakness comes from the way of the case studies have been used in the research path. As

the study started by the qualitative recognition of the site, the four case studies are not

immediately comparable, because each one deepened a step of the whole methodology design.

Furthermore, because the geographic conditions were rather different, each case stressed some

special issues of sustainability, so the proposed overlay of maps and information has not done

for the all ecological aspect proposed in the text, however the recognition of the city form and

its urban and construction marks is completed for all cases.

One last point regards the size of the towns chosen as case studies: Sieti and Badia are villages

more than towns, and even Cava de’Tirreni and Vietri Municipality are small cities featured by

a low demographic density (Density/ Kmq: Cava 1.447,9 and Vietri 949,2 – source Istat 2001).

This size is representative of the relationship between the urban form and the natural

environment, but it is not very significant of the main drivers of contemporary humans activities

on the ecological systems because this kind of settlements have low demography increasing and

low impacts on the site ecology.

The main reference of the study is in the field of urban rehabilitation and maintenance, while

references of urban ecology are not fully developed. Overall, the size and typology of the case

studies make the references to the urban ecology rather weak. Since the convincement of the

need of deepening the study of urban form at different scales within the field of urban ecology

–including the construction scale - the relationships between the study and the key subjects of

urban ecology are not fully developed at present. The main reason concerns the focus of the

study on towns too different from those analysed by the urban ecologists, where the number and

quality of interrelation between humans and environment is more complex. In order to upgrade

the research path by the suggestions coming from the field of urban ecology, the next step of the

study is to enlarge the range of case studies to a wider number of cities, different for size,

typology and geographic dimension.

On the other side, references in the field of urban rehabilitation and maintenance work well.

Starting form the 90s’, scholars have deepen the concept of maintenance as a strategy for

improving sustainability (Caterina, 1991). They postulated that the rehabilitation of the existing

building stock reduces soil consumption and limits the drawing of no renewable resource.

Moreover, advances in urban maintenance postulate that existing building stock is a

resource itself because it is an environmental investment in terms of embedded energy

and other no-renewable resources, and because it also embodies financial, social and

culture capitals (Wood, 2002).

Within the this framework, the advance in the field of maintenance of the urban space

and its environmental performances represents a coherent and original research

approach aimed at highlighting the value of the holistic knowledge of the ancient urban

space. On this point, a new suggestion for the study concerns the perspective of

deepening the notion of “environmental breakdown” as a consequence of the

misunderstanding of the environmental value of the former construction process in

contemporary rehabilitation projects. The environmental breakdown is strongly linked

to urban maintenance but also to the wider field of and urban planning, because it also

involves the matter of decision making process.

Conclusions

The study postulates the existence of inner environmental value that characterized urban form of

cities and villages built in the pre-industrial age.

Three key assumptions drive the study. First assumption is the ante litteram sustainability of

ancient towns, tangible evidence of building tradition devised by economic opportunity and by

environment understanding, a special condition that drove constructive technologies towards

forms and functions adequate to local carrying capacity. According to this, the second

assumption regards the application of LCA to some urban elements, indicated as signatures of

local identity. This step is aimed at recognizing the former life cycle design approach focused

on preserving natural resources, reducing transport costs and optimizing the life service of each

element. Third and last assumption concerns the qualitative approach to LCA. The study targets

LCA as a sort of eco-balance more than an inventory itself, aimed at catching information about

the pre-industrial constructive process and the local design strategy. From this side, the study

postulates some basic criteria for driving the qualitative approach to LCA giving attention at

some environmental parameters: the use of natural resources (local and global), the life cycle

management in a long term perspective (urban and natural), the re-use and re-cycling of

materials. All these criteria could be considered as project’s constrains in the future programmes

of urban rehabilitation and maintenance.

According to these remarks, conclusion starts from the postulation of the need of extending the

case study testing to a wider range of cities featured by the presence of many and different

urban patterns. This is a essential advance of the research oriented to fix the ambit and the

significance of the study, and targeting more effectively the aim of the study in the field

of urban ecology.

By the other side, the study finds two opportunities of development in the ambit of

urban rehabilitation and urban maintenance. According to the present results, a number

of rules for controlling the environmental quality of the rehabilitation and maintenance

projects could be carried out: the analysis of the case studies has demonstrated that

inadequate information about the intrinsic environmental value of some urban elements

takes towards evident planning mistakes, treating the urban climax through the

increasing of sliding or flooding risks or modifying the logic of the existing, mutual

relationship within the natural and built components of the historic built up area. This

kind of development drives towards the upgrading of the local planning codes,

introducing specific knowledge about the former sustainability of the urban form by the

aim of defining coherent measures for preserving and enhancing local environmental

values. The importance of introducing the environmental value of the urban form within

the planning code could be strategic for the governance of many such little cities and

villages, specially those are included in National and Regional Parks. For that places,

the opportunities of recognizing a common planning and construction code may

implement positively the relationship between nature and culture at local level, realizing

a wider sense of identity of the inhabitants. The coherence of local building code with

the Park’s planning tools could lead toward a more effectively governance of the

territory in terms of protecting the natural environment, controlling local resources and

enhancing landscape beauty.

On the same subject, but at the construction scale, a new branch of investigation

concerns the perspectives of developing the analysis of former construction processes

focusing on the specific environmental requirements that such construction products

have to respond. Special attention will be given to the opportunity of increasing local

construction clusters through the introduction of former productive processes that could

integrate contemporary technologies. This kind of development could lead at enforcing

local economy creating high quality products within the construction market offer.

Reference

(1) Alberti Marina (2008) Advances in Urban Ecology. Integrating Humans and Ecological

Processes in Urban Ecosystem, Springler New York

(2) Alberti Marina, (2007) Ecological Signatures. The Science of Sustainable Urban Forms,

(http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/6nv1x61b)

(3) Andersson, E. 2006. Urban landscapes and sustainable cities. Ecology and Society 11: 34.

[online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol11/iss1/art34/

(4) Caterina G. (1991) Indicatori ambientali operativi per il progetto dell’esistente in Amirante

I., Caterina G., Gangemi V., Recupero delle preesistenze e forme dell’abitare, Sergio Civita

Napoli 1991

(5) De Fusco R. (1973) Segni, storia e progetto dell’architettura, Laterza Bari

(6) Fiore V., De Joanna P. (2002) La manutenzione urbana come strategia di sviluppo

sostenibile. Atti del convegno, Liguori Napoli

(7) Fiore V. (1998) La manutenzione dell’immagine urbana, Maggioli

(8) Grimm N. et al. (2000) Integrated Approaches to Long-Term Studies of Urban Ecological

Systems in BioScience571 Vol.50 No.7 July 2000, Pages 571-584

(9) Kostof S. (1991) The City Shaped. Urban Patterns and Meaning through History, Bulfinch

Press London

(10) Perna Tonino (2002), Aspromonte. I parchi nazionali nello sviluppo locale, Bollati

Boringhieri Torino

(11) Rigillo M., Castagneto F., Gilchriest S. (2009) Environmental Performance of Urban

Space: Rainfall Management in Sieti Village (SA) in Passaro A. (a cura di) Civiltà delle acque,

Luciano Napoli

(12) Rigillo M., Castagneto F. (2007) Riconoscere la sostenibilità. La manutenzione dei

caratteri della città storica in Fiore V. (a cura di) La cultura della manutenzione nel progetto

edilizio e urbano, Lettera 22 Siracusa

(13) Sukopp H., (2002) On the Early History of Urban Ecology in Europe, in Marzluff J.M.,

Shulenberger E., Endlincher W., Alberti M., Bradley G., Ryan C., Simon U., ZumBrunnen C.,

Urban Ecology: An International Perspective on the Interaction Between Humans and Nature,

Springler New York 2008

(14) Turri E. (1979), Semiologia del paesaggio italiano, Longanesi Milano 1979

(15) Wood B. (2002), Sustainable Maintenance Strategy, in Fiore V., De Joanna P. (2002) La

manutenzione urbana come strategia di sviluppo sostenibile. Atti del convegno, Liguori Napoli

Photo Credits: Marina Rigillo, Flavia Castagneto, Annarita Giordano, Gaetano Gravagnuolo, Antonio Miranda