Regenerative practices for public space, urban creativity and active citizenship processes in Ponticelli: the experience of Parco dei Murales

Abstract

This contribution aims to explore the role of urban creativity as a catalyst for the activation of sustainable urban regeneration processes, especially for public spaces in the most marginal and fragile areas of cities. In order to do so, we describe the experience of Parco dei Murales, the first creative urban district in Campania, located in Parco Merola, one of the large, densely populated and socio-economically vulnerable districts of Ponticelli, the largest “public city” in southern Italy. The proposed reflection juxtaposes the current urban structure - characterized by massive public residential expansion made up of enclaves, oversized infrastructures, unrealised services, vacant spaces, etc. - with the public plans and programmes that unfolded throughout the 20th century and that never been followed up with the realisation of spaces and services for citizens, with the opportunities arising from the concrete action of certain insurgent practices like street art. Indeed, in Ponticelli, the presence of numerous associations reflects the vitality of an active citizenship that promotes instances of social justice, which often manifest themselves as commons (Mattei, 2012). The regenerative practices activated in Parco dei Murales teach us that, even in a context in which the action of public policies is highly stratified, the immediate reactivation of vulnerable parts of the city was only possible thanks to the protagonism of local actors and the involvement of the inhabitants, within participatory processes that later evolved into institutionalized forms of public-private collaboration. This experience places the Ponticelli case study on three spatial planes of interest to the scientific and political community: the local, the national and the international, in which the Parco dei Murales becomes a best practice reference for urban regeneration processes based on creative actions.