Learning How to Live with Risk—The Role of Co-Design for Managing City–Port Thresholds in Castellammare di Stabia, Naples, Italy

Journal Article (2026)
Author(s)

Libera Amenta (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II)

P. De Martino (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment, Università Iuav di Venezia, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II)

Research Group
History, Form & Aesthetics
DOI related publication
https://doi.org/10.3390/su18073242 Final published version
More Info
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Publication Year
2026
Language
English
Research Group
History, Form & Aesthetics
Journal title
Sustainability
Issue number
7
Volume number
18
Article number
3242
Downloads counter
13
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Abstract

City–port thresholds are increasingly exposed to multi-risk, including climate change impacts, pollution, and obsolescence of buildings and infrastructure as well as socio-economic marginalization. This paper aims to understand what role co-design—and more generally collaborative planning processes—can play in enabling communities and institutions to learn how to live with risk when managing water, city–port interfaces, and coastal public spaces. To do so, this paper analyses the experience of a co-design workshop held in Castellammare di Stabia, in the Metropolitan Area of Naples, organized within the framework of the research MIRACLE and SPArTaCHus. The results of the workshop show that co-design can act as an effective instrument for developing strategies aimed at the regeneration and valorization of underused, abandoned, or polluted spaces in the coastal thresholds of City–Port areas—wastescapes—that are exposed to multiple risks. In these complex territories new methods are needed to understand, describe and interpret the fuzzy boundaries between the city and the port to collaboratively envision sustainable strategies for urban regeneration of coastal wastescapes.