Paesaggi costieri del Ponente genovese: frammentazione, riconnessione e cura

The degradation of the periurban landscapes is often caused by the realization of operations planned by the town-planning and by “spontaneous” transformations out of its control with the creation of new “hybrid” landscapes between town and countryside. Calcinara-Sestri Ponente and Prà Palmaro in the west side of Genoa are considered “islands” of neglect and degradation caused by the industrial activities which have occupied the most favorable areas to production from a morphologic and logistic point of view. The fragmentation of these coastal landscapes began in the second half of the nineteenth century with the construction of the railway line along the coast; the landscape which was characterized by seaside villages and villas became an industrial suburb, eliminating the components of the landscape without interest from the point of view of “modernization”, and consequently altering the relationships between the inhabitants, induced to participate to the industrial and harbour productive processes, and the landscape, with serious repercussions on the health of the population due to polluting emissions lasted for decades, with the loss of the “memory of the places” and of the local knowledge linked to agriculture and sea activities. The progressive degradation and the loss of integrity of the complex agricultural systems linked to the coastal villas Negrone and Vivaldi-Pasqua, caused by the inappropriate occupation of the free areas, by the disorderly placing of stores, greenhouses and industrial buildings has determined a mixing of incongruent and superimposed elements. This landscape has been transformed in a “urban jungle” hardly accessible and difficult to be passed through due to the tangle of vegetation and the acclivity, where traces of unregulated activities of storage and garbage recycling can be seen, as well as precarious structures used for the breeding, abusive discharges for building materials, scraps, bulky urban wastes. The inhabitants have shown the desire of improving the non-places generated by the urbanization with forms of spontaneous associations of volunteers with the aim of improving the quality of life. The requalification and regeneration should be oriented to transform the landscape with the construction of a new ecological network; attractions for new activities within the recreational activities and the social aggregation with the evaluation of the volunteers activities; experimental models for regeneration and interventions of redevelopment with sustainable systems (semi-extensive green roofs on the industrial and residential buildings, vertical green on the containing walls, green parking), realization of areas of ecological compensation easy to be maintained which help the colonization of plants and animal species.