Informal Settlements: The Potential of Regularization for Sustainable Planning. The Case of Giugliano, in the Metropolitan City of Naples

Abstract

The present study tries to analyze the phenomenon of informal settlements in a specific territory. The choice is due to the fact that the above phenomenon has a strong territorial impact, as well as a strong influence on the use and consumption of the land. In Italy the problem of informal settlements is so old and consistent that three building amnesties have not solved it. The aim of the study is to analyze the phenomenon under both the perspectives: urban planning and local finance. A specific methodology, based on the overlapping of different maps, is implemented here. This allows figuring out the phenomenon of illegal settlements in the municipality of Giugliano, in the Metropolitan city of Naples. Giugliano in Campania is the third municipality in Campania Region for the number of inhabitants. The rapid increasing of population has caused an unplanned development, especially in the suburbs and along the coast, two areas that are frequently characterized by the scarcity of infrastructures and public facilities. By analyzing the municipal budgets of the last years, and, in particular, by analyzing the revenues deriving from the retrospective building permits, it is possible to evaluate the activity of the administrations in the sustainable urban management of the informal settlements. By simulating the regularization for some well identified informal settlements (in Giugliano the district of Casacelle with 21.000 inhabitants and almost all illegal) it is possible to demonstrate the effectiveness and the efficiency of the ‘sanatorium’ instrument, highlighting its potential from both the local finance and the sustainable planning perspective.

The paragraph 2 was drafted by Claudia De Biase; the rest of the article was drafted in equal part by the three authors.