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According to the new European standards on pollutant emissions and improving air quality levels, the choice of low environmental impact systems of transport is fundamental. The requalification of disused railway transport today assumes an important role for the sustainability of the city and its building infrastructures. In particular, the reutilization of abandoned infrastructures, such as brownfield railways, allows the possibility of realizing travel systems with low pollutant concentrations. Railway rehabilitation designs respond to the actual requalification policies that are discouraging new exploitations, stopping degradation phenomenon and protecting incessancy of the environment, by means of not affecting the environment with new infrastructures. This paper presents the application of actual urban strategies, presenting a design proposal of requalification and optimization of the former railway transport track in Calabria, a region of southern Italy. Results show the possible solutions in terms of environmental and economic benefits obtained thanks to the use of an urban sustainable design. Moreover, social and tourist implications are highlighted.

The water distribution into stone specimens in laboratory conditions is evaluated through the infrared thermography method (IRT). Porous building stones samples (calcarenite and sandstone) are examined under stable laboratory conditions (controlled temperature and relative humidity) in order to simulate the same hydric behavior in real scale of material systems <em>in situ.</em> Hydric tests monitored through IRT are performed in order to analyze the capillary water absorption and evaporation transport phenomena into stone samples. IRT technique allows to record thermal images at different intervals of time highlighting the internal capillary and evaporation rise heights, responsible for the majority of decay processes occurring in masonries. The geometric shape of the damped area and the time of spreading are directly related to the open porosity of the investigated stone materials. Hydric tests are repeated for each splitting plane of the specimens (faces), in order to obtain useful results that could be applied for real masonries. Results demonstrate the usefulness of IRT as a non-destructive and portable technique in the field of new construction and for restoration purposes, as well as its importance in characterizing the physical stone features and the effectiveness of applied conservation treatments.

Grisolia is one of the building stones most commonly found in the architectural heritage of southern Italy. Also known commercially as “gold stone” for its yellow intrusions, Grisolia was employed by the leading Calabrian schools of stonemasons, principally in the southern Italian regions of Calabria and Basilicata. It is an Upper Triassic crystalline carbonate quarried in the Verbicaro Unit on Calabria’s northern Tyrrhenian coast. Possessing petrographic, physical and mechanical properties that ensure stone strength and durability, it is a high-quality building material suitable for structural and ornamental uses. These properties can be attributed to its low open porosity and excellent hydric behavior (low capillary water absorption), as well as to its high mechanical strength and low anisotropy. These characteristics make it recommendable as a building material for both restoration and new construction.