This article analyses the effectiveness of circular economy principles applied to the peri-urban territories of Naples, carrying out three integrated “eco-innovative strategies” developed within the H2020 REPAiR project (REsource Management in Peri-urban AReas). The main purpose of the research is to combine the rationalization of waste flows and land recovery. Waste, from scattered materials, turns into new resources for the peri-urban areas. The authors intend to describe how it is possible to create a synergy between urban crisis and technological tools working to improve the metabolism of the peri-urban context. Through the agency of mappings, as holders of knowledge and tools, strategies and scenarios are proposed. Such a process allows the research to create a synergy between two disciplines, one belonging to metabolic rationalization of flows and the other related to urban planning and regeneration of ecologically compromised territories. Thus, the peri-urban space, re-using its waste materials, is re-read and re-designed as a complex and compelling landscape system.

Across Europe, the current system of waste management is responsible for environmental pollution, leading to the need of a transition towards a circular economy model, and towards systemic approaches for achieving sustainable objectives. Interpreting waste as resource – through the development of eco-innovative solutions – can play a positive impact on the quality of life and of the environment. REPAiR1 research project proposes eco-innovative strategies, in order to co-design and assess solutions, involving a series of decisional problems that require the development of Spatial Decision Support System, described in their general structure and with a focus on the REPAiR project.

Recent international—UN-Habitat and European Environment Agency—and Italian reports have pointed out that urbanization is incessantly expanding at the expense of biodiversity and of rural lands. The radical growth of land consumption and change of land-use contribute to the increase of territorial risks and vulnerability. In particular, such phenomena are more visible within the peri-urban interface, considered as hybrid and malleable areas straddling between city and countryside realities. Even in the absence of a univocal definition, peri-urban is understood as a space where urban expansion occurs. Moreover, it emerges that such space also lacks local governance. Such uncertainty of form, identity and regulation catches the attention of a new urban agenda, which considers the peri-urban the most suitable place where to enact social, ecological and economic challenging changes. In this light, this paper aims to underline how peri-urban areas, although ecologically, socially and weak from a legislation point of view, constitute challenging territories to enact regenerative design and practices. In particular, new policies in sustainable agriculture are considered as potential solutions for the rapid soil consumption in Europe. Therefore, Campania region has been taken as our case study, because the region has a long history of agricultural practices and currently, it is closely linked to risk dynamics. It also represents an emblematic example for its innate exposure to natural hazards (related to its geological nature and geographical location), and for the ongoing man-made risks as causes of ecological and territorial damages. Moreover, land consumption in the region reached a record level in 2019, with 10% of agricultural land lost in a year (corresponding to 140,033 hectares). More than 70% of the consumed lands coincided with areas already exposed to natural hazards, both seismic and hydrogeological (Munafò, 2020). This paper assesses the results of an experimental application developed as part of the REPAiR (This research has been conducted within the framework of the European Horizon 2020 funded research “REPAiR: REsource Management in Peri-urban AReas: Going Beyond Urban Metabolism” [http://h2020repair.eu/]. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 688920. This article reflects only the author’s view. The Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains). Horizon 2020 European research project. We argue that the project results underline the relationship between the peri-urban interface and the soil regeneration through eco-innovative solutions. This has allowed us to link the spatial condition of the peri-urban with the production of waste and its subsequent recycle. This paper aims to further explore the research field experimented during REPAiR, expanding the materials available on the peri-urban and adding information with respect to the risk to which these places are linked.

The paper investigates a particular phenomenon of the industrialization of Southern Italy, starting from the second post-war period, and, in particular, the unsolved relationship between some large industrial areas and the territories of the medium and small cities on which such productive “plates” have been installed. The town planning policies and instruments with which the industrialization of Southern Italy was planned, on the contrary, foresaw a strong integration between urban fabric and industrial agglomerations. Through the case study of the province of Caserta, the research illustrated by the paper investigates, first of all, the policies that supported this process of industrialization and what the territorial effects of this phenomenon were. Next, the paper illustrates the method of knowledge and mapping of the territory of the case study of the industrial development area of Caserta. The data will be collected in a GIS platform that will return the following condition that is nowadays not available: analytical maps of the brownfield areas and the identification of the areas still intact, agricultural or green areas, urban areas and infrastructures, which trace a cognitive framework addressed to the project in which it will possible to experiment some possible eco-innovative and nature-based solutions.