Valorizing Community Identity and Social Places to Implement Participatory Processes in San Giovanni a Teduccio (Naples, Italy)

Abstract

This paper addresses the implementation of an intervention aimed at promoting participatory processes in San Giovanni a Teduccio—a neighborhood on the eastern outskirts of Naples—to foster the acknowledgment and valorization of local social, cultural, and identity resources by citizens. Former industrial and marine area, today disused and run-down industrial establishments in the neighborhood and obscure and pollute the sea, weakening local identity and cultural heritages. Interviews were carried out to address citizens’ and stakeholders’ social identity, their civic and social engagement in the community, and the potential and critical issues they identified in it. A split community emerged from their words, with a minority civically and socially engaged in the regeneration of community places and relationships—even though through a fragmented multiplicity of projects—and a “dormant” majority, passive and anesthetized by the nostalgia of the industrial and marine past. Participants were also asked to share pictures about meaningful community places; these showed abandoned and run-down urban spaces, but also places where citizens could meet, share, and identify. An exhibition was organized to share these materials with the broader community, opening up a space for thinking about the need to involve citizens in acknowledging and valorizing local cultural, social, and identity resources through participatory processes.