Transformations and deformations in the axiology of the human and urban landscape of Mazara del Vallo (Italy)

Mazara del Vallo is a town in the Sicilian south-western area characterized by intense fluxes of immigration, landscape and territorial peculiarity, a low urban quality level and a considerable quota of unexpressed value and unutilized potentials. The town is shaped by tension between continuity and contamination. Due to the crisis affecting the two main economic sectors of its economy, the town is going through a progressive impoverishment process, whose effects concern the urban shape of the two main landscape units, the Casbah (the old town) and the Canal harbour. This essay is aimed at defining the conditions for the economic sustainability of the urban redevelopment plans in the specific field of the immigration social housing and the recovery of the central function of the harbour area.