From Renewal to Urban Regeneration: a research to rehabilitate Ortigia’s marginal places

A research methodology has been developed for the Euro South Hub project, within the Operational Programme Italia Malta 2007-13, in order to implement urban regeneration strategies. Recent recommendations about the development and the economic promotion of Ortigia (included in Unesco’s World Heritage List in 2005) aimed at upgrading the systems used to attract tourist flows, pose some problems involving issues such as the identity of a specific place and its preservation, after having identified its peculiar characteristics. Reflections about buildings lead to further reasoning up to embrace a place’s social and intangible components; so, regeneration projects are based on a philosophy able to convey the feelings of the community: both resident people and those who live there only for a limited amount of time. The research has been carried out with the aim of expanding the knowledge of Ortigia’s urban operating principles, and it focuses on an area characterised by an irregular arrangement of activities and an uneven conservation status of urban fabric. The paper will illustrate in further detail the analysis method which has been adopted, that is based on the parallel use of a layering technique and on sociological analysis. This leads to a better awareness of the analysed urban spaces and of weak links in particular, where it is necessary to carry out actions in order to recreate a shape that was lost and to make it up-to-date at the same time.