Breaking Walls | Setting Ruins

The city is a complex reality, consisting of a physical and a social component: the Ville and the Citè. Their interaction can generate situations of fragility and conflict. When it happens, the territory is subject to a socio-environmental risk that is mostly evident in those friction spaces dwelt by different socialites.
The case study is Castel Volturno, unstable due to past and present conflicts, and characterized by an unruly urban expansion. A critical reading of the place is proposed, in order to identify the socio-environmental risk factors. Moreover, possible mitigation interventions are selected and reiterated, from this on, to other similar situations.
Borrowing from Earth Science the theory of continental drift, the paper tells about the process of mutual distancing and isolation of social groups, which are self-excluded in multiple urban fragments making up the city. The spaces in-between do not contribute to a productive encounter among different communities, they are barriers, areas of social friction. The proposal does not aim to define a specific project, a formal solution, but to build a strategy that activates a process of transformation that is punctually situated, able to reconnect.