Suburban Environment. East Naples Historical Transformations and Sustainability

Abstract

This article retraces the late modern and contemporary history of East Naples through its environmental transformations. By the end of the eighteenth century, this marshy rural/suburban area hosted small urban agglomerations and many proto-industrial activities, deeply intertwined with agricultural production. During the nineteenth century, the area experienced its deepest transformations as a result of the three parallel processes of drainage, urbanisation and industrialisation. On the threshold of the twentieth century, East Naples became an industrial suburb, home to an uncontrollable residential sprawl interspersed with factories. This inchoate suburban mix has determined the area's unsustainability, leading to those hygienic deficits, environmental risks and economic and social complications that have plagued it to this day.