Facilities, landscape, city. To the origins of a missed
meeting.

ABSTRACT
This article gives an account of a series of researches and town plans
drawn up in the early 21st century about the areas nearby the
settlement of the future high­speed train station in Afragola. Ten years
later, during the construction of the facilities of the Station, designed
by the star architect Zaha Hadid, it is probably about time to wonder
why the huge cost that the construction of the railway required was
not redistributed to the community in terms of utilities and
improvement in the landscape. And why did no one, neither public
operators nor politic makers, act "rationally", by following up on the
technical solutions concerning the problems caused by politics itself?
The depressing landscape absolutely recalls the wide gap between
design and town planning practices.

IJPP ­ Italian Journal of Planning Practice 26Vol. II, issue 1 ­ 2012

Luisa Fatigati
Visiting Lecturer
luisa.fatigati@polimi.it
Facoltà di Architettura ­ Università Federico II di Napoli

ISSN: 2239­267X

Travelling around the new high­speed Naples­Afragola trainstation.

Enrico Formato
Adjunct Professor
e.formato@unina.it
Facoltà di Architettura "Luigi Vanvitelli" ­ Seconda Università di Napoli



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INTRODUCTION
The Asse Mediano is the highway that crosses, along a path that looks like
an arabesque, the entire inland urban sprawl near Naples ­ over the hills that
separate it from the city by the sea. In a sense, the Asse Mediano is the
modern decuman of this conurbation, the fluid axis that with its infinite
string of junctions and viaducts holds together the multitude of scattered
agglomerations and their recent developments.
Moving along this highway is a very interesting experience not only for
those who deal with the territory. With its advertising totem and shopping
centres, more or less dense and structured fragments of contemporary city,
the infinite sequence of bends that characterizes its route, – further on, the
reason why this road has no proper straight stretches – it provides the
driving observer with a repertoire of landscapes that fully gives you back the
idea of confusion and inconsistency of this territory.
Until a few years ago, maybe less than a decade, it was still possible –
driving on this unique highway ­ to stumble on not urbanized, still under
cultivation gaps. It was before the shopping centres colonization (now there
are a few dozens of them, they are pretty large and with a strong impact),
before the housing boom in the early twenty­first century, before the "EU
aid" that contributed to the almost complete abandonment of agriculture.
One of the most interesting town gaps was between Afragola and Acerra, a
cultivated "green wedge" that, following the orographic depression, spreads
out from the east area of Naples to the plain of the Regi Lagni, and from
here back to the centurial countryside of Caserta.
1. ANTECEDENT
In October 1997, the Ministry of Transport, together with the Campania
Region, the Province and the City of Naples and in agreement with the
Società TAV spa, identified the area where to locate the new suburban rail of
the future high speed railway station: the chosen site is in the town of
Afragola, in the centre of the "green wedge" that is one of the few still
cultivated gaps in the inland conurbation near Naples.



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This decision, taken on the basis of a pure transport rationality, underwent,
during the Environmental Assessment at the Ministry of Environment, some
"corrections" of great interest:

the request that the high­speed suburban rail would also become an
interchange station with the local railways;
the final design of interventions must be subordinated to an inter­
towns town plan aiming at the environmental protection of the area.

1.
2.

Following these requirements, the Region Campania commissioned the
starting up of a research to a group of planners, landscape architects and
engineers in 20001.
The research, completed in 2002, features a two­level prediction:

a general structure, with strategies and requirements that will be
absorbed in the under preparation Provincial Plan (as yet unapproved);
an accurate regulation with the arrangement of some variations to the
current General town planning schemes of the five towns most
directly affected by the new railway station and its suburban rail (the
towns of Acerra, Afragola, Casoria, Casalnuovo di Napoli, Caivano).

1.

2.

The general targets of the "Plan for five towns" are defined as follows2:
identification of the area surrounding the Naples­Afragola station
with the localization of the developed fringes of the towns;
reorganization of the road network;

1.
2.

protection of the (large) surfaces that are not developed or that are
intended for agricultural production;

3.
definition of protection measures in order to prevent unauthorized
buildings;

4.
drawing up those projects that can ensure a high level of
permeability of the new facilities in order to reduce the barrier
effect by the train lines and the train station;

5.

identification and localization of higher­level functions (services
and tertiary activities) to address the structural deficit that
characterizes the suburban areas that are north of Naples.

6.

Carino, Lorenzo Di Lucchio, Luisa Fatigati, Enrico Formato. The town and landscape
design was drafted by Paride Caputi, Luisa Fatigati and Enrico Formato.

The assignment has been entrusted to the design team coordinated by Paride Caputi with Stefania1

The objectives of the plan are set by the Regional Resolution No. 5020 ­ 5/8/1999.2



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2. THE "PLAN FOR FIVE TOWNS" (2000­2002)
The High Speed Station is considered to be a peculiar metropolitan equipment:
the station, along with residual agricultural areas, are intended as an opportunity
to provide the hinterland urban sprawl with a large metropolitan park.
It is necessary that the empty areas around the new station are included in an
environmental enhancement project that could consider them as a large
urban void: the renovation of the settlement’s system will follow starting
from this void and proceeding outward.
So, this plan considers the “green wedge”, that from East Naples goes up
towards Caserta, as the new centre of the metropolitan town: an empty
centre that can be structured as an opposite pole for the already built areas.
The cultivated territory to be protected become an opportunity of
transformation of the suburbs starting from a restoration project which
reverses the logic of the current dialectic between town and country: the
second term of the relation has so far been thought as a place waiting to be
involved in a new settlement or production facilities, with no connection to
the distinctive values of the area. The extent of the overturning that can
occur, can be grasped by analogy with a mechanism that is constant in the
construction of the early modern city compared to its archeological areas.
The XVIII century Rome, for example, found some new centralities with the
rediscovery of the Imperial Fora, so that an archaeological site also becomes
a re­foundation: a re­foundation of meanings for the Baroque city. Similarly,
the recovery and enhancement of the country landscape, and in particular of
the Bourbon hydrographical network, are thought as agricultural
archaeological operations and as the foundation of the Campania metropolis.
2.1 THE INTER­TOWNS AGRICULTURAL PARK
Considering the specific resources of this plain, mostly related to the wealth
of the archaeological and historical­environmental areas (farms, mills and a
hydrographical network which strongly characterizes the landscape), the
project suggests the establishment of an inter­towns agricultural park: a
consortium of interested towns ­ along with the City of Naples, the Region



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and the Province ­ might be the managing body of the park.
The Park identifies all the extensive agricultural areas and the areas with
wooded gardens in the plain between the five towns, so to reach various
objectives: the promotion of historical and landscape heritage; landscape and
environmental protection and recovery of the connecting belt between city
and country; the connection between agricultural areas and urban green
areas; the economic exploitation, protection and development of farming,
even by assigning additional and territorial protection duties in relation with
the town functions and the environmental assets; the cultural and
recreational enjoyment of the environment by the citizens; the urban and
services renovation in scattered conglomerations and agricultural villages,
preventing phenomena of urban welding due to the localization of the HST
station; the environmental improvement and conservation of the soil and
water resources to improve the living conditions of the located populations;
the reorganization of the areas surrounding the HST station and the creation
of a great central location in the metropolitan system.
These targets can be pursued thanks to the localization of the HST station,
which, being now included in the plan, is no more, or not only, a disturbing
element to a precarious environmental balance or a “sector facility” whose
impact must be solved by the town planning research, but, being rethought as
a “local infrastructure”, it becomes essential to the development of the area,
and an opportunity for a strategic process of actions for the improvement and
redesign of the plain’s entire landscape.
Within the areas of the future agricultural park the estimations of the current
plans regarding new settlement expansions have been eliminated: particularly
the estimation resulting from the still active Consorzio ASI, to build in the
territory of the town of Afragola, about 2 km north the future station, a
business/production centre, about 200 hectares large, with the establishment of
volumes and functions in complete contradiction with the objectives of the
environmental protection and preservation of the open space.



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2.2 THE EQUIPPED PARK AROUND THE STATION
The general design of the agricultural park suggests, for the area around the
station, the establishment of a "natural, technology and utility park" in which
to locate high­tech laboratories, agricultural testing centres and an entire
range of services to the citizens (not just travellers). The quantities and
functions to be set up in the park facilities were drawn from studying similar
experiences in Europe and they are about 200,000 square meters of gross
floor area (less than a fifth of the erased estimate by the Consorzio ASI). For

Figure 1 – Masterplan: the “green wedge” as the new centre of the metropolitan suburbia



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the entire area of the park, about 300 hectares large, it’s been suggested a
preventive acquisition by the public party, in order to direct the public
investment in infrastructure (the high speed railway and the station) towards
a profit in terms of land value of the areas nearby the station and, above all,
in order to avoid that more or less legitimate private interests and initiatives
would be triggered on them.
3. RESEARCH FOR THE SETTING UP OF A SOCIETY OF URBAN RENOVATION
The reasoning expressed in the Plan for five towns, although being evidently
consistent with the ministerial objectives and the public interest, has been
ignored both by the real estate development company of the State Railways,
and by the Campania Region: paying hundreds of millions of Euros to build
the high­speed railway – already working ­ and another hundred million for
the construction of the station­building (assigned to the starchitect Zaha
Hadid) and not to invest in the preventive purchase of the agricultural lands
whose value is multiplied by the above investment is an aporia that cannot
be explained with the power of reason.
The only concrete act promptly put in place in the above mentioned direction
(it is evident that the timing of the transaction, that is buying the land before the
construction of the railway began, was a necessary condition for the feasibility
of the operation) was promoted by the City of Afragola whose Technical
Department developed, in April 2002, a feasibility study for the establishment
of a Society of urban renovation that, following what happened in the 90’s in
Bagnoli (Naples), would purchase the areas near the future HST station.3
The feasibility study, based on the hypothesis of a park that’s strongly
anchored to the pre­existing environment and to the improvement of the
historic agricultural landscape, was submitted to the Ministry of
Infrastructure, even though it didn’t financed the establishment of the SUR
or gave place to any alternative course. Yet, clearly, the proposed transaction
was highly advantageous to the public coffers. Besides, it was in line with
the ministerial objectives of defence and protection of a territory that’s
precious because it’s rare in the metropolitan area of Naples, strongly at the

Formato.
The Feasibility Study was prepared by Salvatore Napolitano with Luisa Fatigati and Enrico3



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Figure 2 – The feasibility study for the estabilishment of a Society of urban renovation: a
system of parks around the new station

4. STUDY FOR A RAILWAY BYPASS IN NAPLES
During the drawing up of the "Plan for five towns", in 2001, the Province
entrusted the task of drafting a feasibility study for the construction of a
local railway bypass in Naples4. The hypothesis, also included in the above
mentioned ministerial requirements expressed in the EIA, derived from the

risk of being transformed and over­built.

the Progin Spa, the Engeco srl., the Steer Davies Gleave) that engaged Paride Caputi, Luisa
Fatigati and Enrico Formato for the drawing up of the town planning and landscape plan.

The task was entrusted to a temporary joint venture (the Centre for the Transport Systems Studies,4



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objective of making the Afragola station a hub of the local railway transport and
an interconnecting node with the High speed train station.
The plan of the new railway has been studied as closely related to the landscape
design, taking into account a town planning that repeats the reasoning about the
Afragola "green wedge" related to a set of urban gaps identified within the
conurbation that from Acerra (East) reaches the sea of Giugliano (West). This
conurbation has a population of about one million, but it’s totally lacking in
necessary higher services and facilities.
Along the route of the new local railway (which becomes a new element of the
structure of the urban sprawl, just like the Asse Mediano) the plan suggests the
creation of eight urban parks to be structured as new centres for the existing
clusters; the stops and the main stations of the new local line will be located in
relation to them. The park is thought, here as in Afragola, as a morphological
unit where the gap is predominant on the full: the redesign of this area aims to
redraw the fringe areas and to the re­balancing, in terms of equipment, quality of
spaces and quality of life. If the "integrated" park includes the building areas that
are still part of the town planning instruments in force, a qualitative variation to
the GTPS is proposed: in the case of residential areas, for example, the design of
the residence is considered in its relation to the open space, by developing the
housing quantities with intensive housing types to ensure the soil saving.
The bypass railway in Naples has never been funded. The only outcome of the
feasibility study was the partial acknowledgment, in the current (not approved)
Provincial Territorial Plan, of the urban voids as a system of parks.

Figure 3 – Study for the construction of a local railway bypass in Naples: new
centers for local clusters



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5. TEN YEARS LATER
The Asse Mediano was opened in 1993; it was built in the 80’s, when the
current conurbation didn’t exist yet and the big country towns of the
Province were separated from the countryside; it has no straight tracks
because it’s route needed to follow a certain balance of interests: a balance
made of expropriations (to be avoided or facilitated) and lands, probably
permanently polluted, to be forgotten under the roadbed.
Since a few years ago a new viaduct, indicatively with a wider track (three
lanes instead of two: evident sign of a future proliferation of the road
sections), has allowed the passage of the high speed trains between Naples and
Rome. Since a few months ago, you have been able, while driving on this
viaduct, to see the evolution of the road yard of the new high speed train
station (for now no sign of the local ones): the concrete modelled by Zaha
Hadid stands in an eerie empty that hasn’t been cultivated for some time now.
A space that seems to belong to no one, crossed by the absurd repetition of the
railway bridges and colonized by natural vegetation marked by posters and by
concrete or metal fences which marks the taking possession of the waiting
land. Waiting, of course, for the station and possible future compatibility
planning; these are lands that are likely to be a future bargain, but certainly for
now, they have brought profits to those who have in recent years passed the
properties from hand to hand (dividing them at each passage).
It is probably too late to intervene: the station will be just another fold of an
occasional and fragmented space. Being one of the many commercial
centres of the plain, it will be served by a parking lot connected to the
freeway; from its windows you will see only houses, warehouses, billboards,
maybe a few hotels testifying an idea of confused modernity, as if Las Vegas
was now the real scenario of everyday life.
A bunch of packaged documents is all that remains of the park, the
landscaping of the railway line and the attempt of redistributing, in terms of
public utilities, the public expenses on high speed – in short, of the town
planning and landscape design.
In the last decade no one has worked to pursue or at least refute what was
developed between 2000 and 2002. The documents are just there, waiting



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for a choice that politics, at best, is unable to make. Meanwhile, in this
decade, housing congestion has increased enormously and, thanks to public
funding, new, incredible commercial centres have colonized much of the
Marcianise countryside, where the Agricultural park of the “Plan for five
towns” was supposed to be the hinge with the Vanvitellian structures.

Figure 4 – The end of Campania felix: map of abandoned agricultural areas today (brown)



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Figure 5 – Work in progress: the new station and the local landscape



IJPP ­ Italian Journal of Planning Practice 38Vol. II, issue 1 ­ 2012

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