DIDACTICAL ISSUES ABOUT THE ECOLOGICAL-ENVIRONMENTAL REGENERATION OF HIGHLY URBANIZED AREAS

This paper will present a didactic experimentation that started with the analysis of three abandoned areas in Maddaloni, a town near Caserta in Italy, as well as the needs of the citizens living in the neighbourhood, attending the local church, doing grocery shopping at the market and sending their children to the near kindergarten and middle school. The study brought to the design of three sustainable public spaces that with new technologies, laboratories and urban gardens has the aim to become an innovative educator for people, especially for children who should be educated to the care towards the surrounding environment from an early age. Public spaces have always been considered as places where to spend our own free time, by ourselves or with other people, but their quality can be enhanced by using a consistent percentage of green to create a space adaptable to different uses over time and accessible to all kind of people. Based on this belief, each space has been studied to fulfil specific functions according to three main themes: • The Green City theme based on urban farming and related to the selling point of the cultivated products; • The Sociality theme, where nature becomes the scenery to human interactions; • The Environmental Education theme, a subject that has become increasingly more important due to the lack of green lungs in the city. Above all, the aim was to design a space that could be useful to spread the knowledge about environmental education, recycling and the use of renewable energy sources. Keywords: urban regeneration, green technology, research projects