Individuazione delle componenti urbanistiche, paesaggistico-ambientali, edilizie e infrastrutturali attraverso l’analisi grafica della cartografia storica: il centro di Quartu Sant’Elena (CA)

This paper proposes the results of a survey aimed at a historical analysis of urban-environmental changes that led to the definition of the existing urban form of Quartu Sant’Elena, a town close to Cagliari (Sardinia, Italy). The research work, aimed at providing the basis for proper management of land resources, was carried out on different scales of detail, through the creation of a catalogue of building, architectural and infrastructural components of the historic and settlement contexts, and through the analysis of the elements of the landscape on a territorial scale. The information obtained during the investigation was recorded into a common database represented by a geographic information system, appropriately structured in order to allow dynamic management. Within the research work, a very important role was assigned to an analytical reading of the historical maps which offer, in particular through the nineteenth-century documents, an efficient synthesis of the territorial determinant elements and the urban structure of the historical settlement. The examination of the cartography, centered on the use of drawing as a means of exploration and cognitive analysis, led to a series of representations in which the territory in its broadest sense is broken down, discovered, analyzed and re-thought, and in which the graphic reading process, through essential and representative signs, leads to an in-depth analysis of the territorial structure, which is the outcome and the continuous product of historical, environmental and urban dynamics. Through an examination of cartographic documents a cognitive process has been created, which is representative of the events that have characterized the urban evolution of Cagliari’s Campidano plain. The data, gathered and structured on different informative levels, allows, through graphic overlay, comparative reading of the drawings of the area and a series of representations that can reassemble the fragments (thematic contributions) and define an analytical and unified design capable of representing the transformations that have led to the current settlement patterns, and understand its possible future changes