Sposito, Sabrina |Italy

Sabrina Sposito is Territorial Planner. She received her academic education in Italy at the University of Naples Federico II where she obtained a Master’s Degree in Urban Territorial and Landscape-Environmental Planning, a Master’s Diploma in Planning and Sustainable Design of Port Areas and a PhD in Urban Design and Planning. Within her doctoral studies, she did a 6-month visiting at the University of Southern California hosted in the landscape architecture program within the School of Architecture. She has collaborated with Gasparrini architecture and urbanism office, focusing on land-use planning, masterplan and project design. She has been member of research teams, among which the research unit of Naples in the Project of National Relevance 2013/2016 (P.R.I.N.) “Re-cycle Italy” working on strategies to recycle and re-landscape pilot wasted areas in the metropolitan extent of Naples. As part of this research unit, she has also being involved in the International Workshop and Exhibition “Roma 2025 – Nuovi cicli di vita delle metropoli/New life cycles of the metropolis”. Her main subject of research is the challenging role of the water systems in contemporary urban and regional planning, with a special focus on the water space dereliction in critical urbanised areas. In particular, her research interests turn around the necessity of understanding the metabolic processes in strong connection with rivers and settlements based upon a multi-dimensional and cross-scale approach. Nevertheless, during the last years, she has crossed other topics and sectors, as urban economy, urban regeneration, cultural heritage, and environmental assessment. In 2010, she successfully completed the 5-week “Global Village for Future Leaders of Business and Industries” program in the United States that is conducted though the Iacocca Institute as part of the Office of International Affairs for Lehigh University.
 

Project at IAS-STS: Watercourses, settlements and urban metabolism towards a low carbon-energy system: resilience strategies and design-based applications in Naples, Italy.

In the contemporary civilization, the damaging actions on cities, nature and landscapes have dramatically augmented according to increasing wasting processes through which places and materials are subject to consumption, deterioration, and finally rejection (Lynch 1990). This phenomenon is permeating and conquering so extreme extension and density to design a vast setting of depleted lands that Berger (2007) have contributed to legitimate as unavoidable by-products of societal transformations in needs of systemic and landscape reinterpretations. In time of climate and demographic challenges, “recycling” those areas affected by dismissal, underuse, or pollution is extremely relevant and urgent (Gasparrini 2014, 2015). In particular, the reactivation of discarded watercourses in urbanised patterns has a potential role in stimulating the transition towards low carbon-energy configurations. During the research fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Science, Technology and Society (IAS-STS) in Graz I will concentrate my investigations on the Sebeto river plain in the east side of Naples (Italy), which has mainly disappeared under industrial and post-industrial transformations and contamination. Within the European and Italian framework, the research project aims at identifying resilience/adaptive strategies and design-based actions for recovering and managing the residual water spaces in the urban tissues fostering a sustainable urban, ecological and socio-economic development.

Selected Publications

SPOSITO, S. (2015) Hydro-metropolis. What if we design and experience cities through a water-based insight? In: RICCI, M., SCAGLIONE, P. (eds.) R.E.D.S.2ALPS. Monograph.IT Research. Trento: ListLab.

CERRETA, M., CANNATELLA, D., POLI, G., SPOSITO, S. (2015) Climate Change and Transformability Scenario Evaluation for Venice (Italy) Port-City Through ANP Method. In: O. Gervasi, B. Murgante, S. Misra, M. L. Gavrilova, A. M. A. C. Rocha, C. Torre, D. Taniar, B. O. Apduhan (eds.) Computational Science and Its Applications -- ICCSA 2015. 15th International Conference, Banff, AB, Canada, June 22-25, 2015, Proceedings. Part IV, Volume 9158 of the series Lecture Notes in Computer Science. p. 50-63. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. Print ISBN 978-3-319-21409-2, Online ISBN 978-3-319-21410-8. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-21410-8_4.

ATHANASIADOU, E. A., SPOSITO, S. (2015) Water management theories and practices in the planning and design of cities and towns. Proceedings of The2nd International Conference on “Changing Cities: Spatial, Design, Landscape & Socio-economic Dimensions” Porto Heli, Peloponnese, Greece, 22-26 June 2015.

SPOSITO, S. (2014) Blue (+) Green settlements. Towards a new land/water network of drosscapes. In: MARINI, S., ROSELLI, C. S. (eds.), Re-cycle Op_positions I. Re-cycle Italy, I (5). p. 186-192 Roma: Aracne. ISBN 978-88-548-7239-4. DOI: 10.4399/978885487239431