TECHNE: Special Series Vol. 3
Essays and Viewpoint

Informal and Italian illegal settlements: two city visions

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  • Claudia de Biase,
  • Salvatore Losco
Claudia de Biase
Department of Architecture and Industrial Design, Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Italy
Salvatore Losco
Engineering Department, Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Italy
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/techne-16955

Published 2025-07-31

Keywords

  • Informal city,
  • Spontaneous city,
  • Illegal city,
  • Sustainable regeneration,
  • Spatial Planning tools

How to Cite

de Biase, C., & Losco, S. (2025). Informal and Italian illegal settlements: two city visions. TECHNE - Journal of Technology for Architecture and Environment, (3), 70–76. https://doi.org/10.36253/techne-16955

Copyright (c) 2025 Claudia de Biase, Salvatore Losco

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Abstract

The informal city is configured and articulated as a spontaneous, sprawling or illegal city. Each of them present recurring and distinctive characteristics also in relation to specific territorial contexts. After outlining the scientific background of informal and illegal cities, and summarising the Italian specificities of the last ones, the paper focuses on the dualism between the informal and the illegal city found in the analysis of the technical literature on the subject regarding spatial planning. The aim is to bring out affinities and differences between the two city models to contribute to the formulation of the correct contents of urban planning tools for their redevelopment and/or regeneration to transform especially Italian illegal cities into liveable neighbourhoods.

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