Facilities, Landscape, City. To the origins of a missed meeting. Travelling around the new high-speed Naples-Afragola train station.

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 high-speed train station in Afragola. Ten years later, during the construction of the facilities of the station, designed by the architect Zaha Hadid, it is probably about time to wonder why the hige 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 the public operators not the 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.