Complexity and sustainability: relief and representation of the new urban identity

The new urban facts of the territory are not easily identifiable, not representable through a traditional planimetric relief, not explainable with the common terminology and often invisible; at the same time other elements of the territory exist whose identification is entrusted only to the sensitive perception which become a analysis of measure and a reference for planning. As a macter of fact, the contemporary city is the place of the complexity, of the simultaneity and of instability which determine situations of transivity and transformation. Researchers have taken therefore from other disciplines ways to see, to research, to explain, to represent the city and the natural, mental, virtual places in which we live, constructing proper methodologies of transversal and multilevel decodification and analysis. In order to give suitable terms and explain those new sites, several studious have experimented maps, words and multimedial images, hypertext, software, able to render this complexity and to permit the readability, wich have created in most of cases new interpretations and intersections of urban facts. Starting from these premises the aim of this work is that of illustrating the analysis methodology of the sensitive relief and the results of the first experimentation on the urban areas of Naples. In such a complex and diversified contemporareity, the proposed sensitive relief individualizes those elements which have value for the identification of the place, are able to provocate transformations also cultural and to influence the sustainable city construction. The final product is a complex map and the relative legend processing, wich intend to integrate the traditional planimetry, support architects and planners in the sustainable process of construction of the city, dialogue with the common citizens and users of the places.